Customer Reviews

Killing the Buddha: A Heretic's Bible

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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.

"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.

I picked this up because I'm a Rick Moody fan and he wrote this "heretic's bible"'s "Book of Jonah." It's as good as I hoped -- maybe one of his best stories -- and alone worth the price of the book, but the whole thing turned out to be a delicious surprise, almost like a great novel, even though the chapters by outside writers like Moody trade off with chapters by the two main authors, Manseau and Sharlet. Their chapters are called "psalms," and even though these psalms are nonfiction journalism, they're like poems describing all the fascinating ways people love god or hate him or her or check the box marked "other." Their trip across America, from a church near Ground Zero not long after September 11th to rural strip club where all the strippers are religious prophets is inspiring, and the other writers they bring in to join them are provocative. My favorite is Moody's, but don't miss any of them. I'm not religious, but Killing the Buddha makes me believe in the power of stories.

I'm not usually interested in explicitly spiritual or religious writing, but I loved this book, perhaps because it's unlike anything that's usually described by the impoverished term "spiritual" or shelved in the religion section in your local bookstore. The stories in this book range from precise yet emotionally intense reportage, to challenging essays on theology, to absorbing fiction, to sensual, stream-of-consciousness prose. I particularly loved the contributions of Eileen Myles, Darcey Steinke, and April Reynolds. Manseau and Sharlet's treatment of contemporary beliefs especially impressed me--they manage to be both empathetic with the faithful they encounter, yet also sensitive to what is strange, raw or just plain hilarious about their belief systems. Presenting a contemporary pagan festival alongside meditations on the books of the Old Testament allows Sharlet and Manseau to avoid the pseudo-objectivity of social science and the hysteria of political journalism on religion in order to show belief in action--arbitrary, contradictory, and still meaningful.

This often times hilarious but always serious journal of a spiritual journey across America in search of Buddha is worth reading. The book is a collection of experiences, impressions, and encounters with reality as the authors travel across the American continent looking for the various incarnations of Buddha along the way.

The religious community has nothing to fear from the work of Manseau and Sharlet. They do not attack any religion, but rather they celebrate the spiritual venture many of us seem to be working toward. At the same time, they have an incredible collection of stories to keep us open minded about where we might encounter our own Buddha. If you don't have time to travel America, grab this book, sit back, and kill the Buddha vicariously.

I saw the authors of this read last night in Portland. I liked them as readers, and they seemed like good folks, so I went home started reading, and except for some sleep, I haven't been able to put it down since. Manseau and Sharlet set out like pilgrims without a destination and returned with this tale of amazing sights (a Buddhist food fight, "prophets in pasties," a gathering of military pagans) and profound insights about the nature of belief they manage to relay without preaching. This ought be enough, but interspersed with scenes from their journey, they have included 13 chapters of new "scripture," books of the bible re-written by novelists like A.L. Kennedy and Francine Prose. I was disappointed by a couple of them, but mostly they are are beautiful, worth a book themselves. And yet what makes this book something of a miracle is that this interweaving of voices seems so seamless. Manseau & Sharlet say in the introduction their aim was "cacophony," but in that they failed -- there's a wonderful harmony to the way all the pieces of this story of what Americans believe flow together. I have two more chapters to go, but "the spirit moved me" to recommend this book now to "heretics" and true believers and the rest of you who are like me, book lovers who belong to the church of great writing and terrific stories..

A wicked and wonderful blend of beliefs and doubts, accounts of freaks, saints, sinners, holy men (& ladies!) and con artists. The first chapter -- Genesis, of course -- is slow going, but don't skip it if you want some serious ideas about what religion IS, from the perspective of one who has fallen away. From there the book moves like a roller coaster, up and down between journalistic sections about a road trip Peter Manseau and Jeff Sharlett took around to the far corners of faith, and stories by novelists. Not up and down in the sense of good and bad, but up and down in the sense of a ride with thrills and heights and scares. Killing the Buddha is a scary book, although don't let the title throw you -- it's Buddhist itself, in its way. It's scary because it cuts so close to the bone, because it leaves no belief unscorched. Not an innocent book, but a brilliant one.

Finally, a book that gives believers something to think about and lets them think about it themselves. Sharlet and Manseau combine their vivid stories of believers with dynamic versions of scripture, and the result is a journey that enables readers to think about what it means to believe here and now.

In this revamp of the Bible, Manseau and Sharlet write psalms from their impressions of their road trip through the USA, and 13 "books" of the Bible are written by American writers from diverse persuasions. Each chapter provides a unique and individual discourse on the divine.

In psalm 36:1, Sharlet and Manseau encountered a young girl in Heartland, Kansas who explained to them, "Monotheism is a mirror that offers only one reflection; Paganism is a spinning disco ball, a thousand glittering possibilities". After reading this book it is apparent that even monotheism has thousands of glittering possibilities. For every shared concept of Divinity, there is a myriad of distinct cosmologies bubbling up through humanity, each a universe of it's own.

It seems we all have our own unique ways of coming to terms with God, our origins, the miraculous... often breaking out of one religious dogma only to fall for another kind of spiritualized mind-snare.

Tragic, chaotic, surreal, and often hilarious.

I've been a long time fan of the website and bought this book for a friendfor his birthday. To be honest, I started to (carefully) read the Heretic's Bible before presenting it to my pal. I have every intention of borrowing it when he's done and never returning it. I suggest you do the same. Finally a voice for this generation that I can get behind without qualification -- in the single voice of a Chorus of (the coolest,
snarkiest, most arrogant, most humble) Angels kind of way...
Also, if you can make it to one of their readings, you won't be
disappointed. Both Sharlet & Manseau deliver laugh-out-loud performances and they're surprisingly approachable (and easy on the eyes).