An Incomplete Education

by Judy Jones

  Zoroaster trimmed the pantheon of Persian gods to two warring ones: Ahura Mazdah, a.k.a. Ormuzd, the Creator and God of Goodness and Light; and Ahriman, God of Evil and Darkness. Ahura Mazdah is attended by six lesser deities, or archangels, or ahuras, or abstract qualities, take your pick, who translate roughly into Good Thought, Highest Righteousness, Divine Kingdom, Pious Devotion, Salvation, and Immortality. Ahriman, naturally, has his own entourage of evil spirits, called divs or daevas. Human beings, by their thoughts and actions, can side with Goodness, Light, and Life or with Evil, Darkness, and Death, and, by doing so, participate in the ultimate destiny of the Universe. Up to a point. The catch—and what makes Zoroastrianism different from the purely dualistic religions that were all the rage in ancient times—is that eventually, Ahura Mazdah is going to win. This makes for a nice, if somewhat complicated, marriage of free will and determinism—and, eventually, for a kind of happy ending.

  Daily life for a Zoroastrian was nevertheless a very risky business, with evil spirits lurking everywhere. Near-constant ritual purification was necessary to ward off the forces of corruption, darkness, and death. At the same time, Ahura Mazdah’s elements, fire, water, and earth—all of which are reverenced but not, as any modern Zoroastrian would be quick to tell you, worshipped—had to be particularly well protected from contamination; hence the spooky “Towers of Silence” on which Zoroastrians placed their dead so as not to defile the earth. But physical corruption and defilement were also linked to evil mental states, thought being a very powerful force in the Zoroastrian cosmos. At some point, as you can see, it all becomes a bit much for the techno-happy Western mind to grasp. (Although you can bone up on the purification rituals, along with a lot of songs, hymns, and liturgies, in the Zoroastrian scriptures, the Zend Avesta, it’s so fragmentary, so corrupted, and so old that you still won’t know your forces of Light from your forces of Darkness, much less be able to tell who’s winning.) The Eastern mind, on the other hand, seems to do very nicely with it. When Persian Zoroastrianism was wiped out by Moslem hordes in the eighth century, a small group of Zoroastrians escaped to India, where incessant ritual purification is never a bad idea. Now known as Parsis and concentrated in and around Bombay, they’ve become one of the wealthiest, best-educated, and most-respected minority groups in a society that doesn’t normally reward strangeness or strangers. HINDUISM

  More than 700 million believers, mostly in India.

  Very old: predates all other world religions, except Judaism, by centuries at least. Also, very disorganized: has 330 million gods, more than enough for every family to have its own; a couple of dozen sects; a clutch of holy books; plenty of rituals, ceremonies, and spiritual disciplines; and neither a historical founder nor any consensus as to what, exactly, religious practice consists of. In a sense, Hinduism seems easy—tolerant, inclusive, undemanding, with an embarrassment of color, pageantry, and paths to Brahman, the Infinite Being (and ultimate reality) you eventually want to be at one with. Easy, that is, assuming you’re not infelicitously placed within the caste system and stuck being a servant or a peasant; or infelicitously placed without it and stuck being an untouchable—or a pig or a mosquito.

  The paradox here: You have plenty of time (in fact, as many lifetimes as you need) and plenty of ways to work out the release of your soul from the world and the ultimate rendezvous with Brahman. But there’s a real chutes-and-ladders feeling to the game plan and, rather than getting to simply shake the dice, you’re always being judged on how nicely you behaved on your last turn. In other words, your karma—literally, “action”; figuratively, a kind of cosmic system of cause-and-effect—determines your rise (and fall) in caste, through life after life, incarnation after incarnation until you finally get to the top of the board and the end of the game.

