When you accept the fact that—like it or not—you'll lose everything, a strange ecstasy shows up at your door. Being ready to die at any moment gives greater intensity and beauty to all of your actions. The first time I felt it, I understood the euphoria experienced by those who don't fear death. But unlike Scalia, al-Qaeda, and the other religious death-lovers who look forward to the “afterlife,” I don't feel the need to put down life in this world. Actually, the opposite is true. Without fear, I am liberated. Without attachment, everything makes me smile and the joy of being alive shines unspoiled by worries, hopes, and expectations.
If it weren't tacky to quote oneself, what I wrote in another book would fit perfectly . . . On second thought, tackiness never stopped me before so here we go: “The fear of failure, the fear of rejection, the fear of opening up to another human being, even the fear of death itself begin to lose their power over you. No longer afraid to be who you are, you face life with no regrets, no self-imposed limitations, free. Armed with the courage to take risks, you don't allow the fear of losing what you value the most hold you back anymore. It's only when you are ready to lose it all that life reveals itself in all of its beauty.”
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Clearly, there is no recipe to reach this state of consciousness. Mine was desperation and powerlessness. Hopefully yours is more pleasant, but I doubt it since the game is about facing our most terrifying fears, and that is never fun. It's like building strong muscles by lifting weights. Lift too much, and you'll get crushed. Don't lift enough, and you never get strong. Like any other muscle, a fear-defeating muscle is developed by degrees, tackling small fears before moving on to bigger ones. And even after you tame the deepest fears,
they will rise back up unless you keep them in check. It's a constant process.
At the heart of it all is a paradox. On one side, we have otherworldly delusions that breed contempt for this world. On the other, we have a love of this life and an attachment to it, with the accompanying fear of death that makes it impossible to live and die beautifully. Do we have to become fearless death-loving freaks or life-lovers whose dreams are haunted by the terror of losing it all? The only way out is to develop the seemingly impossible ability to enjoy every last morsel of life without any attachment to it. But who is capable of the deepest passion without attachment? It's human nature to become attached to what we love. One seems inextricably connected to the other. This is why in trying to free us from attachment, many forms of Buddhism end up driving passion away as well.
A Zen Buddhist story, however, points to a different possibility. It tells of a man hiking in the forest who stumbles into a tiger who is in the mood for lunch. Chased by the tiger, the man reaches a cliff and, in an effort to avoid turning into the tiger's meal, he grabs hold of a vine and swings himself over the cliff. As he is trying to measure the distance to the bottom of the cliff to see if he can jump, he notices another tiger looking up at him. This is definitely not the man's lucky day, for the situation is about to get worse. Since his life was already not complicated enough, two mice decide to begin munching on the vine. With the range of available choices shrinking by the second, the man notices a ripe wild strawberry growing barely out of his reach. It would be reasonable to assume that the two tigers ready to snack on him plus the pesky mice would give the man plenty to think about, but our hero instead decides to let go of the vine with one hand and swing himself within reach of the strawberry. It's just
too damn red and juicy to ignore. Never did the man taste such a sweet strawberry.
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This is a riddle that can't be solved intellectually but through experience. Sounds difficult? You bet. But solve it and you'll defeat death, and simultaneously escape the clutches of those who offer you the consolation of otherworldly fantasies for the price of renouncing your love for this life.
Understand this story and you'll understand what drives people to fly airplanes into buildings. Understand this story and you'll understand what pushes people to kill and be killed in the name of God. Understand this story and you'll understand the forces at the roots of all the Crusades, 9/11s, Inquisitions, and other religiously motivated forms of violence that have drowned human history in rivers of blood.
It's one of the most meaningful moments of the Old Testament. The Hebrew tribes have just escaped decades of enslavement in Egypt and Moses is the man of the hour. Not only has he led this daring bid for freedom, but when Pharaoh's armies gave chase, he thwarted their efforts by parting the Red Sea. With little time to rest on his success, Moses is now called up Mount Sinai for a face-to-face meeting with the one and only God. As thunder and lightning fill the air, God gives Moses the stone tablets containing the Ten
Commandments—the essential laws forming the moral foundations of Western religions.
This is such a central, climactic episode that even people who have never read the Bible are familiar with it. Less well known, however, but by no means less important, is what happens right after. What follows
after
the delivery of the Ten Commandments, in fact, is at the heart of our story.
While Moses is hanging out with God at the top, at the bottom of the mountain the Hebrew tribes are growing restless. Many days have already passed since Moses left, and no one can be certain whether he is ever coming back. For all they know, he could be dead. Everyone has seen fire and smoke enveloping the summit, so his prolonged disappearance raises several eyebrows. Worn out by the wait, some people, who were less than fully sold on Moses' insistence on monotheism to begin with, decide to kill time by having a ceremonial feast around the statue of a golden calf—a classic symbol of one of the fertility deities worshipped in those days by polytheistic people throughout the Middle East. By the time Moses comes down the mountain, he finds himself in the midst of a full-on orgiastic ritual: wild music, naked bodies of men and women dancing themselves into a frenzy, and perhaps even juicier stuff that biblical authors are too bashful to describe in nitty-gritty detail.
To say that Moses is not pleased would be an understatement. Rather than saying “Hey guys, would you mind keeping the music and the moaning down?” or simply making fun of the worship of a funny looking cow, Moses smashes the tablets with the Ten Commandments and gathers his most loyal followers. “Who is on the Lord's side?” he yells out. “Let him come unto me. Put every man his sword by his side, and go in and out from gate to gate throughout the camp, and slay every man his brother, and every man his companion,
and every man his neighbor.”
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Yes, you read right. Moses organizes a religious death squad that will end up massacring 3,000 fellow Jewish tribesmen by hacking them to pieces with swords.
