If you meet the Buddha on the street, kill him!

The British comedy troupe Monty Python was admired for its movie “The Life of Brian,” an iconoclastic biopic of Jesus that ends with a song and dance number on crucifixes. Alas, Monty Python is no more, but what if they had taken on other major religious figures? Some of you may remember Monty Python’s famous “Penguin on the Television Set” skit, which begins with the characters listening to a radio drama called “The Death of Mary, Queen of Scots.” I have adapted that radio drama into an iconoclastic take on the Zen Buddhist dictum: “If you meet the Buddha on the street, kill him!”

Announcer: And now the BBC is proud to present a brand new radio drama series, “The Death of Siddhartha Gotama, the Buddha.”

[music: fade up and out]
[sound effect: door opening and closing]

Voice One: [deep gruff man’s voice] You are Siddhartha Gotama, the Buddha?

Voice Two: [high reedy man’s voice] I am!

Voice One: Take that, Siddhartha Gotama, the Buddha!!

[sound effects for 60 sec.: sound of a heavy blow on the word “that,” followed by sound of violent blows, crunching noises, smashing noises, things being broken.]
[Throughout all this, we hear Voice Two grunting and screaming in pain.]

Announcer: We will return to the new radio drama production “The Death of Siddhartha Gotama, the Buddha,” in just a moment.

[music: fade up and out]
[sound effects: saw cutting, with other violent sounds as before, with Voice Two screaming.]
[Then: sudden silence.]

Voice One: I think he’s dead.

[beat]

Voice Two: No, I’m not!

[sound effects: violent sounds and screaming start again, suddenly stop]

Voice Two: Hah! Missed me! It’s not so easy to stop the endless cycle of rebirth! Aauugh!!

[sound effects: violent sounds and screaming again]
[music: fade up over sound effects, then down and continue under Announcer…]

Announcer: That was episode one of “The Death of Siddhartha Gotama, the Buddha,” adapted for radio by Hugo Smof Gernsback. Tune in next week for the dramatic conclusion.

Tyranny of structurelessness

jfield passed along a link to a great article titled “The Tyranny of Structurelessness.” It’s a critique of feminist group process that replaced the tyranny of hierarchy with… another kind of tyranny? When I have time to read the article carefully, maybe I’ll find time to write more about it.

Too busy

I wound up talking to an old friend today, someone I hadn’t talked to in two years. We exchanged news (she now has a grandchild!), and then she said something about being sorry about not having called me. Well, I said, it’s not like I called you, and besides we’re both workaholics. That’s true, she said. But what I really called you about, I continued, is this…

…and then we got down to work, because of course I didn’t call her just to socialize. At this point, I guess I’m supposed to apologize for working all the time and not socializing enough. In his book Walden, Henry Thoreau opines, “Men say that a stitch in time saves nine, and so they take a thousand stitches today to save nine tomorrow. As for work, we haven’t any of any consequence.” The hell with it, I’m not going to apologize to the likes of Henry Thoreau. I like to work, and if I take a thousand stitches today it’s because it gives me joy and pleasure to do so.

Autumn watch

This morning when I got to the office, we all complained about our allergies.

“I’m getting these headaches here [pointing to sinuses in forehead] and here [pointing to ears],” said Claudette.

“I wake up in the morning and my eyes are all itchy,” said Linda, pointing to her slightly reddened eyes.

“I can’t breathe today,” I said, coughing.

We compared the benefits of Sudafed (I don’t like the way it makes me feel) and Claritin (it makes Linda drowsy), and talked about eye drops (Claudette said you shouldn’t use them more than three or four times a week).

“I just want a good cold snap,” I said. “Then I’ll be able to breathe again.”

“It’s all these rotting leaves on the ground,” said Linda.

This is the downside to global climate change. Warm autumns mean much worse allergies.

North Unitarian Church in New Bedford, Mass. part two

Second in an occasional series of posts about North Unitarian Church in New Bedford, Mass.

Samuel Louis Elberfeld was minister at North Unitarian Church in New Bedford from 1919-1923. The Web site of John Elberfeld, his grandson, has an abridged version of one of Samuel Elberfeld’s sermons. It is a pulpit-pounding, fire-breathing, Unitarian social justice sermon — one of those social justice sermons that is supposed to make you squirm and feel very uncomfortable. So of course I can’t resist posting the abridged version here… Continue reading →

Site improvements

I’ve just finished a minor rebuild of the entire Web site, including improved navigation on the main site. I made minor design changes on the main site to improve legibility, and make it look more consistent with this blog and my sermon archives.

Most importantly, there’s now a Site Map to give an overview of the whole site.

Additionally, I added lots of new content here — songs and arrangements from our church’s Folk Choir.

A good day to stay home

We left Carol’s parents’ house quite late and headed down Interstate 495. It was ten thirty so traffic was light. We drove along smoothly, listening to the news from Mumbai. Suddenly brake lights flashed red in front of us. Cars around us began slowing down. Ahead of us I could see stopped traffic. “What is it?” Carol said. “Must be an accident,” I said, moving over to the middle lane of the highway. We could see blue lights of a police car. But when we got closer, we saw that it wasn’t an accident. Cars were waiting to get onto an exit ramp, and I remembered I had seen one of those flashing traffic signs with a message about parking for the outlet malls. “It’s people going to the outlet malls, the ones that are going to open at midnight,” I said. “That’s crazy,” said Carol, “and look at all the traffic jam on the other side of the highway!” It was even worse on the northbound side.

Starting at midnight (right about now) it’s Black Friday, the day when retail stores supposedly make enough money to finally put them in the black for the year, the day when millions of crazed Americans drive around spending lots of money to buy Christmas presents. As for me, I’ll be staying home.

Autumn watch

We got up early so we could take a walk before we started driving up to my sister’s house for Thanksgiving dinner. It was unusually calm; in places the water of the harbor was almost completely smooth, in other places it was barely riffled by the smallest breeze; the barges, cranes, fishing boats, and heavy machinery along the Fairhaven side of the harbor were beautifully reflected where the water was still. Some blue sky began to show in the west, and it grew bright enough to cast shadows. Carol decided to turn back about halfway to Fairhaven. A dozen or so Buffleheads bobbed in the water between Pope’s Island and Fairhaven, the black and white of the males showing brilliantly in the growing sunlight. A couple of roofers stood on the flat roof of the old motel on Route 6, ripping up the old roofing; supposedly the new owner of the building is going to renovate it, and reopen it. I kept walking, but by that point my mind settled down and stopped thinking.