  Along the way, be prepared to deal with the most prominent of the gods (each of whom, incidentally, is a manifestation of Braham, and many of whom have subsidiary manifestations of their own): Shiva the Destroyer, a.k.a. the Cosmic Dancer; Vishnu the Preserver, a.k.a. Krishna, a.k.a. Buddha; and Shakti the Divine Mother. And with a couple of important sets of books: the Vedas, those ancient scriptures, written in Sanskrit, that lay the groundwork for Hinduism and culminate in the Upanishads or “secret doctrine”; and the Mahabharata, the longest poem in the world, containing India’s favorite religious text, the Bhagavad Gita, a dialogue between the god Krishna and a soldier named Arjuna. And with any and all animals, especially cows, bulls, monkeys, and snakes (each of which you’ll be nice to, since it, like you, is probably on its way up or down). Of course you’ll visit Benares and bathe in the Ganges. And you may go Tantric, embracing that branch of yoga (from a Sanskrit word meaning “to join” and related to our word “yoke”) that seeks enlightenment through, among other procedures, a style of sensual lovemaking in which “each is both.” Needless to say, you’ll also be on the lookout for gurus, mantras, mandalas (the former chanted, the latter painted), and sutras (treatises on various aspects of the Vedas, the Kama Sutra section of which may remind you of Tantric yoga classes).

  Not that Hinduism is all easy-listening. You’ll also be expected, en route to Brahman, to give some thought to maya (originally, “might”), the illusion that the shapes and structures, the things and events we perceive with our senses in some way stand for reality—otherwise known as confusing the map with the territory. Problem is, as long as we’re under the spell of maya and think we’re separate from our environment, we’re going to be bound—and pushed around—by karma, and once again find ourselves being issued an end-of-lifetime report card. At which point, according to Hinduism (and for that matter, Buddhism, warming up in the bullpen), the whole business begins again. BUDDHISM

  310 million believers, mostly in Southeast Asia, China, Korea, and Japan.

  Take Hinduism. Subtract the caste system, downplay the gods, the ritual, and the Play-Doh colors, and substitute Nirvana for Brahman. Now add the Four Noble Truths, the Noble Eightfold Path, the Three Baskets, and the Great Wheel, and transport the whole business from India to points south (Sri Lanka), east (Burma, Thailand, and Indochina), and north (Nepal, Tibet, China, Mongolia, Korea, and Japan). Refuse to take any questions on the origin of the world or the nature of the divine and insist that everybody in the group work, quietly on his own, toward feeling better about himself through a program of pity, joy, kindliness, and meditation.

  It’s not that Buddhism is abstemious, exactly (the robes are saffron, after all, and representations of the Buddha can be several stories high and made of gold), just that there’s a pared-down quality to it and that it comes down hard in all the places where Hinduism is free-form and assimilative. In part this is because Buddhism had a single founder (and hence an indisputable source and role model), Siddhartha Gautama, the so called “historic” Buddha, son of a sixth-century b.c. Indian prince, who proceeded to renounce worldliness in favor of enlightenment, of the middle way (between extremes of self-indulgence and self-denial), and, eventually, of Nirvana itself—a word that means, literally, a “going out,” as of a candle when there’s no more wick to burn, and, figuratively, liberation from all desires, cravings, and “becomings,” from suffering and from the endless round of lifetimes and selves. And in part it’s because Buddhism, as a missionary religion (like Christianity and Islam), had to travel light, both to maximize its chances of getting over the mountains and through the rainforests and to leave its converts some room to use their imaginations.

  Basically, these converts fall into two camps, roughly established (cf. Catholicism and Protestantism) along north/south lines. The southern camp (Sri Lanka, Southeast Asia) practice a form of Buddhism known as Hinayana (or “Little Vehicle”), characterized by orthodoxy (what the historical Buddha said goes), austerity, and a concept of salvation based on one’s own right living. The northern camp (Nepal all the way to Japan) practice Mahayana (or “Great Vehicle”), which postulates that the Buddha is not just historical but divine and that nobody—not even a
bodhisattva, two-thirds of the way to being a Buddha himself—is going to enter into Nirvana until every last one of us is ready to enter into Nirvana. Two important subcamps of Buddhism: the Lamaism of Tibet, in which the Dalai Lama called the shots until Communist China threw him out, and the Zen Buddhism of Japan, transplanted from China, in which satori—the attainment of enlightenment, plain and simple, through intuition rather than intellect—is the name of the game, prepared for in activities like judo, calligraphy, flower arranging, and so on, and embodied by the koan, a paradoxical observation of the sound-of-one-hand-clapping variety.

