Was the Buddha a God or a Human Being?
Was the Buddha a God or a Human Being? Growing up in Kathmandu, I usually came across two groups of people who viewed the Buddha differently. One group viewed the Buddha as a God, someone who was able to magically relieve people from their sorrows. The other group saw the Buddha as a mere human being. For the second group, the Buddha was a social reformer who proclaimed ways to achieve harmony and peace in society. This duality made little sense to me and, in fact, I had a hard time understanding if the Buddha they were talking about was the same being. This confusion only got worse as I came across other preconceived notions about Buddhism, some of them were that in order to follow Buddhism you had to become a monk or a nun, that meditation meant following your breath and nothing else, and some even hilarious ones like claiming Buddha to actually be a reincarnation of Vishnu and that Vishnu's main intention t...