Myths and Mysticism

Pot-Bellied Buddhism

The pot-bellied Buddha serves as the Bible does for Fundamentalists when they justify war, violence, and consumerism: to mystify and hide the nonspiritual, sense-bound nature of the hedonist lifestyle.

Neo-Pagan is Not New Age

Neo-Paganism is a sincere attempt to reconstruct northern European traditions which disappeared, first with the incursion of the Roman Empire, and later with the rise of Christianity in that region.

What I Don't Like About the New Age

As I spoke with the young man last night, I kept hearing him cite the Buddha on this or the Buddha on that as "proof" that he and those he admired had arcane powers, but nowhere did I hear him refer to the Four Noble Truths or its central message of compassion.

Notes on an Encounter with a Cult

Received a long lecture on the wisdom of Ken Wilber, New Age master of the proverbial cutting edge. Found the alarm bells going off in the back of my head -- cult! cult! cult! -- and finally said so when I could get half a word in edgewise.

Crosses on Billboards

Twice, as we came back from Palm Springs earlier this evening, the image of a cross smote my eyes.

Spiderman

Spiderman is a liberal.

Catholic Suttee

When martyrdom is chosen because of social pressure and not because of personal devotion, it becomes murder.

Achilles the Heel

I am amused to find a new Hollywood attempt to tell the story of the Trojan War, sans the fidelity to the story told by Homer and everyone else.

The Sun and The Moon

Did men seize on the Sun out of Womb Envy?

Five Pillars

One should fight with Muslims as one should fight with Christians: return to the roots of the religion and ask them why they are perverting it with hatred.

Martyrdom 8: The Buddha

You don't promote enlightenment by inciting pain. You merely increase the level of suffering in another person's life until she gives in.

The Closet

Why the closet? I asked in my journal yesterday. So we'd concentrate on the work of self-reconstruction.

One Year Ago

Fundamentalist political correctness has not disappeared.

Are You a Slave?

A good parable beats a R*ndenoid slogan any time.

Jero-Augustianism

The heresy dominates our lives even today!

Rhinoceros at Retreat

It wasn't the people who drove me away from the Meeting but that person who sits inside me, who must declaim and perform.

No Stigmata, No Pain

Making me feel guilty because I don't bleed as much as Jesus is a pretty cruel thing for a mind and a culture to do to a person.

Eleven Days

Workers lost eleven days of wages and landlords charged a full month's rent.

Why This Skeptic Dislikes Snopes.com

Must the result of debunking always be the suggestion how stupid people are rather than how creative?

Lining up to be Cool Like Jesus

The trouble is that we don't know how to read myth.

Jovinian and Pelagius

How different the history of Christianity might have turned out if we spoke of St. Jovinian and St. Pelagius instead of St. Jerome and St. Augustine.

Canonical Proportions

I decided to go on a hunt for my Buddha nature.

Martyrdom 7: Christ and the Cross

In the original myth, Christ didn't die so that we might emulate his suffering: he suffered because we suffered.

Jesus of the Plastic Injection Molding Machine

Christ spoke of lilies not artificial flowers.

Suffering, Guilt, and an Ant Farm

The older I get, the more wary I become of self-help courses....

Martyrdom 6: Catholic Martyrs, Attis, Pious Frauds, and BDSM

It was not for beauty that the early church fathers banned the damaged from celebrating the Mass; the prelates were more concerned about the barbarous lengths to which some interpreted scripture and pagan rites in which initiates altered themselves.

Martydom 5: Vukovar, Guernica, and Hiroshima

I refused to take the side of any government, any army in a war.

Martyrdom: A Short Break and Wicked Thoughts

A couple of amusing thoughts that came to me while discussing this with my wife regarding the issue of the mythical "International Jewish Conspiracy".

Martyrdom 4: The Soot in the Fields

To thwart them, we must tell the whole truth. Sixteen million people died in the Holocaust: Jews, Gypsies, Slavs, homosexuals, and "defectives".

Martyrdom 3: Esprit de Corps

Generals such as Patton like to think that they are the high priests of vast congregations called "armies", but from what I have heard and read from grunts the spiritual community is more akin to that of Quakers than to the Vatican or Shinto.

Passionate about Passion

How often is it that you get to see people all around being passionate about a myth?

Martyrdom 2: Pyramids, Tophets, and a Ram in a Thicket

The man or woman who lies down upon the altar is called a victim, from the Latin victima meaning an animal used for sacrifice. The word comes from an Indo-European root "weik" signifying that which is magic and holy.

Talking to A Christian About the Buddha

The Buddha taught the Golden Rule four hundred years before Christ lived.

Passion and The Passion in Lake Forest

Sitting in a restaurant talking about how the movie moved us is not putting ourselves in the position of Jesus, who suffered the tortures, carried the cross, and expired with his hands and feet pinned to its wood while slowly suffocating.

Martyrdom 1: The Martyrs of York and Edith Stein

Which were the martyrs of York? The ones who killed themselves or the ones who were massacred by the crowd?

