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GOD�S HOOLIGANSOnce a teacherset fire to a wooden Buddha statue to warm himself A pupil cried : "Look out, you�re setting fire to the Buddha!" The teacher asked : "Where is the Buddha?" ���������������Zen story Bewildered the world saw those Afghan hooligans shoot to pieces the more than 1500 year old Buddha statues. A heritage of human civilization irrevocably destroyed. If there had been no fools in Afghanistan, the Buddha statues could have remained there for longer. For how long ? Everything is transitory. Even the pyramids will turn into dust. Before this happens, billions of people will have been born and will have died. Some of them will be remembered for some time, because they left something behind that remained important for a long time, from a human viewpoint. While billions of people perish, thousands of billions of other beings suffer and die. Is the destruction of a Buddha statue more tragic than the death of a mosquito, smashing against the car ? Five billion years from now the sun will die and with it the earth. While expanding, the sun will swallow the earth. The Buddha knew this, when he said : "There comes a day when the great ocean dries up, perishes and does not exist anymore�" "There comes a day when the great earth burns up, perishes and does not exist anymore�" And in both cases the Buddha added : "But I assure you that the beings who wander about in ignorance and driven by the thirst to live, will find no end." "What do you think is more : the water that is in the four great seas, or the tears you shed while getting what you hated and not getting what you loved?" And this is all there is to say. All the rest is of secondary importance. Still, I can�t omit to draw attention to a couple of matters of secondary importance. Secondary importance ? I had to chose my words better, because suffering is of no secondary importance. 1. How the Taliban came in power In the eighties Afghanistan was ruled by a communist government, that among others attached importance to a qualified education for all young people. Girls included. Girls had as many rights as boys, including the right to study at university and exercise a profession, to participate in the labor process. The communist government was a progressive government and attached no great importance to religion. This dissatisfied the reactionaries, who set up a rebellion army. The legitimate government called for help to the Soviet Union, which sent its Red Army in, with all those lovely young Russians, more talented for music, poetry and litterature than for fighting wars. An intelligent statesman in the West would have asked Brezhnev how many troops he needed. Instead we sent weapons and money to the terrorists who were to become our worst enemies. Because for the USA every godfearing fascist in the world is (was ?)better than the godless Bolsheviks and their Evil Empire. There has been a time when the West even allied with Stalin in order to beat a greater evil. But strangely enough, after Stain�s death the West has sabotaged every difficult Russian attempt to put an end to Stalinism and to democratize and humanize the soviet system. The cannons that shot the Buddha statues to pieces, were fabricated with American capital. 2. The opium for the people ? And the terror which now suppresses the Afghan women is a side effect of the American way of "freedom". Karl Marx said that religion is the opium for the people. He meant that religion is a means of comfort, a sop that prevents the people from defending itself against exploitation and oppression. Marx was a moderate man indeed and judging mildly. Because religion is no drug, it�s a deadly poison. Anyhow, religion as a political power is. I�m not talking now about this thousands of years old melancholy of humankind, this nostalgia for a better future or a better past, this desire for a cosmic motherly womb, a shelter for fear and suffering and sorrow, for a dream world. Maybe religion - spiritual awareness and not churches and the like - maybe religion is opium indeed. And maybe opium and those so called hallucinogenic drugs are doors of a wider perception, be it a perception which is not free, because one pays with a little bit of health. After having studied all religions and separating chaff from wheat, throwing the rubbish overboard, I could keep an amount of precious treasures, which move me deeply. True religion is humankind�s dream and its cry of distress. True religion knows no gods nor commandments. Religion means commitment, alliance, it�s the knowledge of being part of everything, of life, together with all living things. That�s why religion is also love and compassion. The power of the politically organized religion on the other hand, is a horror story. It started with human and animal sacrifices, material sacrifices. Until now people and animals are slaughtered for religious absurdities. Especially the monotheist religions have a history of ruthlessness. Judaism less than both the other ones, because Judaism is more protectionist than expansionist. Christianity and Islam however, raged over the world like devastating catastrophes. You will argue now that it�s rather unfair to compare people like Francis of Assisi� (1181-1226)�in Christianity and Sufi poet Rumi �(Jalal ad-Din ar-Rumi 1207-1273)�in Islam with disasters and you are perfectly right. Francis and Rumi belong to the spiritual world, not the political one. The same for Isayah at that inspired moment when he described his dream : a time will come when no man shall raise a weapon against an other� They shall re-forge their weapons into ploughshares� 3. Eros and Thanatos The Christian and Islamic political powers have intruded all places, violently at the most. Both with the same mania of self-glorification and the same disdain towards anything or anybody that thinks differently or is different. A second characteristic is : eating its own children. "La r�volution mange ses enfants," Robespierre said. Nihil novum sub sole, Christianity and Islam had done this long before. While a European crusade against Islam was going on, at the same time there was the inquisition at home and this inquisition made more victims than the war. Someone remarked : "The pope has killed more christians than did the moslims." By the way, it occurs to me that Christianity had its most cruel and less inspiring period around the years 14OO-1600 and that Islam is now living its 15th century. Do 15 centuries signify a turning point for religions ? Anyhow, Christianity never really overcame this critical age. This political organization succeeded in maintaining its influence into the former century and partly even into this 21st century in some isolated regions (Europe, America), but since the Protestant iconoclasm it has never been the same again. The French Revolution, the Bolshevik Revolution and the Spanish Civil War are just examples of it. The actual non-violent dechristianization is the final stage. Tomorrow, today, the Islam is on turn. What we see at the moment, may look like an affirmation of power, but mind you, this is the beginning of the agony. A similarity between both the most powerful monotheist blocks is their abhorrence for sex and hate against women. One who denies human sexuality, denies youth and denies love. One who oppresses women, buries the source of life and is longing for death. One who longs strongly enough, will get what he�s longing for. The terror of religious insanity is however very strong and it will be hard to pull down this wall of Jericho. But pulled down it will, as surprisingly sudden as the Berlin wall did. And the world, astonished and shocked, will witness the revenge of history, the revenge of Woman in the Islam. One who destroys works of art is a barbarian, but one who lapidates women is a coward and a criminal. One who orders the lapidation of a mother, while her child has to look how she�s burried with just her head above the ground, after which the pious good-for-nothings of the village can throw stones till she dies, is worse than a criminal. What is the international court in The Hague good for ? Why must Nurnberg always come to late after Auschwitz ? And when all mosks have turned to dust forgotten by all men new Buddha statues will stand just right in Afghanistan And when these statues once again have gone the way of men and kingdom still many insights will remain so similar to Buddha�s wisdom Lode Willems april 2001 |
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