Buddha was teaching one day. People were gathered all around, and people would come up one by one and ask questions. A man comes up and asks. “Is there a God?”
Buddha looked at him for a moment and said, “No. there isn’t a god.”
More people came. After a while another man shows up. He walks up and he says, “Is there a God?”
Buddha looks at the man for a moment and says, “Yes there is a God.”
Now Ananda was standing by and he’s like… wait? I’m trying to figure this out? He answered one thing one way, and then he answered the same question another way. What’s the actual answer?
Buddha kept on teaching and towards the end of the afternoon another man came up and he said, “Is there a god? Some people say there is and some people say there isn’t, and I can’t quite sort it together.”
Buddha looked at this man and then he just closed his eyes. It was a beautiful afternoon. Birds were singing and you could hear the river going by. Buddha sat there for about an hour with his eyes closed in this manner. The man also closed his eyes, listened to the birds and listened to the water. After about an hour they both opened their eyes together and the man said thank you. “Thank you for the answer,” and he left.
Now Ananda was really perplexed and he finally asked, “But what’s the answer? To the first guy you said one thing. To the second guy you said another thing. With the third guy you didn’t say a single thing!”
Buddha looked at him and said that the first man was convinced that there was a God. Buddha could see that and so in order to shake up his belief systems he said, no there isn’t a god. The second man was an atheist and he was convinced that there was no God at all. So Buddha answered him the opposite. The third man was actually questioning. So Buddha just sat silently and let him discover it on his own.