Put something heavy in a light format,

a spoonful of something sweet to jazz up the bitter pill. Soften the tragedy of self-consciousness by giving it an ego to coddle and hug. The face in the mirror keeps looking back increasingly suspiciously. Religion may have the answers to a thousand questions that keep popping up so regularly that it must be more than coincidental, but I doubt it. Religion can only deal with certainties, and those are very few. Put something hard in a soft place and gift-wrap it for future generations to come, the seeds of memory, the fruit of immortality. These are the things that humans do, species specific, above and beyond the duties of genus, aspiring to the heights of genius, destined to settle for something less, a graveyard for egos. You study and slave, you scrimp and save, you sweat and sacrifice, postponing personal pleasures, giving your godly gifts, just to end up alone and afraid in a corner in a room in a building in a neighborhood in a city in a state of despair, in a country on a continent of a world in a universe that really doesn’t care. You take your love when and where you find it. You give your love to anyone who’ll have it.

Gay marriage is more about equal rights than the conferral of sacrament

and is best dealt with that way. Certainly life partners should be able to share themselves with full legal rights without regard to sexual preference. Nevertheless, full church sacrament will never be granted, not from any of the established churches, anyway. Churches exist to decide between right and wrong and that’s what they attempt to do. The Great Chain of Being figures prominently in the philosophy of many religions, either directly or indirectly. This sanctifies reproduction as something holy, not dirty, not chosen, but a duty.omosexualityH Homosexuality figures into this system only as a sin, an aberration to be condemned. Whether homosexuality should or should not be considered something reprehensible has to do with whether it is a lifestyle chosen or an inherited trait. If chosen, then it is an aberration. If inherited, then it is natural. The debate may never be resolved. Certainly bisexuals throw a monkey wrench into the argument. Certainly no one is born with two sexual needs, are they? Surely one is chosen, isn’t it? By the same token, much sexual activity goes above and beyond the strict call of duty in fulfilling the basic needs of reproduction. Nothing is obvious. Nothing is forbidden. Everything is given. Everything is permitted. Religion that must resort to enforcement is not true religion at all.

“You’ll spoil your dinner,” my mother used to say

with all the conviction of a nutritional specialist issuing pronouncements on the future of the species, as though one bite of the forbidden cookie would send shock waves through the culinary establishment. Mothers are like that. They speak in parables. They speak in circles. They speak in broad terms on multiple issues. They issue directives. They issue freshly washed clothing and recipes for fulfillment. They issue love at low interest, with long-term repayment options. I loved her because I was supposed to love her, even though it was hard sometimes. No, that’s not true. It was hard almost all of the time, she rigid of bent and unyielding in her convictions, a woman of God and little else. I used to call her ‘Mother Superior’ only half-jokingly. At least we kept our sense of humor. I wonder what my father kept hidden. I doubt that he ever had good sex. Maybe he didn’t care. Hey, wait a minute! That’s me!

SEX, DRUGS, RELIGION

One of my previous lovers left me for a woman. That made me stop and think. She swings both ways now, I think, if and when she swings at all. I guess that’s natural when your life consists primarily of sensation. She’s an artist. She’s also an atheist, or so she says. They’re the saddest people in the world, or so it seems. They also seem to be more inclined to drug use, though I couldn’t place causality. They go way beyond recreation, inspiration, and good ol’ fashioned “getting fucked up”. They’re into Club Med, something to kill the pain, that special kind of sympathetic pain that accrues mostly to druggies; they need it special. But don’t forget the ‘opium of the masses’. It kills pain, too, the pain of being. I think the main problem with religion is the picture in our minds of the traditional battle gods with their long beards, war wigs, and bad teeth, threatening us with eternal damnation if we slip and fail. Thor is there with a fist full of thunderbolts, and so’s his boss Woden and Frida the Wonder Woman, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday hanging over us like a sentence of death and a book of lies. It’s so negative, promising Hell for bad behavior, as if we couldn’t behave ourselves otherwise. Islam takes the opposite tack, promising a Heaven full of virgins if we do the right things here and now. Score one for Islam. You already know what Hell is like. Buddhism doesn’t do any of that. It doesn’t lead you into battle, nor does it promise Heaven nor Hell. It just doesn’t do much of anything at all, actually. This world is all illusion. No shit. These are not religion’s bright spots. People have done things in the name of religion that I wouldn’t do to my worst enemy. It doesn’t have to be so hard.

RACE FOR RELIGION

Pidgin English replaces Pidgin Sanskrit and the history of Southeast Asia moves forward into the new millennium. The Indian influence seems as though it were always benign and probably one of the best justifications of India’s reputation as a guru-culture, i.e. a culture of teachers and teachings. It appears that that is exactly what they did in Southeast Asia about two thousand years ago, both as traditional Brahmanists and as the reformers, Buddhists, bringing not only religion, but alphabet and much new vocabulary. But as is always the case, ‘teacher, teach thyself.’ Hinduism in its original form is forever stained by its embrace of the caste system, a polite form of racism. There is always the danger of this in any culture with more than one race, of course, and the religious acceptance of it seems no more than an afterthought to justify what was already the case. While Buddhism never addressed the issue specifically, its lack of a caste system must have made it more attractive, all else being equal. Islam certainly capitalized on the inherent tension in the caste system and complemented it with its simple, but strict, teaching accessible to all, and an army promising plenty of spoils for the victors. To the present day Buddhist temples are centers of learning, if basic, in Southeast Asia and were for a long time almost the only centers. Islamic schools serve much the same function in its sphere of influence. It’s an open question as to why the history of the area is entirely dependent on Chinese annals for chronology and corroboration, given the advanced state of Indian learning and literacy.