The Bible, Passion, and Jewish-Christian Relations

We must ask "Why this Gospel? Why not one of the other three, none of which include the divisive line?

Of Clovis Points and Automobiles

The man (or woman) who chipped the stone into the shape of a pointed leaf thought of these problems that went with ensuring the kill....

The Book of Job

Candide cries to the narrative voice "But surely man who is made in the image of God --" And the narrator replies "Maybe this is His Image."

The Bible in Fifty Words
Don't have the time or patience to get through the whole Bible? Here's a shorter version. A friend sent me...

The Ark

Poor Job. He bit the dust first.

Twelve Cheeses for Twelfth Night

On this day, those who still have their lights up (e.g. us) exhaust ourselves singing choruses of the full version of the Twelve Days of Christmas.

Caroling

This is the attitude we should allow birth in our hearts in the season of the light that shines in the darkness, a light that the darkness cannot grasp.

Christmas: A Debate

We keep our Christmases simple in these parts, mostly because we are not blessed with children.

Mute Troubadour on the American Dispensation

Maybe that's just a local thing.

Stoicism vs. Buddhism

Imagine Seneca and the Dalai Lama sitting together in the same room. Someone brings in a box of chocolates.

The Brights 2: Rhymes with Own

Call me a None.

Shaving a Fluffy Bunny Saint

The word is out: you do not tarnish the legend of St. Francis of Assisi, you do not apply a depilatory to a man who gives most people the warm fuzzies.

Speculation, pure and simple

There's a big fear I have. That I will tell a joke or declaim a poem and someone will make a dogma out of it. Then stone me for not following it to the letter.

Temple Sought

I look at myself and think where is there the temple of beauty for the likes of me?

The Bible: Anthology or Word of God?

When the church councils put together the Bible, they included everything that they thought would help set the context for the ministry of Christ.

Utah Travel Diary 1

Looking up the canyon, past the pumpkin colored walls of the lower gorge, is like seeing hot glaciers capping the red rock.

God and Atheism
Does the USA exist? How could anyone claim that it doesn't exist? But then you can't actually point to it....

Atheism
Yesterday I wrote about the "brights," a new name for people who we used to call atheists or agnostics. I...

The Brights
My November issue of Atlantic Monthly arrived in the mail today and has an article on the use of "bright"...

Valyermo 6

The peace of the garden could have been Eden.

Supply Side Jesus

Word is that the National Review has referred to it as "low, stinking satire", a chorus that I will undoubtably hear when our current affair discussion group meets next month.

The Body as Wound

Early Buddhists likened the body to a wound. It oozed from nine orifices (twelve in women) and gave pain.

Messages

If I refuse to be terrorized, what power do they have over me?

The Buddha Meets Ötzi

Taking a walk in a cemetery with the Buddha, I think, would give us a different sense of what death and continuity are all about. The place I'd really love to visit with him is the cryogenic crypt where they keep Ötzi the Ice Man.

Past Lives and Reincarnation

Eighteen years ago when I was out of work and searching for answers, I invested in a "past life regression".

Jesus and Miracles

Two thousand years after the life of Christ, Heresy is mainstream.

Sri Ganesh

Maybe it's a good thing that I've never performed the ritual that Nancy describes?

Scarey

We're a nation which moves not when we have thought things through, but when things happen and when our leaders tell us what we want to hear to be able to go along with abridgements of the Constitution and war.

Humility vs. Belittlement

Where humility aids you in gaining a true sense of yourself, belittlement merely turns you into a tool for others.

God Bless Who?

"God Bless America" they proclaimed as if our dead suddenly raised us over all the other countries with dead.

Another Rogue Thought
Should there be no afterlife, the believer in God will be in for much less of a shock than the...

The Fish and The Crab

I came across the fable -- loosely tied to the larger tradition of the tales told by Scheherezade to the angry Sultan Shanidar -- of the Fish and the Crab.

Thought
God may not exist, but emotions are a real territory....

On Wearing the Crown of Arrogance

Life's a guessing game. "We tell ourselves stories in order to live." Was that Joan Didion or Anais Nin?

Joel the God?

I rejoice in my limited consciousness. Complete awareness would drive me mad

Blaspheming Jesus

Cain and Seth Discuss Abel

The one that I call Cain spoke and asked the question of all the years: "Why don't we kill one another?"

Illusions

These things only confuse me if I think about them. So I don't. Not often.

Politically Correct Easter

Lynn and I suggested that instead of spewing out "Happy Resurrection Sunday", they just say like the Orthodox do "Christ is Risen".

An Open Letter to the Virgin Mary

She is with us.

George W. Bush: Servant of Satan or Servant of God?

"I'm glad we have a Christian president," said "big_jizo" and I said "We don't."

The Gunfighter Myth

Only the United States puts the first priority on polishing its guns, stocking ammunition, and, from time to time, using them. In the meantime, while we declare our independence from the world, we eat a lot of cold beans, grown and canned elsewhere.

