Buddhism

Norse Saga About The Buddha

aardvarchaeology — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 20:07:49 +0000

Norse Saga About The Buddha

I found something pretty wild in an essay by J.L. Borges this morning. There's a 13th century Norse saga about the Buddha. And the story has other fine twists as well. This all revolves around a legendary tale of the Buddha's early life.

In the 6th century BC a son was born to a petty king in what is now Nepal. He was named Siddharta, and it was prophesied shortly after the boy's birth that he would become either a great king or a great holy man. His father then kept him carefully protected from contact with religion and human suffering, apparently to keep the boy away from the holy-man alternative career path. After 29 years of secluded luxury, Siddharta left his palace for a chariot ride with his driver and immediately confronted an old man (aging!), a sick man (disease!) and a dead man (death!). This freaked him out, but when Siddharta then met an ascetic holy man he took heart from the peaceful look in his eyes and decided to renounce the world.

This story is just a prelude to the part of the Buddha's life that really interests Buddhists. But let's fast-forward some centuries. In about the 3rd century AD, Manichaean Persians translate the story into Middle Persian. In the 8th century, Muslims translate that into Arabic. By now the honorific Bodhisattva (“enlightened existence”) of the original text has been misunderstood as the man's name and rendered first as Budasaf, then Yudasaf, and then Yuzasaf. A Georgian version of the 9th century makes it Iodasaph, a Greek one of the early 11th century makes it Ioasaph, and then in 1048 a Latin version makes it Iosaphat or Josaphat. Along the way, Siddharta's driver Channa has somehow acquired a more important role and been renamed Barlaam, and the story has been adapted as a Christian tale. This Latin version of “Barlaam and Josaphat” is what King Haakon IV of Norway has translated into Old Norwegian in the 13th century. An 1851 edition is on-line.

Meanwhile, Barlaam and Josaphat have come to be venerated as a pair of Christian saints, celebrated on 27 November in the Western Church. And Borges points out a delicious irony: in 1615 the Portuguese historian Diogo do Couto (who lived in India for many years) denounces the heathen Buddhists for believing in a story that is obviously just a garbled version of the legend of Saint Josaphat.

The meaty Wikipedia entry on Barlaam & Josaphat is a good place to start if you want to delve deeper into this story.

aardvarchaeology Mon, 04/08/2013 - 16:07

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Buddhism

Considering that the 17th century Portuguese thought that they owned India (and the rest of non-Christian Africa and Asia, plus Brazil and Newfoundland) under the Treaty of Tordesillas, it's no surprise that they would consider Buddhist mythology inferior to the Catholic history, which to them was obviously correct (see Ambrose Bierce).

I'm familiar with some of Borges's fiction, which I encountered in high school Spanish classes. (It's widely considered, at least in Latin America, a serious oversight that Borges never won the Nobel Prize for Literature.) I wasn't aware of his nonfiction. Do you have any good pointers, either to the original Spanish or to English translations?

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16566.Selected_Non_Fictions

If Snorre Sturlasson's contemporaries had caught that latinized story and incorporated it into Norse myth
(the way the later version of the Balder myth -a resurrected Balder as creating a new future after Ragnarök- was borrowed from christianity) we would now have had Buddha running around with the aesir in Nifelheim and Jotunheim.
Channa was of course Loke in disguise, messing with the mind of a potential rival.

"This is the saga of Buddha Gunnarsson, son of Gunnar Eriksson, son of Erik who came to Island during Landnam"

I agree that Balder is a thinly disguised Christ. But the loan was made no later than the 5th century, long before the Icelandic landnam. Balder and the mistletoe arrow is one of only two Eddic motifs that can be identified on Migration Period gold bracteates. The other is Tyr with his hand in Fenrir's maw.

I've heard that the Vikings traded with Iran via the Volga-Caspian route - maybe the legend entered their folklore directly from that contact?

Still they chose to translate the Latin version.

Presumably due to a shortage of middle persian -old norwegian translators at Haakon's court?

I thought it was generally agreed that the Swedish, Danish and Icelandic versions were translations by the versified German text by Rudolph of Ems. Is that not so? Then is it correct to call it Norse?

I may have misunderstood what they translated. Can you recommend a source regarding the Old Norwegian text's archetype? As for whether it's Norse, I don't understand what that has to do with the source language.

