Monastery of the Great Mystery

High on drugs, he shoots
and kills hairdresser for
being too slow to braid his hair.

I once knew a psychiatrist who believed that if a person would talk non-stop with no reinforcement for more than two minutes it was indicative of some mental illness. I do not know that this is true, but I do know there are compulsive talkers who will go on without stopping for long periods of time. Most of these people, I believe, are at least covering up some kind of anxiety. I suggest you watch Sarah Palin’s non-stop performance at the turkey ceremony the other day and think about this.

I confess to having to pinch myself every now and then, just to make sure I am not dreaming. The world I find myself living in sometimes strikes me as totally unreal. That is, I see on my television (to me a mysterious weird invention to begin with), men actually dressed up as hamburgers, carrots, vitamins, animals, etc., trying to convince me to purchase products that I neither need nor want. There are also singing chocolate chip cookies, talking automobiles, talking insects, and other grotesqueries (is that a word?). While these things are irritating and ridiculous in the extreme, there are other things going on in my world that are even worse. Can you imagine, for example, unpiloted drones that invade other nations’ airspace to kill people attending weddings and funerals? How about children and others going hungry in what is said to be the wealthiest and most powerful nation on earth? Or a culture in which many dogs and cats actually eat better than some people? A place where one individual can possess more wealth than thousands of others, working all their lives, could possibly accumulate? How about living in a world in which innocent people can be arrested and kept in prison for years, charged with no crime, and not allowed even to communicate with their families? Secret prisons in which they can be tortured at will? People can also be put in jail for years for possessing parts of a plant that grows wild by the roadsides all over the country, and is far less harmful than alcohol, which is perfectly legal and often abused? Anyway, you get the picture. Even the most imaginative of writers could never have dreamt such a society like the one we find ourselves living in today. It is so irrational, so cruel, so thoughtless, so absurd, so lacking in saving graces as to be someone’s evil nightmare. But when I pinch myself I realize it is real, it exists, I am part of it, and it appears to be virtually inescapable.

At moments when this reality sits more heavily on my mind than usual I sometimes find myself dreaming of some kind of retreat. It is fairly common in some cultures, like India, for example, that when a man has grown, married, and fathered children (and probably also has grandchildren), and is entering the twilight of his life, to withdraw from society and retreat into a monastery or some such thing, where he lives out his remaining years in peace and reflection. These are usually religious retreats of some kind. But I think of something like a Monastery of the Great Mystery. Those who would be allowed there would be those who have rejected all known organized religions, but would still believe in The Great Mystery, and could spend their remaining years in reflection. I suspect this might be considered religious enough to be allowed a tax exemption, and would not actively engage in political activity of any kind. It would be modeled somewhat on those monasteries where the participants have taken vows of silence and do not speak at all. It would be different, however, in that each entrant would be allowed a specific number of words, and no more. Let us say, for the sake of the dreaming, each person would be allotted one million words (perhaps even fewer). This means that while you could speak if you wished, you would only do so if you had something truly important or significant to say to others. You would have to think before you spent any of your precious words. While this would probably not solve The Great Mystery, it would at least save us from the nonsensical gibberish that constitutes most religious discourse, and it would free us from the excesses of religious ceremonies of all kinds (of course it would be too late to save some from circumcision, subincision, tooth extractions, scarifications, immersions in water, and other unpleasant rituals we might have been forced to endure as helpless young men). We could also avoid various onerous and unnecessary dietary rules, and so forth. And there would be no hymns or religious mumbo-jumbo, no prescribed religious garb, no religious icons, and no candles. It would, in short, be a society of serious, independent, free thinkers of all kinds, nonbeliever believers, who agree to escape the clutches of the insane asylum that nowadays passess for the human condition. I realize this needs work, but what the hell, so does everything else.

LKBIQ:
With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.
Steven Weinberg (19

TILT:
Pandora’s “Box” was actually an earthenware Jar of some kind.