Blog Illustrated by a Collage.

 Clearing out the rubbish I find that I am a Buddhist after all. A rationalist who does not believe in the gods and goddesses in a literal sense but understands them to be symbolic representations of various states of being. Buddha was a philosopher at a time when the distinctions between philosophers and religious innovators were blurred and often over lapped. I have, for instance, thought of both Jesus and St. Paul as primarily philosophers brought up in a theocratic society and so they taught, first and foremost, as theologians otherwise they would not have been understood.  Jesus never claimed to be God, we all being in his terms Sons of God; and Buddha never claimed to be either a deity or an an exceptional human being. For 3 or 4 centuries early Christians accepted reincarnation as fact and I can find no reason to disagree with them. The photograph in my collage is of Christmas Humphreys, the founder of the Buddhist Society and a man who had an enormous influence on me when young. He encouraged me to study both the Zen Masters and St. Paul with equal diligence and I`m glad he did so. Bertrand Russel led me to study the Greek and Modern philosophers, and thus learn the tools to defend myself against propaganda and theocratic bigotry.

Trevor John Karsavin Potter. 03 September 2025..