There's a good 1843 Pfeiffer edn of Rudolph von Ems "Baarlam und Josaphat" which is believed to be the way by which other mediaeval germanic versions were rendered. It is a complex narrative, where the Buddha element is just but one of many popular pious legends interwoven. I guess the Icelandic version could be called a Saga, that's true.

Sounds like Haakon's version is not a straight translation, then?

The frontispiece of the 1851 edition reads "Originally written in Greek in the 7th century, later translated into Latin, and thence again, freely reworked around AD 1200, translated into Norwegian". But of course philology has made advances in 160 years.

Could be worth comparing Haakon, Rudolph and the Latin version. It is nevertheless fascinating how a narrative could spread so widely and in so many forms.

OT, but still it needs to be repeated, since the term viking was used above. There has never existed a tribe, a nation, or a people called vikings, this is an anglosaxian misinterpretion dating less htan 100 years. The term viking is mentioned in several medevial prime sources; The Beowulf, "Gesta Hammaburgensis ecclesiae pontificum" by Adam von Bremen etc. Adam states clearly that world means "pirat" nothing more and nothing less: "Aurum ibi plurimum, quod raptu congeritur piratico. Ipsi enim piratae, quos illi Wichingos as appellant, nostri Ascomannos regi Danico tributum solvunt. " = "There is much gold here (in Zealand), accumulated by piracy. These pirates, which are called wichingi by their own people, and Ascomanni by our own people, pay tribute to the Danish king." Observe, 1. Adam is surprised that they pay tax and mentions this is a vital information their own people call THEM vikings, which means that the rest of the people does not view themselves as vikings, so they even have a name for this minority. Furthermore, above is claimed "Vikings traded with Iran via the Volga-Caspian route", this was NOT vikings, it was just simply scandinavians, most of them from present Sweden. Now, it may surprise you that the word viking is only mentioned on six runestones in Sweden, in 5 cases, its used as a personal name (without explanation) and in the sixth case its used about a man who was a viking watcher, he was a guard AGAINST vikings. This man, obvioulsy related to the royal family, would probably rotate in his grave, if he knew that millions of people call him a viking today. And to be more precise, vikingr was primarly an activity, and it was a temporarily activity, when a person was not piracing anymore, then this person could no longer be refered to as a viking. This is very precisely defined in Egil Skallagrimsson, when he is discussing Björn Farman: "Björn var farmaður mikill, var stundum í víking, en stundum í kaupferðum; Björn var hinn gervilegasti maður." = english: Björn was a great traveller; sometimes as viking, sometimes as tradesman. A tradesman was a tradesman, a viking was a viking. The same perosn could of course change between the two activities, but it doesnt make them the same. A tradesman is a tradesman, a pirat is a pirat. It may surpirise you that probably less than 1% of the sedish people during medevial time commited piracy, and were, during that time refered to as vikings. Asa consequence, most swedes probably hated vikings as much as other people working hard for their food. There were NO viking kings, and although Harald Hårfager is named as viking king, in a lot of anglosaxian litterature, the truth is that he cleaned the shores of Scotland and Hebrides from vikings, most of them escaping the king to Iceland. Theres even a scandinavian source mentioning an attack from arabian pirats, and they were refered to as vikings. When arabic people were mentioned as pirates, this makes sense, once you understand that viking just means pirat. Forget about "viking ships" since pirats probably never had a wharf or made any ships. The correct term is long ships, and they were mostly used by non pirats, the royal navy "ledung" as an important example. A misunderstanding and abuse of a defenition that was clearly defined for over 1000 years, and the last 50 or so misinterpretation, will never help anyone to fully understand the complex medevial scandinavian society, which in fact was never dominated by vikings. Even if Spain and Britain had some pirats sailing the atlantic sea, this will never make the kings of spain and britain "Pirat-kings". It will never make those countries peaceful farmers, shepheards, and fishmonglers to pirats. It is exactly the same for scandinavia. A misinterpretion, or a lie, will never become true, regardless how many people repeat it over and over again. Read the prime sources, and you will understand, what most important encyklopedias has not clearified, due to the popularity of what people in their phantasy see, when they hear the word viking, an archtype, which in reality never existed. Most ncyclopedias today state in their intro that vikings were not a people, and then is the rest of the articles an unclear story about pirats from scandinavia AND non pirats from scandinavia. Those articles discuss what vikings ate, drank, spoke about, etc, which clothes they wore, which weapons they used, etc, but all this archeological material is remains from scandinavians, not pirats. It has to be stated: Scandinavia had a flourishing society, which is known already in year 78 by Tacitus, and scandinavins still exist. They were builing ships, exploring, trading, and also pirating as vikings. But this doesnt make just any baker, shepheard etc, during medevial time , a viking. Most vikings were probably outlaws, and hated and disrespected by most Scandinavians. They had to flee to Iceland or Jomsborg, when the scandinavian kings lost their patience. Its time to focus on the original difference of the terms norse, scandinavians, vaeringar, rus and vikings. Allt hose terms had unique defenition for over 1000 years. Anyone can feel free to mix them together in a pseudo-scientific marmelade, but who, in the end benefits from that? In the end, its a matter of respect. All germans during the 40s can not be refered to as nazis, all americans can not be refered as cowboys? Why shall then swedes, living in akingdom already mentioned 2000 years ago, be refered to as vikings, just because some pirates were scandinavian during 800 AD to 1000 AD?