LIMITS OF DOGMA

You don’t have to throw out religion because of the dogma. That’s like throwing out the dishes with the dishwater. Religion is initiated in experience and culminates in a belief system. One man’s dogma is another man’s belief system is another man’s mind control. Those who denigrate belief systems, including religion, seem to need higher than normal levels of drugs and alcohol to attain that enlightened mental state. Admittedly belief systems can get out of control and into politics. It’s an endless temptation and maybe even the ideal system if it’s capable of self-correction. Dogma is usually not. They’re all guilty of it, of course, Buddhism in the Tibetan theocracy, Christianity in the old Holy Roman Empire, Islam in modern Iran among countless others. Communism was guilty of the same thing. It’s called ‘totalitarianism’, the idea that the state can control everything, including thought, or conversely, that religion can run the government. These things require finesse, tolerance, and time. Some concepts are simply irreconcilable, better just to agree to disagree. Taliban women under veils are as repulsive to modern Western sensibilities as Amsterdam whorehouses are to the mullahs. There’s no easy reconciliation, best just to stay on your side of the line.

APOCALYPSO

Tsunamis and typhoons and hurricanes are taking revenge on those who take Nature lightly, changing money in the temple and erecting pleasure parlors right on the edges of her frayed slip. After the tsunami, some Thais asked me if this was it, the Big A, Armegeddon, Apocalypse, as if because I’m a Farang, therefore of Judeo-Christian heritage, I’d know what it’s supposed to look like. Thai Christians take that shit seriously. You don’t just casually go switching religions. If you leave the graven images and the golden Buddhas behind, you at least want a good old-fashioned apocalypse in return, or maybe a Messiah or two. The problem is, if Jesus came back, no Christians would believe it, so the new believers, prostitutes and drug addicts and mixed loose nuts, would have to start all over again. Religion is like that. Desperation makes it very attractive. The more money you have, the more you have to lose, the camel and the eye of a needle and all that.

The more we learn, the less we know

That’s the hard thing for religion to admit. It is about certainties, after all. It’s hard to admit I really don’t know jack shit about what’s out there; I only know what’s in here, that I feel this incredible love radiating outward and seeping inward that connects me to every living thing that breathes on this one-in-a-trillion planet. It has nothing to do with someone stroking my ego or pulling my leg. It has everything to do with a friendly word from a stranger, a helping hand when you’ve fallen down, or a baby’s smile. Just thinking about it in the fifth dimension of memory can send a shiver up my spine, and a tear to my eye. This is the great gift of Christianity, the transformative power of love. In a dog-eat-dog world, nobody had ever said anything as simple as “love your neighbor as yourself”. Imagine what would happen if everybody actually did that. The problem is that too often those who don’t, take advantage of those who do.

Messiah complex, God simple.

If you believe in anything, then you believe in God. But beware of false prophets and easy solutions. It’s time for a new religion, gather up all those shitty little revelations and write them down in a new Bible, if that’ll make you feel any better. Ancestor worship runs in the family, but stops short of a true metaphysics. Oriental religion offers a way out, but no way in. Western religion could use a pill to chill and enjoy the show without everybody demanding the starring role and a share of the box-office. But no drugs, please. It’s time for East and West to meet somewhere besides WWIII-era cheesy GI bars lining the beaches in Pattaya and Frankfurt. It’s time to reconcile science and religion without all the rank and rancor. Science is about probabilities; religion is about certainties. There’s really no need to battle over turf. Islam is way ahead in one area- they have a God with no face, pure and inescapable, while Christians need frequent inspiration from the guy with the tan, and Buddhists prostrate themselves to a thousand graven images while professing non-attachment. Christianity wins the battle over behavior hands-down with the doctrine of unrelenting love, and Buddhism will always be closer to theoretical physics with its flexible approach to reality. But talk’s cheap. As always, do as they say, not as they do. Buddha, Christ, and Muhammad take their places in the head, heart, and muscle of the world and man like the sage, lover, and soldier in all of us: old, middle-aged, and young. Islamic discipline, Christian love, and Buddhist other-worldliness are the tripod legs of one true religion, the trilogy, the triple Gem, the five pillars, the Ten Commandments, and the eight-fold path all showing different sides of One Truth- God exists. Live your life accordingly.

ARGUMENTS FOR GOD

Maybe there is a God, and maybe he gives a shit. Maybe there is a reason to live. Maybe I need it. Maybe I need the sandy coastline, the muddy rivers, and the purple sunsets. Maybe I need people in general, though maybe no one in particular. My heart is a palimpsest, a lonely beach washed over and rewritten many times by warriors determined to topple my castles in the air. If you can explain it, then it isn’t God. God speaks in silence, in your innermost thoughts. God is that voice inside, your partner in dialogue, your constant companion.