www.killingthebuddha.com

A voyeur, a thief and Barack Obama’s prayers at the Wailing Wall.

by Stephen Prothero

Read more here: www.killingthebuddha.com

Join us for a literary evening to celebrate the adoption and relaunch of killingthebuddha.com, the online magazine of exceptionally unconventional religion writing.  We invite you to a revival in Brooklyn featuring some of the latest KtB contributers, new and old, in a cozy pub, with a great selection of beers, books, couches and darts (board included.)  So, mark your Gregorian calendars and spread the antiphonal word.

Since Killing the Buddha was first created in 2000, the unholy love child of Jeff Sharlet, Peter Manseau and Jeremy Brothers, religion stories have made it — to glossy magazines covers, the babble of the blogosphere, and the bestseller list. But Killing the Buddha is still the only place for brazen stories of belief — lost  and found and lost again.

Earlier this year, KTB was left behind — for real children, great books and magazines that pay. But three new Buddha killers, initiates in the anti-tradition, have stormed the empty palace. We offer ourselves, among these hallowed and heretical pages, as your humble editors. Ashley Makar is praying that KtB will help her keep one foot out of the ivory tower; Meera Subramanian is guerrilla gardening in edens and underworlds while looking to the heavens for falcon gods; and Marissa Dennis is performing midrash at the intersections of borderlands and bodies. The Buddhas keep popping up on the road, right around the next bend, blinded by your headlights. We’re here to help you lay on the gas, for free.

Join us as we spread the Word. Tell your friends. Tell your enemies. Poke us on Facebook. Let the show begin. Again.

Seven years. That’s how long it has been since KillingTheBuddha.com began. Seven! That’s 63 in Web years. When KtB was born, there were no blogs; Salon was big news; the guy who started Facebook was in junior high.

Old enough to know better, young enough to find something else to do, we who have been here since the beginning have moved on to writing books, having babies, and publishing in magazines that use actual paper. Much as we wish we could keep KtB going, there’s just no more time.

It has been a great deal of fun making this site happen. Many thanks to all who rode along with us. If there’s something we’ve published that you can’t live without, have no fear: We’ll leave the archive up until the internets fall down.

yo ktb,

count me stupid (my wife will confirm) but i can’t
figure out what you did to your website?
it’s gotta be the biggest fucked up confusion i’ve
seen since the old rooster caught his pecker in the
chicken wire fencing!

blah, blah, blah

cock-a-doodle-doo!

jack of the universe

The best religion book of 2007 is finally in a bookstore near you. Two longtime friends of KtB, Scott Korb and Peter Bebergal, have teamed up to write the most honest account of what it means to struggle with belief — and toward it, and away from it — that we’ve read in years.

The Faith Between Us should be required reading for anyone asking big questions, not just about God, but friendship, family, commitment, and love. Take the advice St. Augustine heard from on high: pick up this book and read it. While you’re at it, buy yourself an extra copy — give one to a friend and enjoy excellent conversations about this excellent conversation of a book.

We rarely publish poetry here at KtB, but this week one of our own (which is to say me, Laurel Snyder, the person typing this) has released a book of poems.  A book of poems called, “The Myth of the Simple Machines”.

And because a few of these poems are kinda relig-ish, and because such poetry doesn’t always appeal to the straight-up lit-blog crowd, and because I can…

I’m reprinting a few of the poems here, now, for your poetical pleasure.  I’d like to believe they’re in keeping with the spirit of KtB, but then, I’d like to believe in general…

**

In the Kitchen 

God clacks his spoon
against his bowl, 
his bowl against his table,
and his table against
the yellow walls of his house.   

God’s impatient or just
keeping time.   

The soup isn’t hot enough yet, 
so he waits, writes his name
on a yellowing cookbook
where the dust is thick and moist. 
He writes “God.”   

God’s a sloppy housewife. 
He sits on the counter,
stares at his slippers, 
watches the pot of soup
until it boils on the stove.   