Since Buddhism is much about the inevitability of death...http://www.xkcd.com/1198/

*slaps forehead* Man, oh man, more stuff to add to the neverending reading list.

Buddhists believe in God, but don't care as much

razib — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 09:51:28 +0000

Buddhists believe in God, but don't care as much

The blog of the Buddhist magazine Tricycle has responded to my post that Buddhists generally believe in God. Some of the comments also brought up some semantic issues which are real in how Buddhists view God, and how it might be distinguished from more personalized conceptions of the divine being, especially in the Abrahamic religions. The short of it is that many Buddhists will accede that gods may exist, but that their role in the religion is relatively marginal. Additionally, Buddhists reject the Creator God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, which is an important distinction.

First, though the distinctions among gods are certainly relevant and important for religionists, to a nonreligious atheist, like myself, they're not particularly important. A spook in the sky is a spook in the sky. More clinically a supernatural agent is a supernatural agent. The fact that one may believe in the existence of supernatural agents, but not worship a particular supernatural agent, is an interesting point, but from my perspective believing in a supernatural agent makes you a theist. Even a supernatural agent of somewhat limited scope vis-a-vis the omni-God of the philosophical monotheists. On a somewhat related point there is ethnographic and psychological cross-cultural data, reported in Theological Incorrectness, that suggest that the gods of all religions are conceptualized by human minds in the same way.

In any case, it seems entirely likely that Buddhists do generally believe in God/gods. But do they emphasize these supernatural agents to the same extent as monotheists? The World Values Survey asked how important God was in someone's life. Below are a slice of nations, with Buddhists as well as some non-Buddhist groups as comparison points.

	Japan	Korea			Thai.	Viet.	Malaysia		Taiwan	Singapore
	Budd	Budd	Protest	Cath	Budd	Budd	Budd	Mus	Budd	Budd	Mus	Protest
0	7.4	12	1.4	7.6	0.1	25.7	0.4	0.4	2.9	4.3	0.4	1
2	7.1	7.8	0.2	4.8	-	9.3	0.8	-	2.5	1.6	0.2	-
3	8.9	8.9	0.7	12.8	0.2	2.7	2.1	0.3	5.8	4.7	-	1
4	4.3	3.2	-	5.6	0.5	4	5	1.3	7.1	2.3	-	-
5	8	19.7	8.8	11.1	4.4	10.6	17.4	7	20	23.8	0.4	3.1
6	25.2	11.8	9	16.6	8.2.	6.2	17	11.5	24.6	15.2	0.2	3.1
7	12.9	13.6	13.7	15.3	23.2	8.4	17.4	7.9	9.6	15.6	0.2	6.2
8	12.6	13	11.2	9.8	29.2	15.9	12.9	9.9	12.9	16.8	2	12.6
9	5.8	6	11.1	6.9	16.3	7.1	12.9	9	4.6	10.9	2.9	12.5
10	7.7	4.1	44	9.6	18	10.2	14.1	52.6	10	4.7	93.7	60.4

On the face of it it does seem that monotheists place God at the center of their lives in a way that Buddhists do not. One might quibble here and suggest that the way that the question was asked biased Buddhists to presume that "God" was the God of the Abrahamists, as opposed to god-like entities with supernatural powers of more Buddhist nature. But until further exploration confirms this hypothesis, I think one should accept the survey data and assume that religion does have an influence in reshaping the weights of various supernatural concepts and entities in one's life. The Abrahamic meme does seem to transform people into relative God-addicts, as opposed to the recreational use common among Buddhists.*

* I suspect that there is some conflation here between "Buddhism" and the pre-Western nature of religious orientation in much of East Asia. Hindus in the data sets actually resemble Abrahamists more than the Buddhists.

razib Sun, 04/19/2009 - 05:51

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It's relevant that a large fraction of Buddhists don't believe in a god, and are still viewed as Buddhists by themselves and other Buddhists. It says that god-belief doesn't characterize Buddhism, the way it does Christianity or Islam.

