by Jeff Sharlet and Peter Manseau
The Free Press
Review by Jeremy Hinsdale
KILLING THE BUDDHA takes its name from a line attributed to the ninth-century Buddhist master Lin Chi. In the tale, Lin Chi is approached by an ecstatic monk who claims he has just encountered the Buddha himself while out on a leisurely stroll. Implicit in the monk's holy paparazzi moment is the notion that he has simultaneously achieved nirvana. He's been authorized to skip the long, dull tunnel of religious practice and can proceed directly to the big payoff. Lin Chi, unimpressed, waits a beat, smacks the monk flush across the face, then tosses him a red-hot coal of advice: "If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him."Lin Chi's stinging admonition is meant to point out the dangers of thinking you have found The Answer. What appears to be Truth with a capital T, whether in the guise of a sublime oasis or a fiery revelation, is likely nothing more than a mirage projected by your own murky thoughts and desires.
With Lin Chi's words as their guiding principle, Jeff Sharlet and Peter Manseau, authors of KILLING THE BUDDHA and masters of the indie webzine of the same name, set out to expose, circumnavigate, and occasionally tickle the underbelly of the varieties of religious experience to be found in America at the dawn of the twenty-first century. Their approach is both novel and peripatetic. The chapters of the book alternate between reworkings of selected books of the Bible commissioned from a host of talented writers (Exodus according to novelist Francine Prose, Jonah by Rick Moody) and the authors' own postcards sent back from a madcap, spiritually guided road trip across the United States which began shortly after the Twin Towers fell.
In Henderson, North Carolina, they meet the holy-rolling W. F. Buddy Faucette and the gun-toting transvestite "Isshizean Zean," who decided to drop in on his sermon and startle his flock one Sunday morning. A bit farther down the road, in Broward County, Florida, the intrepid authors find an entire congregation praying for the blood and power of "Victory Day," a glorious occasion celebrating a death sentence for an accused murderer. Soon Manseau and Sharlet are partying with prophetic strippers, East L.A. gang members who tattoo religious icons on their flesh to protect them, and storm chasers who search for the divine on the wind-swept prairies of Tornado Alley. They even get naked and dance around a bonfire with a pack of unruly pagans, witches, and assorted "troll people" in the heartland of Kansas.
The thirteen biblical chapters of KILLING THE BUDDHA, markedly different in tone from the irreverent road psalms, are comprised of both nonfictional and fictional interpretations of books from the Old and New Testaments. Some authors use the personal essay to explore themes found in the original Bible stories, such as performance artist lê thi diem thúy's meditation on Ruth as seen through the lens of her mother's death. For the academically inclined, there are more theological treatises, albeit pitched in the offbeat key that characterizes the book. Scottish novelist A. L. Kennedy's chapter on Genesis, for example, posits that the angst of possessing a free will is proof of God's dark sense of humor, and Peter Trachtenberg's exploration of the Book of Job uses Venn diagrams -- groups of circles that overlap and intersect, named for the English cleric John Venn (1834-1923) -- to explain the relationship between God and suffering.