  Careful: It’s often hard to remember what’s basically Hinduist, what’s Buddhist. Not only did Hinduism spawn Buddhism, it then glommed on to a lot of what the Buddhists had gone on to say and think. So you get nirvana, karma, mantra, tantra, and yoga, not to mention Buddha himself, in both packages (though usually not in the same strengths). Do try to remember that there are now almost no Buddhists in India itself. And that whereas the spirit of Hinduism is theatrical and clubby, that of Buddhism is no-nonsense and do-it-yourself.

  Let’s begin with yin and yang. You remember yin and yang: the two poles of experience, joined in a symmetric union, a continuous cycle; yang the bright, creative, male, heavenly force, yin the dark, receptive, female, earthly one, each of the two containing the seed of its opposite. Note that we’re not talking Western-style opposites here, of the true-false, good-bad variety, but something more like harmony, balance, completeness, fulfillment.

  Turns out, that’s pretty much how Confucianism and Taoism work. Each founded in the sixth century b.c. (and thus predating the arrival of Buddhism in China by roughly seven hundred years), and each equipped with its own legendary sage, the two together sum up, play to, and care for the Chinese character as we know—or think we know—it. Confucianism is practical, social, ethical, full of advice on how to behave in the world, father to son, husband to wife, ruler to subject, older friend to younger friend, and it’s more code than creed, with no churches or clergy in sight. Taoism is mystical, devoted—even more than Buddhism (though probably less than Zen)—to transcending everyday life and finding the tao, the path, the way of the natural order. Nor did the Chinese fall into the trap of doing some schematic Type A/Type B thing with the two. Rather, they chose to emphasize Confucianism when they were educating their kids, then convert to Taoism when they got older in the hopes of regaining the spontaneity that had been squelched by a lifetime of honoring social conventions and playing by the rules.

  Confucius—K’ung Fu-tse, or Grand Master K’ung, back home in China— was, you don’t have to be told, particularly good with the one-liners: “It is only the wisest and the stupidest who cannot change,” “The proper man understands equity, the small man profits,” “Silence is a friend who will never betray,” and so on, enough of them to fill the Lun Yü, or Analects, Confucianism’s basic reference work. Lao-tzu—the “Grand Old Man” (literally) of Taoism, said to have once baffled Confucius in philosophical debate—had a more enigmatic style, as befits a religion determined to transcend: “Without going out of the door, one can know the whole world. Without peeping out the window, one can see the tao of heaven. The farther one travels, the less one knows.” His collection is called the Tao Te Ching (The Way of Virtue). The I Ching (or Book of Changes), by the way, which you once may have been in the habit of consulting on days when the Tarot wasn’t working out, and which is as much about yin and yang as everything else in the country is, predates both men; Confucius even based some of his teachings on it.

  So, Confucianism is yang: practical, masculine, dominant, active. Taoism is yin: intuitive, feminine, yielding, passive. The Confucians wanted to get the job done, keep the wheels greased, make sure the system held up for another few hundred generations; the Taoists to lead a perfectly balanced life in harmony with the tao and to leave artifice and conformity in the dust.