Dear sir,
I think that one should specify the word "God". What is God? Originally Buddha's rejection of Creation and Creator came as a reaction to Vedic concepts of the matter. There is no evidence that the monotheÃ¯stic God of the Jewish Religion was known among the peoples of Northern India where Buddha lived. When Buddha speaks about a Creator he refers to one or other of the many names that the Vedic religion used to designate it.
The Indic words 'deva', 'brahma' and the like have in the recent past, and unfortunately still in the present, wrongly been translated into English as 'gods'. And yes, this is more often than not accepted as a correct translation by Asian lay Buddhists who cannot be bothered with the fine print of Buddha's Teachings; the canon is generally unavailable to most and monks tend to avoid thorny issues.

The content given to the word God East and West should not be confounded. When a Chinese Buddhist uses the word 'god' s/he refers to pre-Buddhist concepts in the DaoÃ¯st religion that could be translated with the word Nature or Natural Force. Likewise the Buddhists living in South-East Asia retained in some cases parts of their extra-Buddhististic shamanistic religion where there generally is equally mention of natural forces that they, if pressed to give it an English name, designate as "God" or "god". It might indeed be compared to the remnants of Northern European nature worship from ancient times that in some way makes for the popular phrase "I believe that there is 'something'," meaning that these people surmise the presence of some natural power that is above and beyond them.

It might therefore be the case that questionaires the World Values Survey used were not specific enough, and that they too used the word God the way someone does who doesn't know anything about flowers. Yes indeed, a rose is a flower, but not all flowers are roses.

The content given to the word God East and West should not be confounded.

they should not if you are a partisan of either set of religions. it is fine to do so if you are an atheist in many contexts, as substantively they aren't that different. substantively in terms of an operational definition which people implicitly assume and use in any manner to justify or interpret behavior.

It is a dangerous thing to say that Buddhists 'believe in God'. The Buddhist view of God/gods differs from the Judeo-Christian notion in a way that is often misunderstood. This article, because it doesn't explain the difference, is spreading more ignorance about Buddhism. It is not enough to say that Buddhists don't believe in a Creator deity. In Buddhism, deities are used to focus attention, to aid in spiritual development/enlightenment. A Buddhist strictly following the tradition of the Buddha does not 'believe' in anything that cannot be proved objectively or experientially. Buddhist deities, if they exist in some substantial form, would still never be 'supernatural'. They may be beyond the scope of current scientific measurement, but that doesn't mean they are supernatural. In any case, Buddhists are never encouraged to have 'faith' in anything that they can't experience for themselves. It is a 'come and see for yourself' religion.

Furthermore, there are many different sects, some who focus on deities, and some that don't, and it is too much of a generalization to say "Buddhists [i.e. all Buddhists] believe in God". The author should have done more research to find out which sects focus on dieties and which don't. Being both a Buddhist and an atheist myself, I know there is no contradiction there. Buddhism, by definition, does not require belief in anything supernatural, nor does it require atheism. Buddhist teaching does not make statements about whether God/gods exist, because their existence has no bearing on the goals of Buddhism. Indeed, the question of whether God/gods exist in any ultimate sense is intentionally beyond the scope of Buddhism itself.

I think the headline of this article was a sensationalistic and rather false generalizaton. This topic, your readers, and Buddhists like myself deserve clear and precise information, which would have come from a thorough investigaton and a little more thought.

The ancient Hebrews were well aware of the distinction between "God" and "the gods". They were commanded to only worship the one God, but it doesn't say anything about believing in the existence or not of the gods.

