Home » Aphorisms! » What I think I believe: A prose poem

What I think I believe: A prose poem

To say there is no duality is to concede there is.

To say God has a list is ignorance.

To say you know anything for sure is naive.

To believe in a separate, personal God is nothing short of ridiculous.

Every religion tells us that God is immutable, omnipotent, and utterly ungraspable by the human mind.  Every religion goes on to tell us exactly what is in the mind of God.

Do you think your one, holy, catholic and apostolic church has droned the same immutable message since it rose from the ashes of the Roman Empire?  Do you really believe your free-thinking, free-wheeling nihilistic Buddha is the same one who sat, perplexed, tormented and impatient under the Bodhi tree?  Can it be your quibbling, etymological Yaweh is the same brutal partisan of the Torah?  Is your pitiless prophet the same one who forgave the Meccans for trying to destroy him?

Congratulations, you have mastered the difficult art of intransigent gullibility.  Nothing is changeless, not even the divine genealogies your ancestors would find disturbing without their context.

Yes, there is a God, created and lovingly maintained by his human masters.  How could it be the opposite?  Does God shave?  What does he eat?  What use would he have of testicles?  Where does he get his clothes?  How can he have demands?

In my universe, there is no god but All.  There are no demands, no rewards, no punishment.  Leave that kind of stuff for humanity.  The meaning of life is life.  The meaning of death is life.  The meaning of humanity is arrogance.  The meaning of good is evil.  The meaning of my right hand is my left hand.

How can it be otherwise?

6 thoughts on “What I think I believe: A prose poem

  1. You summed up much of what I think in a very concise way. I’ve thought that Zen comes a wee bit closer to not claiming to know the unknowable, but even it is a creation of us fallible humans.

    • Thank you. Yes, I agree. I used to study zen a lot, read Suzuki’s books until it finally dawned on me they were telling me not to read them. At least it’s a religion based on questioning. On the other hand, so what? It seems every time I try to say something rational about this stuff, I can’t.

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