It smells like cabbage and turns the day
into what God calls “supper.”

God reaches for the salt and thinks
about his dreams, how they’re full
of other people, other things.
God tears into the bread and it feels
nice, close against his fingers.

He finds his teacup cracked
and whimpers. He can fix it
but it will still have been broken.
God pulls the teacup to his belly
and holds it there, hard.

He says to the room,
“Look! Something might happen.”

(this poem first appeared in Parlorgames magazine)

**

Logos

1.

And this earth was once
Confused and tangled
And darkness.  

And God called to the light,
Day! And to the dark
He called, Night! 

And suddenly, he saw giant
God-fingers making shapes
Through the murk. 

And God called
To the fingers and to
The things they felt. 

And in the white room
A man watches his hands
Beat and bruise a thing. 

And he relents and breathes
Into the white room, and sees
That the thing is now just that. 

And so he calls to the thing
And the moment and the air
Hovering in the room. Thing! 

And then again he calls,
Clearly and flatly: Time of Death: 12:32
He calls to the time. 

And elsewhere, Our Father who art—
You fucking whore you fucking slut—
I think We’ll call you Emma—  

And elsewhere, I will—
My body which will be given up for you—
My name is X and I’m an alcoholic— 

2.

Nobody can say word
Is not the nature
of saying.  What we are.

(This poem first appeared in the Iowa Review) 

If monks in Myanmar weren’t marching against the military junta this week, they would likely be taking part in a march of another kind. Late September is traditionally the time for one of Myanmar’s largest religious festivals, held just 100 miles north of Yangon, epicenter of the protests and scene of increasingly violent government response.

Myanmar has been described as the most devoutly Buddhist nation on earth. Ninety percent of its citizens count themselves as followers of Buddha, and those who devote their lives to following his path, Buddhist monks and nuns, are held in universally high esteem.

So it’s no small affair when, once a year and only for a few days, the Buddha’s Tooth Relic, the most revered spiritual artifact in the country, is removed from its shrine in the town of Paung-de. Placed on the back of an elephant, the tooth relic is then paraded through the city to bestow blessings on all who behold it. Thousands of monks and other devotees follow in procession, filling the streets with burgundy robes, the smell of incense, and the cacophony of drums, gongs, and chanted prayers.

It’s a scene that seems as though it could have occurred a thousand years ago, and it might lead one to wonder if the monks learned to create such a spectacle for reasons very different than those for which they march now.

Yet it is not so simple that one instance of marching monks is religious and one is political. Even the most purely political actions can have religious causes; even apparently religious events can be political to their core. And even something which seems as timeless and apolitical as a religious relic – in this case, a piece of the Buddha’s tooth said to be recovered from his funeral pyre 2500 years ago – can be so tied up in the machinations of the state that it’s impossible to know where religion ends and politics begins.

It turns out that Myanmar’s tooth relic was a gift – more of a loan, actually – from the officially irreligious and atheistic government of China. The tooth has served a bargaining chip between the two nations for decades. When Myanmar — then called Burma — initially asked to arrange a visit for the tooth in the 1950s , the Chinese were so dismissive of it that they reportedly replied with a disdainful, “Take it, we have no use for it.” Only on reflection did they realize what a powerful political object they had in their possession.

They have made excellent use of it since then, periodically loaning it to the Myanmar junta, which in turn used it as a display of its own power, and moreover as a way of organizing its devout population to its own ends. Every year when the tooth was removed from its shrine and paraded through the streets, it was as much a statement of political will as religious devotion. The politics may have been hidden beneath layers of burgundy robes and pious chanting, but they were there no less than, yes, a tooth hidden behind a tight-lipped grin.

Religion has a long and infamous history, in every tradition, of being used by the state. Yet in Myanmar this month we are reminded that it can also be used in defiance of it.
As similar as one group of marching monks might look to another, they chose to fill the streets for another reason this year. Not in a state-sponsored parade behind a tooth that has become a political pawn, but behind one of their own, carrying a megaphone.