The gods in Buddhism strike me as very similar to the gods of Europe and the middle east.

think the headline of this article was a sensationalistic and rather false generalizaton. This topic, your readers, and Buddhists like myself deserve clear and precise information, which would have come from a thorough investigaton and a little more thought.

it's only important because religionists are prone to kill themselves over picayune differences. but as i said above, the differences are trivial in a substantive sense. no one knows what the philosophical differences mean in a concrete sense, they're just willing to kill & organize around them.

But until further exploration confirms this hypothesis, I think one should accept the survey data and assume that religion does have an influence in reshaping the weights of various supernatural concepts and entities in one's life.

Your original point is well taken and your post provides further helpful analysis. As for the comment above:

It's relevant that a large fraction of Buddhists don't believe in a god, and are still viewed as Buddhists by themselves and other Buddhists. It says that god-belief doesn't characterize Buddhism, the way it does Christianity or Islam.

If by "a god" we mean an omnipotent, omniscient creator god, the question is really whether someone who believes in such a god would call himself a Buddhist. The absence of such a god is what more accurately characterizes Buddhism.

I think we would do better to consider beliefs that actually are contained in Buddhist doctrine. For instance, while a belief in otherworldly beings is not central to Buddhism, for many, a literal understanding of rebirth is. Respected monk/scholar Bhikkhi Bodhi, as an example, goes so far as to say that without a literal understanding of rebirth, one is not practicing Buddhism at all. Columbia Buddhist studies professor Robert Thurman, on the other hand, disagrees, although he himself believes in not only rebirth but also reincarnation. Writer Stephen Batchelor, for his part, makes a case for Buddhist agnosticism (Rebirth: A Case for Buddhist Agnosticism). Batchelor asserts that many Buddhist schoolsâsome Mahayana schools in particularâare essentialist and backslide into a belief in atman (Bristol University's John Peacocke agrees). Batchelor took a lot of flak for this and for his book Buddhism Without Beliefs (the magazine I edit published it in partnership with Riverhead/Penguin) because many felt he'd rationalized the juice out of the teachings.

My understanding of the original post is that Buddhism isn't as free of claims unsubstantiated by scientific proofs as many think it is. I agree with that (I think most Buddhists would, too) and while I can't vouch for the integrity of the data cited, if accurate, I wouldn't be surprised.

...it's only important because religionists are prone to kill themselves over picayune differences...

All too true. But that this is a human condition not a religious one. Socialists are happy to kill other socialists over minutia of doctrine. Union members kill non-believers who dare to attempt union jobs etc.

In any case, Buddhists are never encouraged to have 'faith' in anything that they can't experience for themselves

No. Practically speaking, faith is heavily pushed in some schools of Tibetan Buddhism. Amongst the masses, Padmasambhava is surprisingly Jesus-like.

Doesn't Pure Land Buddhism also require a good deal of "faith"?

Spiral, Tibet doesn't seem to correspond to your sketch even nominally. Obviously zen is another story.

But that this is a human condition not a religious one. Socialists are happy to kill other socialists over minutia of doctrine. Union members kill non-believers who dare to attempt union jobs etc.

you make a good point, and of course it is a human condition. in any case, the scale of socialist-on-socialist killing dwarfs union-on-non-union killing, so i think bringing up the second example is kind of moronic and now people will be pissed at you for taking an anti-union potshot and be prone to derail the thread off its natural course.

If by "a god" we mean an omnipotent, omniscient creator god, the question is really whether someone who believes in such a god would call himself a Buddhist.

yes. but look, i don't believe anyone know what they believe if they say them believe in an omni-god. that is, the very nature of such a god is beyond human ken. ergo, the empirical psychological data strong points to the reality that the supernatural agent people conceptualize, as opposed to avow a belief in, is a limited god of the type which has been with humanity since the beginning.

In what I've read, Buddhism is described as a hierarchical, esoteric religion whose entry-level believers are theists, but whose more advanced believers (whose precedence is accepted by the commoners) are not. The process of advancement in the religion is moving from myths and fossilized misperceptions such as God, Mount Sumeru, Atman, etc. to a less erroneous view of self and world. But Buddhists use the erroneous views as teaching devices, the way that you'd tell a child not to go somewhere because there were monsters there.

Thus, statistically, Buddhists believe in God.

Much of what I've read is written in English for Westerners, but some of what I've read in Chinese says the same. In particular, God or Gods are subject to illusion the same way humans are, and wrongly believe that they created the world.

