Other People's Gods

[soulsurvivor]

In this thread, I'm looking to hear from theists, and mostly those of the idea that there are multiple Gods, or that God can present her/his/itself in various forms.

How do you feel about other people's Gods? If you have one or two you favor, or you stick within a certain pantheon, what is your relationship with the deities of others? Do you feel they all exist? Are they different forms of similar deities, or each their own entities? Do you acknowledge them, choose to ignore, or something else?

This is not a thread for any One True God 'stuff'. Sorry!

There is no such thing as other people's Gods, so all Gods are for everybody.
But a person may choose to worship only some of them or just have their own favorite single God.

Local Gods (I think we should all worship these):
- The God of the Earth - he is the one who manages all creatures and humans on Earth
- The Solar God - he is the one who keeps all creatures in the solar system alive (without the Sun we would all be dead).

There are Gods for each physical element of Creation whom we may or may not wish to worship. Below are the Hindu names:
Earth element - Ganesh
Water element - Parvati (Goddess)
Fire element - Laxmi (Goddess)
Wind element - Hanuman
Sky/Space element - Saraswati (Goddess)

Universal Gods (with Hindu names):
The Father - Shiva
The Son - Vishnu
The Holy Spirit - Brahma

Take your choice.

 

[Sundance]

In this thread, I'm looking to hear from theists, and mostly those of the idea that there are multiple Gods, or that God can present her/his/itself in various forms.

How do you feel about other people's Gods? If you have one or two you favor, or you stick within a certain pantheon, what is your relationship with the deities of others? Do you feel they all exist? Are they different forms of similar deities, or each their own entities? Do you acknowledge them, choose to ignore, or something else?

This is not a thread for any One True God 'stuff'. Sorry!

As a Pure Land Buddhist, to start, Buddhism absolutely acknowledges the existence of various divine beings, gods if you will, and various schools do worship different buddhas and bodhisattvas. When Buddhism spread to China, Korea, Japan, and into Southeast Asia, it mingled with the local religious beliefs there, so there was a lot of cross-pollination where Buddhists worshipped the gods of China, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, or Thailand with no problem at all! This was the case with all different schools: Ch’an (Zen in Japan), Tian’tai (Tendai), Shingon, and yes, even the Pure Land school.

To speak more specifically to Japanese Buddhism, that being my practice, there was a conception called “honji suijaku”, which was the idea that the kami of their pantheon were local manifestations of different buddhas and bodhisattvas given to the people for the purpose of their salvation. In addition, the gods were looked at as even being protectors of the Dharma, so this even further served to justify their worship.

How this impacts my relationship to non-East Asian divinities, uhhhhh in general, I believe that every group of people has its own divinity or divinities, but I don’t really worship them at all. In Jodo Shinshu, we devote ourselves primarily to the Amitabha Buddha (in Japanese, Amida).