Being Good and Killing Jesus
Once I'm with the Wizard
My whole life will change
'Cuz once you're with the Wizard
No one thinks you're strange!
No father is not proud of you,
No sister acts ashamed
And all of Oz has to love you
When by the Wizard, you're acclaimed
...And one day, he'll say to me, "Elphaba,
A girl who is so superior,
Shouldn't a girl who's so good inside
Have a matching exterior?
Yeah, that’s not a thing.
My biggest struggle in life is fighting the belief that if I'm good, I will be rewarded. I have no idea how this concept developed, because 1) I'm not ever rewarded and 2) I'm not actually good.
This is codependency, and it's a lie.
I do it every chance I get. Habitually. Obsessively. I'm better than you. I have better taste in television, in music, in wine. I'm better at religion (I'm a "good" Christian and a "good" Buddhist). I'm better at dieting. I'm better at friendship.
All lies. I've spent my life overcoming being ugly, fat, and gay. Love me anyway. And people do love me anyway. But they don't love me in spite of those things, nor do they love me because of those things.
“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’" - Matthew 7:21-23 ESV
"Buddhism goes beyond doing good and being good. One must not be attached to good deeds or the idea of doing good; otherwise it is just another form of craving." – buddhanet.net
Obviously this is a terrible citation, but plug into Buddhism and it's everywhere. Even Wikipedia.
Let's just accept that goodness doesn't matter. That doesn't mean go out and be bad. Badness doesn't matter. The whole scale is thrown out the window.
I've been told this for 40 years and I'm not good at… not trying to be good. But this podcast, which I've referenced before, really helped me: If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him.
If you are tempted to follow a teacher, a mortal, a lover, a muse, to give up your identity to another person, sublimation, you should kill that person (the nice Buddhist podcast says "cast aside," but a therapeutic technique is to actually act the violence out in your head. So.). You cannot be good for that person. You cannot meditate enough, serve enough, push your identity aside enough, be strong enough, to earn praise. To earn heaven. To earn love.
I go from teacher to teacher and lover to lover seeking grace, this is not a one-time experience but a lifetime of repetition. And now I have permission to slay them all, to be myself. Myself which is nothing, sure, but that's different than being bad.
So that really resonated with me. And see, now I have the urge to look back Christianity into it, talk about doing good works in secret, praying in secret, etc., because if I'm too Buddhist, I'm bad. I'm not balanced. I'm crazy. I should have called this the crazy scholar instead of the lazy scholar but I didn't want to be too out there.
These impulses are happening EVERY SECOND.
Why put this out there if it's just the rambling of a madwoman? That's the point.
Because if I have to kill the Buddha, I have to kill Jesus.
I had this realization listening to God of My Gaps, an Elevation Church podcast. Which says it's non-denominational but it's really Baptist/Evangelical. He was talking about the same thing, grace alone and we're all sinners, and Jesus suffered and then died for us.
Except, he didn't die for us, he just died. He had some great ideas and he got shanked three years into his ministry. Imagine if he had lived for 80 years like the Buddha.
He died and he left us alone, without (much) spiritual guidance, and we had to make our own lonely way in the world. We have to accept him not as a savior, but as a man. And that makes it easier to not try to please him. I was already there, I mean, Jesus is my bestie in my dark times when I'm completely alone, he's not showing himself when I'm doing good—I'm never doing good.
So here's the other point of this post. The truth is out there. Buddha, Jesus, the mentally ill cult leader (redundant?), good parents, TV preachers who own six houses, 12 step programs, existential modern literature from Gen Xers… It's all the same truth. Being good and being bad aren't things. Being close to God (reality) and being far from God (fantasy), those are things. This is not rocket science, yo.
It's still impossible to live it successfully, and that's totally fine.
There's no right way to meditate. There's no right way to relax. There's no right way to be angry or sad. There's no wrong way either. There's just… being.
For more help being meaningless, there's the Zen Thinking Podcast.
“Notice the space;
that exists between you and thought,
that exists between you and emotion,
that exists between you and your opinions of others and the world.You are this space,
this emptiness,
this beautiful nothing.”