Buddhism centers on the enlightenment experience or discovery of Gautama Buddha around 500 BC, but it's a generica experience -- there were many other Buddhas before him in various eras.

John Emerson:

Going to the texts and commentaries is going about it backwards. Orthopraxy is more important than Orthodoxy in most branches.

I'm not sure where you're getting your perceptions of Buddhism from. If anything, within the Mahayana Tradition that China is steeped in, the higher practitioners are often steeped in rituals that ascribe all sorts of "merit" accumulation and transfer. Even in the austere Zen tradition there are rituals that the priests and monks must master in order to move up the ranks. Not mention, in China, Zen is pretty well blended with the Pure Land tradition.

Sure there's a lot of stuff written about "form of emptiness, emptiness of form" commentaries, but like I said before, orthopraxy, not orthodoxy predominates, and for every commentary written by a learned monk on such matters as the illusory nature of reality, there's ten written by other learned monks for consumption by other learned monks on the power of invoking a certain Buddha to cure illness, be reborn in the Pure Land, or what have you. Of course, nowadays, there's more interest in the "intellectual" stuff.

Granted, though, in China, Taoism is the usual go to source for practical esoteric benefits.

In General:

Most humans are wired for religious belief (or set of belief behaviors and idealizations if you ask what my personal theories are on the matter), of course how that stuff is organized ain't wired in any special way in regards as to how to define the concepts pushing those needed buttons in humans for meaning, significance and over-arching connection, etc. Depending on the person and concepts, quite a bit of crosswiring can occur.

That most Buddhists believe in God(s) is not surprising. Nor is the fact that it's expressed quite differently than the Judeo-Christian one. It's more telling that this finding is a talking point in the West whereas among active Buddhists (by this I mean folks actively interested in their practice) in the East it would be either shrugged at or looked at quizzically. Hope that makes sense.

I think a major point of Buddhism is missed in this discussion. It is not whether some Buddhist believe in a god or not, it is that Buddhism itself does not care whether a patricular person believes in god. This is of course more true at the beginning of the path than at the end. In the end even Buddhism must be left by the side of the river.

The following blog post and videos of ordinary Thai teenagers speaking about Buddhism may be of interest: http://efference.blogspot.com/2007/11/here-are-thai-teenagers-talking-a… .

I'm now studying at Mahidol University (near Bangkok), so perhaps I can make a point of continuing the interviews with Masters and Ph.D. students, if anyone finds insight/entertainment in the videos.

As a southern buddhist, I don't know the god of abraham from adam's housecat. to be/not be a bubbasattva does not require "belief" in much more than the weather forecast--"I believe its going to rain"

<--Buddhist. The philosophy doesn't really mention "gawd," and sorta leaves it up to the individual to have their own opinions.

Really, I think it's asking the wrong question. Are you going to spend all your questions on some possibly made up omnipotent being that appears to have no personal recourse on your life, or are you going to ask the questions about that life you're actually living? That same question is relevant to anti-theists (which I'll distinguish from non religious persons).

Also, keep in mind many buddhists are against these intangibles like being reborn, or magical healing and spirits and demons and crap that seem to creep into some sects. That whole band of unreasoned thinking has a habit of leading to stupidity.

Summary: Is there a god? F' if I know man. Does it really matter?

As both an American and a Buddhist of 35 years of practice, I can't resist commenting. I'm surprised that there are any Buddhists who believe in God. I certainly don't. I don't even see Buddhism as a religion, per se. It's not so much a belief based system as it is a practiced based system. If the Buddha's experience of Nirvana is to be translated into "God", then that term (i.e. "God") loses any meaning as it is commonly used. There is no such thing as "God", who is a divine being, in Buddhism. That much is certain. Of course, there are many "lower level" gods in Buddhist mythology, but they are merely viewed as temporal beings. I had always liked to think that all Buddhists are "atheists". I'm sorry to hear that that is not the case. One caveat, though. There are many people who practice Buddhist meditation or observe other Buddhist modes of practice who may not consider themselves "Buddhist", and may indeed, believe in God. That, of course, is a horse of a different feather.

There is your god in Tripitaka too (Bible of Buddhism)
God really exists. And to refer to Tripitaka, god is an angel in one of the heavens. Day of the end of the earth exists too. And in the far future there will be seven suns. All details are in Tripitaka.

Difference is that target of Buddhists are not to live with the god, but to be... disappeared forever (no reincarnation)