Let's look at it again. “Put every man his sword by his side, and go in and out from gate to gate throughout the camp, and slay every man his brother, and every man his companion, and every man his neighbor.” This is Hitler speaking. It is Stalin speaking. It's Mao. It's Pol Pot. It's Torquemada. These are the words of all the self-righteous fanatics in history who ever felt entitled to wipe out anyone daring to think differently from them.
What's going on here?!? God, after all, has just spelled out as an absolute moral law that you should not murder people. Without skipping a beat, Moses feels it's a sacred duty to order the killing of 3,000 of his own. Through this story, the Bible seems to be telling us that if you run into people who don't worship the one God who says murder is bad, then you should murder them.
If you are confused, you are not alone. The rest of this chapter will explore the differences between inclusive and exclusive approaches to religion, and the effects these opposite worldviews have on everything, ranging from religious freedom to “holy” wars, from the possibility of interfaith dialogue to vice laws.
I was reminded of this uplifting story not too long ago. I had just finished teaching a night class and was on my way home. After flipping through a few channels on the radio and finding no good music, I stumbled upon the beginning of a religious broadcast about the difference between “politically correct” and “biblically correct.” The voice of the lady lecturing was pleasant. She sounded like some
sweet, old Grandma—you know, the type who spoils you with gifts, pinches your cheeks, and bakes you cookies. I was stuck having to drive for an hour anyway, so I figured, why not? Let's check out what Grandma has to say.
In her delicate little voice, she began explaining how nowadays many Christians believe that even if someone belongs to a different religion, as long as they are good people, they are still worthy of respect and may be admitted to heaven. Nothing wrong so far. But, the lady warned, this belief is just a modern fad, some wishy-washy, liberal version of postmodern Christianity. This idea may be politically correct, but it is not “biblically correct.”
“You want to know what God thinks of religious diversity?” she asked. “Turn to Exodus, chapter thirty-two.” Chills went down my spine. After quoting the Moses death squad story, she continued with another pearl of religious fascism coming from the Old Testament. In Numbers 25, over 24,000 Jews have died in a plague sent by God as punishment. Why? Many Jews have married foreign women and agreed to honor their spouses' deities. In the midst of this crisis, Phinehas, the “hero” of the story and a Moses loyalist, stalks a Jewish man who has gone back to his tent with his Midianite wife and thrusts a spear through both of them while they are having sex. Extremely pleased with this act, God halts the plague and spares the remaining Jews.
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Grandma is on a roll now, and nothing can stop her. She tells how the prophet Elijah received divine assistance in having 450 priests of Baal slaughtered.
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She gloats as she describes how the pagan queen Jezebel was tossed out of a window to be eaten by dogs.
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And she continues on, quoting one passage after another to reinforce the legitimacy of murdering religious dissidents. “If you truly follow God's word,” she finishes, “then you can't tolerate other religions.”
Damn . . . I'm not so sure I want your cookies anymore. You are one scary old lady. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, she is regretting the passing of the good old days when we burned people at the stake. Most Christians today—along with most followers of just about every major religion—are probably not inclined to share the lady's cheerful enthusiasm for spilling the blood of unbelievers. The pluralistic notion that we shouldn't persecute followers of a different path has gained ground even among many of the most hardcore religious individuals. But the speech by the grandma from hell offered a sobering reminder that while in some parts of the world chopping people's heads off with swords over religious differences has fallen out of fashion, the ideology justifying religious violence is far from gone. It is right there, in the pages of scriptures, waiting to be dusted off and brought back into the mainstream.
Renowned religious scholar Charles Kimball has argued that religions are innately good vehicles of love and compassion, but they can turn evil when they give in to rigid dogmatism. When this happens, religious violence is just a few steps away. Following this line of thinking, he separates authentic religions that are pluralistic and inclusive from corrupted forms of religion that encourage conflict and hostility toward different ideas.
Even though I like his work, I don't share Kimball's certainty over which religions are “authentic” and which are “corrupted.” My concern here is not to establish the authenticity of a certain religious doctrine, since it seems like a hopeless undertaking. After all, many sacred texts contain lines supporting compassionate, friendly interpretations as much as bloody, intolerant ones. This is why, within most religions, you are bound to find very open-minded people willing to consider other points of views as well as people who swear by the exclusivist claim that their way is the Only Way. I don't care to
debate which one is true. I only care about the consequences. Certain religious attitudes encourage dialogue and respect for individual inquiry. Others plant the seeds for a harvest of blood. These very concrete, opposite results are the main reason why I embrace the former and oppose the latter.
Since the religious difference between inclusive and exclusive views is quite possibly the most meaningful there is, and since so much depends on this choice, let's see what pushes people to join either camp.
The basic assumption at the roots of an inclusive approach to religion is that no one can ever know the entire truth. No matter how much knowledge we gain, the essence of life can never be caught and neatly explained. For this reason, both Taoists and Lakota people speak of life as a Great Mystery. Divine power may be perceived, but it can never be fully understood. And an individual's search for truth is a work in progress, not something to attain once and for all.
The impossibility to know the truth from A to Z inevitably implies no one can claim its exclusive ownership, for no single method or doctrine is big enough to capture it all. This realization is what prompted the fourth century pagan apologist Symmachus to state, “What does it matter by which wisdom each of us arrives at truth? It is not possible that only one road leads to so sublime a mystery.”
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The same sentiment is echoed by Thomas Paine when he wrote, “The key to heaven is not in the keeping of any sect, nor ought the road to it be obstructed by any.”
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This doesn't mean there is no truth and everything is relative. It certainly doesn't mean all approaches and conclusions are
equally valid. Some paths are going to produce good results, and some won't. But you will not know which is which until you test their effectiveness. No idea is to be rejected without giving it a chance to prove its worth.