86 of 97 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Looking for God in America, May 3, 2004
I always preferred the sanitized version of that very Zen-like bit of ancient Zen Master advice that is the central idea of this book, namely: If you meet the Buddha by the side of the road, kick him. It was always a bit too much for me to recognize that the actual injunction is to "kill him." What Lin-Chi I-Hsuan (?-867), who is recognized as the founder of the Rinzai school of Zen Buddhism, actually said was:
Kill anything you happen on. Kill the Buddha if you happen to meet him...Kill your parents or relatives if you happen to meet them. Only then can you be free, not bound by material things, and absolutely free and at ease. (from The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, p. 398)
To get a feel for the shock of what Lin-Chi I-Hsuan said, imagine a Christian religious leader saying, "If you meet Jesus by the side of the road, kill him." Of course, that is what the Bible had us doing so long ago. Or think of the experience of seeing the Buddha by the side of the road as similar to seeing Christ's face in the Shroud of Turin. We have done that.
The idea is that whoever you might meet by the side of the road is a fraud. He certainly is not the Buddha. If you follow him you will be following a false path. Therefore kill him.
Or, as the authors of this book have it: "The Buddha you meet is not the true Buddha but an expression of your longing. If this Buddha is not killed, he will only stand in your way." (p. 1)
But I am compelled to point out that this is merely the beginner's understanding of what it means to kill the Buddha. What I-Hsuan was really pointing to is renunciation. The act of killing the Buddha is a symbolic way of renouncing the trinkets of this world and its delusional thinking. It is a way to dispel the false dichotomies, the bugaboos of good and evil; it is a way to throw off the heavy load with which the socialization process has burdened us; and also a way to challenge the biological imperatives of the evolutionary mechanism.
What this renunciation of the pillars and icons of the world leads to is the freedom that comes with nonattachment, sometimes referred to as nirvana or samadhi. As long as we are attached to this world we are not free. Once we are nonattached we can return to the world and draw water, cook rice, and live without delusion or fear. Renunciation, as it leads to nonattachment, paradoxically allows us to regain the world but in a way in which the gross material and biological desires of the world do not affect us.
The authors, along with thirteen contributors who write personal essays on various chapters of the Bible, try to get this point (or at least a similar point) across by looking at religion in America while exposing the absurdities and contradictions in the Bible. It is a little like Jack Kerouac's On the Road meets Mark Twain's Letters from the Earth.
I think Mark Twain would approve of the content, although I suspect he would like the prose to be more direct instead of so preciously wrought. A. L. Kennedy's piece on the "inexplicable" God of Genesis, which sets the tone and opens the book (after an introduction entitled, "Mortal, Eat this Scroll"), is beautiful rendered and intensely felt in a dreamy sort of way: the kind of prose much admired in literary magazines and writer's seminars. We all wish we could write so well. I also liked Peter Trachtenberg's quasi-logical take on the trials and tribulations of Job, to mention two of the essays.
Interspersed between the essays are chapters describing the trek across America taken by Peter Manseau and Jeff Sharlet. They begin in New York at a Puerto Rican Pentecostal church in the shadow of the towers that are no longer there, and end up in a bikini bar in Geneva, Illinois. (Seems right.) Their experience is filled with gritty Americana, reminding me in its way of Paul Simon's lyric, "They've all Come to Look for America," and Vladimir Nabokov's escape, and a thousand and one road novels inspired by Kerouac.
Their cause is noble. They want to go beyond "a God too small to be God"; that is, beyond a God that has a bellybutton and a bad temper, a God that plays silly games with His creatures, torturing some in hell, rewarding some in heaven, assigning some to purgatory, like some petty, sadistic bureaucrat in the sky
What Mark Twain did for the 19th century, and H.L. Mencken did for the early 20th, Manseau and Sharlet are attempting to do for 21st century America. They write that "killing the Buddha is a metaphor for moving past the complacency of belief, for struggling honestly with the idea of God."
This is key: the idea of God. Such a notion. Is this the God of Swords, the Bronze Age God of Battles, or is this the God of the Vedas, the Ineffable, about which nothing can be said? Or is it the God of Taoism, defined as only a divine tendency, a Way of the World and the Ten Thousand Things? Or is it the God of Zen which we must forever laugh at and kill?
Bottom line: a little too showy in the writing, a little too young in the comprehension, but vivid, worthwhile, and refreshing.
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32 of 35 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Finger-licking-good!, January 11, 2004
"Mortal, eat this scroll" is how the book begins, and whether you mean to or not, you will. Perhaps figuratively, perhaps literally (I haven't yet decided what to make for dinner tonight). Guided by skepticiscm and spiritual wanderlust, Sharlet and Manseau lead a chorus of talented writers in creating a work that is beautiful, dangerous, and above all - nourishing.
By no means a feel-good fuzzy of new-age spirituality, each book of scripture asks those questions that make any good religious skeptic sleep with the night light on. In response, each book of psalms brings forward a look at the funny, strange, sad, and sincere quest that is America in search of the divine. Together the voices that emerge - those of the authors, their subjects, and the reader - create a sound that is new and truly original, authentic and unapologetic.
For myself, a life-long skeptic of all religions, this is the only bible I've ever felt inclined to call my own.
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