As anybody with knowledge of world religions knows, the creed and call to faith of Islam is:
“There is no god but Allah, and Muhammed is his prophet.”
My riff on this is:
“There is no god, and I am his prophet.”
From the East, Buddhism has, beginning with the early 1800s, exerted a powerful pull on many Western minds. Often accepted not just uncritically, but stripped out piecemeal, the result has been things like New Ageism.
The core tenet of Buddhism is that the idea of a self is nothing but an illusion from which one must detach to avoid endless reincarnations. Well, there’s one sure-fire road to self-detachment, hence this riff:
“The only good Buddha is a dead Buddha.”
Speaking of that, why don’t Buddhists join sky-clad Jains in voluntary suicide, whether slow or quick?
2 comments:
I don't think you are the first one to come up with that quote.
http://books.google.com/books?id=p4iFh9QKv-AC&pg=PT48&lpg=PT48&dq=%22there+is+no+god+and+i+am+his+prophet%22+meaning&source=web&ots=0NEDqI7ZuL&sig=Vf3PBkc49vcjzr5_LiHiUrXlxqI
Well, the author of that book didn't make the comment as a direct riff on Islam's profession of faith, though.
And, he used it to try to claim that atheists actually believe in a god more than anybody else, which is absurd.
So, with those caveats, I'll stand by what I said about the quote.
If you're talking about the "only good Buddha" quote, I don't claim to be first with that, by any means.
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