"Generally, in Buddhism, gods are considered not ultimate but temporary because gods themselves cannot give up a self. That is why Kunkhyen Rongzompa identifies eternalist gods as worldly deities.
"As long as there is a self, there are always passions, there is always karma, and there is always change. There is nothing absolute. There is no view of how to reach the fully enlightened state that is connected with eternalist gods, whose histories occur within different times and places.
"Whether time is brief, long-lasting, or many eons, it is a temporary appearance that belongs to beings, depending on beings’ habit or manifesting from Buddhas according to beings’ faculties.
"Even though time and place do not exist and are just conception, whoever has not realized the fully enlightened state believes in a reality of time and place.
"Buddhas have no time or place, but Buddhas manifest within time and place for the benefit of beings. They are called fully enlightened because there is nothing trapped in time. Buddhas’ inconceivable wisdom is forever abiding in unwavering stainless Dharmakaya, never remaining in the habit of a certain place.
"Buddha has purified self, so that is why Buddha is fully enlightened. Because eternalism does not give up the view of an existing self, whether a god is considered intermediate or supreme, there is still the cause of passions and karma, even though the way the appearances of gods arise seems positive according to history or an individual’s experience and excels beyond the appearances of ordinary human beings.
"Since self is not purified, self produces cause and effect. Whenever there is cause and effect, a possessor comes, and there is samsara no matter what aspect of gods arises.
"This is the basic Buddhist view about the characteristics of gods.
"The contrast between eternalist and Buddhist views of gods is comparable to the contrast between the Western geographical system, which from a Buddhist perspective only concerns one small part of the phenomena of this world, and the Buddhist geographical system, which is about all phenomena and is related to sentient beings according to time and place.
"In the Buddhist view, one cannot make anything certain and sure. It is actually not good to try to make any kind of doctrine into something certain and sure, because if something is thought to exist only in a definite way, its reliability will eventually fail.
"It is important not to compare eternalist gods, but to differentiate between the characteristics of wisdom, and then it will not be necessary to deny any gods’ doctrines, which are infinite. They have existed before, they exist now, and they will exist in the future because of beings’ phenomena, which are the general source of eternalist beliefs, and what arises is believed depending on beings’ time and place.
"The eternalist belief that a god is absolute is only conceptual within time and place. Even if one tries to determine what is absolute according to an eternalist view, whatever is found will be conditional, compounded, and temporary because it is conceptual. Even though there is belief in permanence, where does anything exist permanently? If something exists permanently, it cannot manifest anything because it is frozen, without mind, spirit, or wisdom.
"Even when considering absolute truth, by excessively concretizing absolute truth due to inflexibility, it will become diminishable and will not turn to a pivotal state or quality."
— Dungse Thinley Norbu Rinpoche, A Cascading Waterfall of Nectar, Shambhala Publications.
