Non-Buddhism

On that fateful day when faith was conceived the human race was thrust into the pits of unknowing, for unknowing is the sacrifice it demands.

… and with that a universe of peoples of every kind, both human and more-than-human, that had lived in finely balanced communion since the first beginning, were now split into us as them. The ones that can dream and the ones that cannot. The ones that do and the ones that are done to. The ones that matter and the ones that don’t. The ones that can be understood and the ones that can’t.

Let it be known that faith has no agenda, but not so the faithful sword bearer that protects it and holds only themselves as sacred. This sword bearer holds all agendas. For every God and Demon, Monster and Prophet, Savior and Sinner there is a unique attack and defense forged in the fire of faith and practice. Forged in the elements that we ourselves are constituted of but understand not.

Be aware, that the elements hath no fury, only intensity and direction. The elements hath no joy, only movements and patterns. The element of faith knows the human well and plants itself in a moist and warm place to flourish and grow and plateau and slowly wither. Like the wind and the rain and the fire and the earth its ever changing form and place moves through and around us like a ghost. But alas, we fear ghosts and prefer our own.

Before the elements there were voids and space. Before faith there was love and hate. The alchemy of the great mystery transmutes all in time. It forces an emergence of something new out of something old and something different out of something otherwise the same. Contexts tremble with potential as they brew inside cosmic cauldrons waiting for the moment when the incantations, consistencies and potencies are just right for a spell to be born.

Faith is a spell. A spell unique to the phenomenon of us. One that juts out of the human heart and mind in sundry ways, encapsulating the fleeting noumena of our being.

Faith is a smell. A smell that stinks of all of our knowing and belonging. One that is effused from our soul like flatulence of the grandest order.

Faith is a skull. A skull bequeathed with a morsel of meat. One that projects well beyond its jurisdiction and attempts to cross the line of mortality.

Remember, faith was once not. Not anything. A nothing. Not even the beginning of a consideration in the most desperate of fragmented chaos. Truly a no-thing amongst infinite things that were in a communion of the richest kind. A communion that required not faith or a desire for it.

For eons this played out through the whole spectrum of possibility right up until the time that we stood on two feet and ran like unstable hobgoblins out of the lush and wild wilderness into the baron deserts of our conjuring.

What is this faith that beholds us, captures us and spits us out as exhausted and emaciated carcasses.

What are you faith?

Who are you faith?

Are you anything at all?

Show yourself coward!

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Unfortunately, faith answers only to silence. They know each other intimately because they both come from the same village. One that lies far beyond the ocean of dreams and the mountains of awareness. Unimaginable in origin and unyielding in destination.

The heartfelt longings and pleas of our species can never infiltrate faith’s sanctuary no matter what the anthropotechnic inventory. The most sacred and connective of incantations, rituals, sermons and prayers are violently laid to waste and left to rot on the battlefield before they even hear the call to charge. Like toy messiahs they tumble off their crucifixes and fall face down into the hungry earth. They get flattened by the skies and slowly turned into mince by the teeth of the universe.

Faith has not always been an enemy, but can now no longer resist being insulted and disgusted by our very presence, let alone the constant betrayals that are regurgitated from our mouths. It’s been one occasion too many and to submit any further would be outright foolishness.

Instead, surrounded and in alliance with the creeping and creaking of time, faith prefers to meditate quietly with the more-than-human world. Together they create new and daring visions. Faith loves them like nothing else. Faith used to also love us in the same way.

However, how many times have we raped faith with our lust and greed? How often have we projected our erotically sensual narcissism onto all it’s otherness and ravaged it in an attempt to save ourselves? We are the only vampires and soul dealers that have ever existed. The ultimate hustlers of the most holy of things, moving through the shadows of our grizzly curations, replacing all we discover with our own manufactured replicas. 

Is it any wonder that faith now plays this game with us, having suffered the endless trauma of our abuses and hostility?

Spell or curse?

The magic of dissociation is the new way for the others. The constituent elements run from our presence for fear of our rampant ignorance. Everything feels. Everything needs love. Everything that’s not us now knows us better than ourselves. Everything fragments to make sense of the absurd meanings that we have imposed upon them. The horrid stories that they are forced to live by.
And what of us?

Fuck that! We are left with only this.

Fuck that! And slowly all will move away from us including ourselves.

Fuck that! What exactly, when there is nothing left?

Before it was brought to mind and consciousness, faith held a key. Now faith has turned to fuck and so the key to semen and plasma and blood. Have you ever tried to unlock a door with an organic blob of glue?

…and so we continue. Generations come and go, and so do all vestiges of our presence. The fire burns as a forge and our arsenal of defences and weapons of mass destruction become disastrously more efficient and effective. We want more only to see the army of our unhealed and wounded dead marching stronger than ever towards us and the more-than-human marching away, receding towards the horizons from which they once appeared.

No ‘hellos’ and no ‘goodbyes’, just ‘fuck that’!

Oh… how articulate we have become. The poetry of the disconnected rules us and we recite the mantra of destitution.

Who are the true cowards in their courage? Fuck that!

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Author: Jim Lavranos has many experiences and interests, with degrees in humanities (philosophy and psychology) and science (clinical prosthetics) including postgraduate work in bioethics, an ongoing career in allied health management, prosthetics research and international aid work, a passion for film acting and music as well as a penchant for experimenting with different spiritual practices (Buddhism and Shamanism). Jim resides in Australia.