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LanDroid 
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Joined: 27 Jul 2002
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Location: Cincinnati, OH
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 Posted: Mon Jun 05, 2006 6:23 pm Post subject: Karen Armstrong interview
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Quote:
Well, explain that. What is religion?
Religion is a search for transcendence. But transcendence isn't necessarily sited in an external god, which can be a very unspiritual, unreligious concept. The sages were all extremely concerned with transcendence, with going beyond the self and discovering a realm, a reality, that could not be defined in words. Buddhists talk about nirvana in very much the same terms as monotheists describe God.
That's fascinating. So in Buddhism, which is nontheistic, the message or the experience of nirvana is the same as the Christian God?
The experience is the same. The trouble is that we define our God too closely. In my book "A History of God," I pointed out that the most eminent Jewish, Christian and Muslim theologians all said you couldn't think about God as a simple personality, an external being. It was better to say that God did not exist because our notion of existence was far too limited to apply to God.
Salon.com
You'll have to click through an ad, but an interesting read since we've discussed one of her books.
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