  Not that it stayed so simple. First, threatened by Buddhism, Taoism sacrificed all the understatement to eye appeal and sheer numbers. Buddhism had thirty-three different kinds of heaven, so Taoists came up with eighty-one. Taoism took over some of the Buddhist gods and restored others from the old folk religions it had supplanted (including the City God, the Wealth God, and the Kitchen God), and developed a lively interest in selling charms, reading fortunes, and sponsoring secret societies. Today, it’s still sect-and-society mad, a religion of the semiliterate and the eternally hopeful. Confucianism, too, once it had eliminated the examination system it ran to keep those civil-service candidates on their toes, seems to have had an identity crisis. Both are outlawed in the People’s Republic today (it especially didn’t help Confucianism that Confucius was a feudal aristocrat), but we know that’s just a phase of the cycle, don’t we? SHINTOISM

  3 million believers, mostly in Japan.

  The Hammacher-Schlemmer of Eastern religions, full of odd and largely useless items, as well as old and demographically undesirable shoppers, and, perhaps most important, overshadowed by Bloomingdale’s up the street (that would be Buddhism, a sixth-century import from China via Korea; that there are as many Shintoists as there are today is due in part to sheer force of habit and in part to the fact that most of them are practicing Buddhists, too).

  The religion of ancient Japan, Shintoism—from shin-tao, the later Chinese equivalent of the Japanese kami-no-michi, or “way of the gods” (Japan had no written language until it appropriated China’s in the fifth century A.D.)— developed out of a combination of nature and ancestor worships, sometime around 700 b.c. The religion had a complex pantheon of kami, or gods, led by a Supreme Sun Goddess and including guardian household spirits; presiding tree-, river-, rock-, and village-divinities (including kamikaze, the “divine wind”); deified emperors; and miscellaneous national heroes.

  A set of customs and rituals rather than a moral or philosophical system, Shintoism puts a lot of stress on purity, especially bodily cleanliness, and obedience; makes little of life after death and a lot of self-versus-nonself thinking; and fosters the belief that, since the Japanese have occupied their island pretty much by themselves for as long as anybody can remember, they are all related to each other, to their royal rulers, and to the Supreme Sun Goddess herself. It’s these last planks in the Shintoist platform that had so many Japanese committing harakiri for their emperor in World War II and Douglas MacArthur banning Shintoism as an instrument of the state, while allowing it as a religious sect, shortly thereafter.

  The Good Book as Good Read

  Sorry; as far as we know, video Scripture hasn’t hit the market yet (although audio Scripture has). However, the written Word itself offers some pleasant surprises, especially if you’ve been avoiding it since Sunday school days. It is, for instance, tailor-made for short attention spans: You can easily absorb a verse or two while waiting for the cash machine and half a dozen psalms on a short bus ride home. It’s chock-full of the kind of homespun wisdom and thoughtful advice you’d be lucky to get in a year’s subscription to your favorite lifestyle magazine. It puts any number of book and movie titles into perspective. And given a choice between contemplating “Mother Eats Baby in Bizarre Devil-Worship Ritual!” at the supermarket checkout counter or any one of the passages following, we know which we think makes for a nicer day. Being sentimentalists at heart, we also opt for the King James version whenever possible, as we’ve done here.

  1. There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bore children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.*

  Genesis 6:4

  2. By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept when we remembered Zion.**

  Psalms 137:1

  3. A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest, and poverty will come upon you like a vagabond and want like an armed man.

  Proverbs 6:10

  4. I am a brother to dragons, and a companion to owls
. My skin is black upon me, and my bones are burned with heat. My harp also is turned to mourning, and my organ into the voice of them that weep.

  Job 30:29–31

  5. I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.*

  Ecclesiastes 9:11

  6. Or ever the silver cord be loosed, or the golden bowl be broken, or the pitcher be broken at the fountain, or the wheel broken at the cistern.**

  Ecclesiastes 12:6

  7. For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind: it hath no stalk: the bud shall yield no meal: if so be it yield, the strangers shall swallow it up.†

  Hosea 8:7

  8. And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?

  Matthew 7:3

  9. For we brought nothing into this world and it is certain that we can carry nothing out.

  I Timothy 6:7

  10. Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

  Hebrews 11:1

  11. Be not forgetful to entertain strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.

  Hebrews 13:2

  12. And when he had opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven about the space of half an hour.‡