I’ve spent the better part of Saturday crafting this piece. My writer’s group, which meets every Tuesday got together on Vashon Island for a week of writing at an AirBnB on the coast. From a comfy chair overlooking the water I can see a raft of seals swimming and basking on a neighbors floating dock. It’s a great place to continue diving into my journey which I summarized in my previous piece Unpacking
My journey of deconstructing my xtian faith, which inevitably led to deconversion, was a years-long process. During that journey, I toyed with the idea of calling myself an atheist and did so for a few months. However, in the end, I realized I was a spiritual person, and denouncing fully the idea of some greater being or source of it all felt impossible for me. So, I propped myself up and continued searching.
I don’t remember the first time I came across Alan Watts’s writings, but he is now a staple in my burgeoning Tao and Buddhist literature collection. I recently read two of his books, This Is It and Cloud Hidden. While I was reading those books, I was also simultaneously listening to his talks that his son had compiled into an anthology in podcast form. I was thrilled to discover that Alan had an extensive background in Episcopalian/Anglican Christianity but had become compelled to leave the church and explore Taoism, Buddhism, and Hinduism.
While Alan’s issues with the church differed from mine—I was concerned with the modern church’s hypocrisy and also scriptural issues surrounding semantics and exegesis—he was concerned with issues of theological contradictions, which, to be honest, had yet to crop up in my thought processes.
Christianity, even as it is understood by quite thoughtful Christians, is certainly no remedy for anxiety. In Christianity, it matters not just very much but absolutely that one choose good rather than evil, for one’s eternal destiny depends upon the decision. Yet to be certain that one is saved is the sin of presumption, and to be certain that one is damned is the sin of despair.
The idea of eternal conscious torment in hell at the hands of a loving god is a morally repugnant idea, which must disprove the very idea if only through its absurdity.
When my son throws a temper tantrum when I tell him to clean his room, there are consequences. Maybe he loses TV privileges, dessert, or has to go to bed early. After the consequences for his behavior are doled out, that is the end of it. I don’t punish him every day for the rest of his life for the outburst. If I did so, I would be a cruel, malicious, evil parent. To believe god does this makes us more moral than her/he/them.
The Hebrew-Christian universe is one in which moral urgency—the anxiety to be right—embraces and penetrates everything.
God, the Absolute itself, is good as against bad, and thus to be immoral or in the wrong is to feel oneself an outcast not merely from human society but also from existence itself, from the root and ground of life.
To be in the wrong, therefore, arouses a metaphysical anxiety and sense of guilt—a state of eternal damnation—utterly disproportionate to the crime. This metaphysical guilt is so insupportable that it must eventually issue in the rejection of God and of his laws—which is just what has happened in the whole movement of modern secularism, materialism, and naturalism.
Absolute morality is profoundly destructive of morality, for the sanctions which it invokes against evil are far, far too heavy. One does not cure the headache by cutting off the head.
The appeal of Zen, as of other forms of Eastern philosophy, is that it unveils behind the urgent realm of good and evil a vast region of oneself about which there need be no guilt or recrimination, where at last the self is indistinguishable from God.
I have compiled pages of highlighted notes from those two books, trying to condense it down into a blog post without copy and pasting it all here. It feels like an insurmountable problem. Those two books were immensely impactful, and I felt paralyzed by the desire to distill my observations into a quick read but unsure how to proceed in a reverent manner befitting the profound journey the books elicited within me.
I wish I could write half as well as Alan—my journey as a writer has been fraught with self-doubt and criticism—in the end, all I can do is keep write and see where it takes me. Writing has never let me down. I am far from figuring things out. Every day is a journey. All I know, though, is that leaving xtianity and stepping into Buddhism and Taoism has given my life a peace and joy I never knew as a xtian.
The energy and material which we have all squandered on making war since even 1914 could have warmed, fed, and clothed everyone on Earth, but we go about this atrocious squandering in the name of such immaterial and irrelevant fantasies as religion, honor, ideology, progress, racial purity, and patriotism—the last being not love of one’s country but of the idea of one’s country, of the mere image, the flag, the crown, the icon of Lenin, Mao’s little red book, the cross, the crescent, the swastika, and other such absurd baubles.
I’ve been picking my way through The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory as well as Jesus and John Wayne. Both books chronicle the rise of xtian nationalism in America. They’re hard books to read, as I see so much of my childhood and many of the experiences in the church growing up that have gotten us into the mess we’re in now.
As I’ve studied Alan Watts’s books and talks, I was shocked to discover he all but predicted the insanity our country finds itself in now—but way back in the 60s and 70s!
Christians and Jews who believe more firmly in the Devil than in God are always afraid that if they let go, the Devil will take over first, unaware that not having let go is the Devil already in full control.
For ordinary self-control is the domination of one’s behavior by the selfish self: its love is assumed, pretensive, and dutiful; its righteousness is hypocritical; its chastity issues in cruelty; its spiritual ideals are highbrow ways of inflating the ego; its profuse confessions of sin are subtle ways of one-upping more ordinary people; and its beneficence has an odd way of arousing resentment in its recipients.
Or:
Calvinists (i.e., predestinarian Presbyterians) and Muslims half believe this: they concede that everything which comes to pass is the divine will but continue to regard themselves as separate and submissive subjects of that will. They are therefore notably energetic and aggressive people, but because they still regard themselves as puppets of that will, their energy takes a divisive, cantankerous, hostile, and exclusive course. For when you surrender to God, you must secretly hate him and then vent this hatred on other people.
The adage “There’s no hate like christian love” rings especially true these days as I watch in horror the church I left years ago continue its unchecked obsession and love affair with their bloodlust and hate toward their enemies (anyone not in full compliance with white supremacist, anti-immigrant, anti-LGBTQ+, anti-women’s rights, pro-gun ideologies and agendas).
In true Alan style, though, he does leave glimmers of hope—words which encourage me to renew my commitment to speaking out against the atrocities being committed all over our country by MAGA as they succumb to their ignorance, hate, and greed.
I suppose the Taoist way of life is the polar opposite of Billy Graham’s muscular Christianity.
Water is supple and soft, but give it enough time and it can wear anything down and break through any barrier. The Taoist life, lived in the flow, not seeking to resist, fight, or succumb to violence to gain superiority, is the water wearing away, every day, the hate, greed, and ignorance that hold our country in a stranglehold.
Tulku Sherdor said shortly after the election:
As a dharma person, you must realize that this world is not here to make you happy with its decisions and problems.
Rather, you are here to throw your hat in the ring and do anything you can to make it better, no matter how big or small.
We know this world for what it is. If we can’t accept it into our hearts, what point is there in talking about bodhisattva vows? Can we only live in a world where everyone is a bodhisattva? Good luck.
Don’t let your happiness rest on changing others’ views to fit your beliefs and needs. Let it rest on doing your best to model what a virtuous life can look like.