No but as Yazata has expressed Buddha never said that he was for no writings have ever been found with him saying that he was. I can only go by what the scholars have found and interpreted that was written about him.
Maybe he actually understands the teaching? Which has nothing to do with deities. If Buddha was a god, his teaching would be unattainable for mere mortals. The fact that he was just some guy gives people hope that his teaching can be achieved by anyone. Everything he said points to this.
What ever, Buddha is a deity for many people there are buddha temples , the devoted people pray to him in the temple burn incense put offering at the altar of Buddha they have a large numbers of monks in the temple . That was my observation in China . For curiosity I went to more then 2 temples . The Catholics pray to Mary . were in the commandments it says don't pray to other gods and don't make yourself any images of thins in heaven but people do. My question to buddhists is in the period Buddha was born what was the deity at that time . I suppose their their parents were believer on some deity.
Hinduism was the primary religion in the area that Siddhartha Gautama was born and lived. He was born into a hindu family.
True, but it's a misconception about Buddhism that Buddha is a deity, no matter how the people have come to worship him.
I can see Confusio as an enlightened man without religious attachment , but Buddha have a closer step to a spiritual note. Example among Catholics. St Paul and other saints there is no deity in him yet people pray to them yet you can see the wisdom in Paul's writing . Buddha will suggest meditation . Paul will say pray ( meditate ) so the Holy spirit will enlighten you . Meditation us a praying condition.
Meditation is taught as being subtly different than petitioning a god for something, but I agree that it depends on the person, and the effect could be the same. I believe that Catholics are in fact polytheists, since they treat Mary and the saints as quasi-deities.
I agree . Unfortunately Constantin wanted to all religion in his empire , so the product was Catholicism, If Buddhism would be in his empire at that time , probably buddhist rituals would be in Catholicism.
about chan symbolism decendent from mohenjo-daro http://www.eyeofchan.org/all-articl...icles-by-chuan-zhi/1007-the-three-jewels.html reasonable?
I don't think that even the earliest Buddhists thought of the Buddha as 'just a man'. The Pali discourses are filled with hagiographical notes, with suggestions that the Buddha was the embodiment of perfection. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhahood The Chinese are almost all Mahayana Buddhists, who believe in the existence of supermundane Buddhas. The Mahayana Buddhists developed kind of a trinity doctrine of their own. They imagine the Buddha having three different forms. First, there's the Nirmanakaya. This is how the Buddha manifests as a human being on the Earthly plane. The historical Siddhartha Guatama was this Buddha's Nirmanakaya. Second, there's the 'enjoyment body', the Sambhogakaya. This is a glorious god-like form that the Buddha supposedly assumes when he's in the heavens among the devas. And lastly, there's what the Buddha truly is, the Dharmakaya. This one started out in the early Pali discourses as a description of the dependent origination, the causal process, that people confuse with a substantial mind, soul or self. But as time went on it turned into what Buddhist piety imagined as the embodiment of enlightenment itself - ineffable and without any boundaries or limits. So from the point of view of belief in supermundane Buddhas, it makes sense to pray to a heavenly Buddha with a divine form and miraculous supernatural powers (there's supposedly many Buddhas, each spatial universe and temporal eon has one). In the Trikaya scheme, these would be Sambhogakayas. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trikaya Mahayana also places great emphasis on the Bodhisattva path. This is the path that a sentient being takes towards ultimately becoming a Buddha. As time went on this Bodhisattva path was imagined as being more and more grand and elaborate, so that highly advanced beings nearing Buddhahood were heavenly beings in their own right, able and willing to answer prayers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bodhisattva
That's all the superstitious detritus that tends to surround someone people admire. Thankfully Zen Buddhism avoids all that.
