Gods, merit-seeking, and a law of cause and effect

Where, the notes begin, does the philosophical challenge over the existence of gods and over human beings end? Theism, atheism, and pantheism still surround human society, and within that surround people go on thinking and acting philosophically, wanting to come closer to a god, or wanting the opposite. India at the time of the Buddha’s birth, they write, was no different. Hinduism was the state religion, and the Buddha’s appearance was, for people they call ignorant, an enlightening event.

A powerless person may begin merit-seeking faith in a child’s pure dependence, hoping a greater and holier being will save them; but once that faith is stained by the world and starts to fill one’s own interest, it becomes an error. The Buddha, they write, pointed to that error clearly and coldly, and spoke of a law of cause and effect.

Sages in the same era

As human knowledge and the capacity to think rose, beings once worshipped as gods were, they write, proven to be objects of natural law. In the era of the Buddha’s appearance, Socrates and Plato in Greece, and Confucius and Laozi in China, were among those who let humankind taste the truth; such forerunners we honor as sages. To a humankind that had until then believed in gods and myth, their appearance played a decisive part in turning a dependent relation between gods and humans into a more horizontal structure of truth and reason. Through that period, humankind first established a human image that had shaken the gods off, and the forms that followed varied with the cultural sphere.

Awakening, impermanence, and a later record

The foremost solution among the Buddha’s teachings, they write, is awakening. The Buddha’s awakening is understood as insight into dependent arising: by recognizing that relationality called arising, complete awakening was attained. Dependent arising, they say, is a philosophy of change grounded in relativity. The joking phrase that life is impermanent, used when one feels hollow, also comes from Buddhism, and means change: nothing does not change.

When the Buddha is understood around the religious, around awakening, or around nirvana, which of these three is right or wrong matters less from a religious point of view, they write, because all of this was recorded later, and an efficient way of treating the gaps that appear in the Buddha’s life is hard. The notes leave the book at that difficulty, before a later shop heading on the order of the report. The same Korean report, at fuller length, is on CampusDown.

Sources

1. The notes, a student reading of a book titled a pilgrimage of the Buddha: Hinduism as state religion in the notes’ telling, a law of cause and effect, Socrates and Plato and Confucius and Laozi in the same era, awakening as insight into dependent arising, and gaps in a life recorded later.

Last updated: 15 November 2026