Astrology

By the way, I'm an Aquarius. Statistics show that most of you who believe in astrology will claim to have had me pegged and to completely understand me now.

Ah Puch

The Mayan god of death is Ah Puch. I invoke his name now when I screw up.

St. Rasputin!? Then St. Stalin?

It's not bleeding icons or weeping statues that make a saint. It is the good works and dedication to the ideals and methods of Christ.

Mexico City 11

Mexico City 8

Photographic Evidence of Mary's Power?

Look at this photo: doesn't the Virgin just glow? I took this shot inside a gift shop located beneath the new Basilica dedicated to the Miracle of Tepeyac.

Superstition as Art

Natalie advises that I should "just to be safe I'd get it [the fallen picture] fixed immediately." I have no problem with this.

Mexico City 6

Supersition as Infection

The frame holding our wedding certificate fell from the wall this evening.

Mexico City 5

King Canute

Canute, I suspect, was a master of persuasion and good judgement: his legend as a King may well rest on his abilities as a peacemaker (I do not recall any tales of him waging war.)

A Prayer for a Demiurge

I spoke to the Demiurge: "Stop getting into my life. Get thee behind me -- where Satan is -- and push.

Fishes' Heaven

Rupert Brooke was stuck in the trenches when he wrote a parody of beliefs about the nature of Heaven -- as fish must conceive it.

Divine BDSM?

Jesus said that he didn't bring peace, but a sword: this fellow pulls out a fragmentation grenade and lets me have it.

The Origin of Toothache

Painful imagery, eh? See. You can never trust a god!

Valor

Aztec belief held that the souls of women who died in childbirth earned every bit as honorable a place in their afterworlds as the souls of warriors killed in battle or slain as sacrifices.

St. Antony's Sister

It makes a sweet story if you don't think it through.

The Holy Innocents

It is a celebration of the life of any innocent who has died at the hands of tyrants, pursuing or merely suspected of pursuing, the cause of liberty and personal conscience

Commies, Kooks, or Savants?

Intelligence on this organization (New Tradition) from skeptics, pacifists, or others would be appreciated.

Day of Two Feasts

Today is sacred, both for Christians and Zoroastrians: it marks the birth of Christ and the death of Zoroaster.

Two Bloggers Who Would Hate Zoroastrianism

In the Parsee view, insects, spiders, and scorpions are creatures of the Lie. A good Parsee stomps them flat whenever he sees one.

Zoroastrian Hell

If you've been following my blog for the last few days, you've probably been reading my commentary on what I have characterized as the Zoroastrian contamination of Christianity. This is not accurate.

Who Has the Mint Jelly?

When I was a child and suffering from my first moods, my mother used to tell me to "offer my pain up to God".

Mithras Revisited

I've got a couple of books on Mithras, one of which is popular and old, the other of which says that based on new evidence and understandings, the older book is entirely wrong

Me as the Battlefield Between Ahriman and Ahura Mazda

So what's been happening to me, according to Zoroastrian teaching is that the forces of Evil (led by the Arch-Demon Ahriman) are flinging everything they can at me: mental illness, gout, asthma, nasty people, blog roaches, joblessness, etc. because they want me to lie. They want me to say that Ahura Mazda is no darn good.

More on Job

Note when Job loses it. He does pretty well, to tell the truth, when he loses everything in God's attempt to prove a point. It's when his friends come and try to tell him that he has no business being angry with God or feeling so bad that he explodes.

God and Satan

My rant at God was based on Biblical understandings derived from the Book of Job, Jonah, and a particular incident in the life of Christ.

Tarnish on a Golden Legend
Today over at City of the Silent, I re-examine the legend of St. Barbara, a popular saint who was removed...

God as an Exercise of the Imagination

There's a crazy theme running through our society, one which says that when you lose a job, get sick, gain weight, etc., that you're being rebuked by a divine force.

Sound-bytten

Poor Chris Rettstatt. A victim of sound bytes....

The Earth Shall Quake

They were and they remain fearless in the face of oppression, strife, and war: indeed the only thing that Quakers quake about is God the Almighty.

A Caption for wKenShow
I suggested this as a caption for a picture posted by wKenShow: Jeremiah 14: 14-16 "Then Yahweh said to me,...

Jeanne Jugan

I think her story demonstrates very nicely the danger inherent in any established religious authority, particularly those based on accidents of biology such as sex.

Me and St. Martin de Porres

Even though I no longer call myself a Catholic, when I see images of him, I point to them and say "That's St. Martin de Porres. I've named myself after him."

My favorite quiz
I call myself an agnostic, but the Belief-O-Matic quiz says that I fit in better as a Theravada Buddhist, a...

Is Saint Rasputin Next?

Nicolas III...does not inspire [supporters of his canonization] to tell the truth, which is one of the highest forms of Good. This should be reason enough to reject for all time any claims on his sainthood.

Oedipus the Hero

Oedipus is a true hero, a proto-egalitarian, the kind of man we are supposed to have in the Oval Office at this moment.