Buddha has been thought to be an atheist. Nothing can be farther from the truth. Buddha has been thought to be against God. Nothing can be more untrue. Buddha’s reverence is such that he cannot assert the word God. To assert the word God is to create a separation; as if God is separate from me. The inseparableness is so much, the unity with God is so much, that even the word cannot be uttered.

That has been a tradition in ancient Israel: for centuries the name of God was not asserted. Only the highest priest of the great temple of Jerusalem was allowed, and that too in absolute aloneness, and that too only once a year. Nobody else was allowed to use the name of God. Only one day, once in a year, the highest priest, the purest, the most pious, the holiest man amongst all the Jews, would enter into the shrine, the innermost shrine of the temple. All the doors would be closed. Thousands of people would gather all around the temple just to be present there while the priest asserts the name of God. Nobody would hear it – the priest would whisper it.

You cannot shout the name of God; it can only be whispered in silence – and only once. It was a beautiful tradition. It shows reverence. Otherwise, beautiful words like God become contaminated, become profane. They become ugly.

Even now, Jews, whenever they use the word God or they write the word God, spell it differently. They don’t use the full spelling G-o-d. They simply use G-d, they leave out the “o”, just to show that, “We are not competent enough to assert the full name.” The essential part, the middle core of it, the very soul of it, is left out. And that “o” is beautiful because it is also the symbol zero. It is not only “o” but zero too, and zero is the innermost core of God.

Buddha calls it shunyata – emptiness, void. “G” and “d” are just peripheral; it’s okay, one can use them, but the innermost core has to be left unexpressed. It is because of tremendous reverence for God, for existence, that Buddha has never used the word. But hints are there; for the perceptive ones, for the sensitive ones, there are infinite hints. In each sentence there is a hint.

The moment you die consciously, in meditation, God is born – because you disappear as an ego. Then what is left? A stillness, a tremendously potential stillness, a silence that is pregnant – pregnant with the whole. When you disappear, boundaries disappear. You melt and merge with everybody else.

The poet, only once in a while, becomes attuned with the flower, attuned with the sunrise, attuned with a bird on the wing. The mystic becomes one with existence forever. He is the flower and he is the cloud and he is the sun and he is the moon and he is the stars. He starts living in a multidimensional way because the whole life is his. He lives in the tree as greenness, and in the rose as redness. He is on the wings of the bird, he is the roar of the lion and he is the waves of the ocean. He is all…how can he be violent? How can he hurt? How can he be destructive?

His whole life becomes a creativity.

The mystic is utterly creative.

The sutras: