How to win the cosmic war on Christmas

"... the only way to win a cosmic war is to refuse to fight in one."
--Reza Aslan


Fig. 1 Season's Greetings, Earthlings

At Thanksgiving dinner this year, my uncle made a curious observation about my aunt's shopping behavior. She, my little cousin and my grandma have made it a tradition to wake up at 3 am every Black Friday and rush off to a major mall to take advantage of the bajillions of holiday doorbuster deals that surface every year right after Thanksgiving. I thought it was a harmless tradition, giving those three some time together doing what a large percentage of folks do this time of year. Nothing special. But my uncle mentioned that my aunt would buy one or two of that year's "hot" and "hard-to-find" item for the sole purpose of bragging rights, then return it a few days later. She did it to prove that she had the shopping skillz to grab a certain DVD or toy before anyone else, then get a refund after the stampede of shoppers was over.

I said to my aunt, "You know there are desperate people who would probably commit a hate crime against you for doing that."

She said, "I know!" and laughed.

Fig. 2 The Cathedral of Shopping: The Mall of America

Earlier, while waiting for the turkey to be sliced, I was in my cousin's room, assisting her with decorating some black t-shirts with fabric paint and glitter. She had three of them, each with their names on the back and "Black Friday 09" plastered across the front. They claimed that they all wore the same thing so it was easier for them to find each other if they got lost in the "running of the crazed consumers." I thought it was fairly practical at the time, but in light of my uncle's comments, I saw this Black Friday activity for what it truly was: a sport. They had uniforms and a healthy sense of competition. Well, maybe not so healthy. Shopping for Christmas has become a full-contact sport requiring a certain level of cynicism and defiance with a full-throttle ego boost that accompanies success.

I love my aunt, cousins and grandma dearly, and I'm certainly not judging them for commiting a mild offense against other early bird wacko types who place way too much value on obtaining half a dozen Zhu Zhu robotic hamsters, but seriously... is this the real problem with Christmas?

Fig. 3 Worship the almighty Flying Christmas Presents

The mainstream media outlets (and Stephen Colbert) have been reporting on the so-called "War on Christmas" for years. They focus mainly on Wal-Mart greeters' usage of "Happy Holidays" over "Merry Christmas" and overly PC people shoe-horning in holiday wishes that include Chanukah, Kwanzaa, Eid, Festivus, etc. into their holiday office parties and gift-giving activites. Because God forbid we respect all the less-than-overcommercialized sacred festivals of other religious traditions celebrated by citizens of this country. This hyped-up paranoia about Christmas supposedly getting usurped by other holidays is patently absurd, of course, since the real threat to Christmas is the deep-seated materialism that surrounds it. The true meaning of Christmas, in my opinion, is not at war with outside aggresors, but from within.

Yes, this argument has been raised as well, and by the very same people who bring up the anti-PC argument. I only invoke the argument because as a Buddhist convert, I've had to recently reinterpret my reasons for my continued observance of many holidays, as well as summon a mission statement regarding my observance of Hanukkah, Diwali, Passover, Samhain, Holi, Yom Kippur, etc. in an effort to further my multipraying quest.

Fig. 4 Jon can't believe dreidels can't compete with Santa Claus

I could have woken up one day and played the "I'm not Christian" card and declared that I didn't have to participate in anything that wasn't related to my new spiritual path. Hey, it would save me a shitload of cash and headaches every year, wouldn't it? I could have sat back and amused myself by anthropoligically analyzing all the fun out of these gauntlets people perrenially embark upon in order to please their money gods. It would have been too easy to just excise myself from the holiday fray and meditate on the futility of materialism.

The year I converted myself, that first year I had to experience Christmas without the churchgoing obligations or the latent guilt of not really believing the nativity story and how to reconcile that with the obsession over Santa Claus and elves and fruitcake and inflatable lawn decorations and credit card debt, I was free. I was free to understand.

I understood for the first time how other religions effected Christmas. And despite what I've heard from a particular cynic who shall remain anonymous, it's not a bad thing that Christianity has been touched by religions that came before it. Jesus wasn't born in December, but more likely around the time Jews celebrate Sukkot in the fall. Or perhaps in the spring. Christians today celebrate in winter because that's when pagans celebrate Yule and Saturnalia and other winter festivals, and Emperor Constantine cleverly moved the date to make it easier for pagan converts such as himself. Santa Claus is derived from the Turkish Saint Nicholas and the popular back story of his life is drawn from Germanic folk traditions. Dragging an evergreen tree into your house and lighting it up to remind you that life persists through the bitter winter? How totally pagan of you!


Fig. 5 Jesus wishes he were born on Christmas

Christmas is not "diluted" by these non-Christian influences, but enhanced. It has been enriched by the numerous converts through its history, converts who brought their own flavors to the big melting pot of Christmas. Gift-giving, baking, decorating, visiting with family, and parties have basically become secular activities in December, and this captures the distinctly American influence on Christmas: sharing it with everyone, no matter the race or creed. With this in mind, it's difficult to put stock in the paranoia, the superficial culture war borne out of fear and ethnocentricism. The problem the warriors for Christmas have is with themselves, and unable to appreciate or recognize the beauty of the Christmas collage, they lapse into self-loathing without even knowing it.

Fig. 6 Who's to say the Festivus Pole doesn't enhance Christmas?

I now fully understand what Christmastime means to me: family gatherings, seeing far-flung friends, creating homemade gifts, lighting my menorah, baking Martha Stewart cookies with my sister, watching holiday classics like National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, Lord of the Rings, and Doctor Zhivago, playing A Colbert Christmas music on an endless loop, enjoying the laughably mild winters of Florida, but still freezing my ass off to see the Geminid meteor shower on a clear cold night.

If Christmas to you means a false sense of "purity" over a rich medley, or if it means casting aside all other holidays in an effort to "preserve" a homogeneous past that never existed, then you're participating in a cosmic war that cannot be won by anyone involved.

I choose not to participate in the cosmic war. I choose to participate in Christmas. It's the more Buddhist thing to do. It's the more American thing to do. It's the human thing to do.

Fig. 7 Totally Kosher.

Dashboard Buddha: Dune Edition

The universality factor is not one limited to Buddhism. Followers of every religion see aspects or images of their faith in everyday situations, culture, literature, and sometimes even tortillas and cinnamon buns. These “sightings” often end up telling us more about ourselves than about the religion, i.e. seeing the beauty of a blooming flower as evidence of a supreme being’s love of beauty or that we truly bask in the wonder that God would take time out of his busy daily schedule to manipulate the heating elements in toasters to create vaguely Jesus-shaped burn marks on bread.

But what is most telling about such visions is that we want to believe. We want to believe that the words of our gospels, hymns, pujas, mantras, and prayers apply to our lives in a fundamental and thinly veiled manner. This is natural and to be expected if we are ever going to push ourselves through toward heaven or enlightenment. Unfortunately, this expectation has to potential to limit our spiritual vision. If we only look for what is obvious as a sign that we are on the right track, we miss out on the infinite subtleties of the Universe. An outsider may not understand the spiritual significance of a Native American peyote ritual or a sweat house, simply because Jesus didn’t talk about it. Or someone may not understand the simple antiquated existence of Mennonites because they live in a metropolis and can’t imagine not having a Facebook account.

In my Dashboard Buddha entries, I will chronicle my attempts to lay the template of my beliefs over commonplace things. It could be any number of sci-fi fandoms, a weekend activity, a movie, a book, a TV show, or a single act of a person that struck me as an enlightened thing to do. I’ll make a concerted effort to turn my spiritual gaze toward the ubiquitous and the unintentionally profound. As George Clooney once said in O Brother, Where Art Thou?, I will “see the lilies of the goddamned field.”

I christen this column with a piece about that most famously misunderstood and deeply geeky of sci-fi adventures: Dune.

I must not fear.


Fear is the mind-killer.


Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.


I will face my fear.


I will permit it to pass over me and through me.


And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.

Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.


Only I will remain.

--Bene Gesserit Litany Against Fear, "Dune," Frank Herbert

Fig. 1 You know you've made it when you're immortalized in Lego

I’m probably one of the few people who saw the original 1984 David Lynch film version of Dune and was positively mesmerized instead of utterly dismayed. I only saw it because I had been watching Twin Peaks re-runs and had a crush on Kyle MacLachlan and I did what any self-respecting teenage girl does when she has an actor infatuation: I watched everything I could find no matter the known quality or lack thereof. What resulted was affection more powerful than that between a girl and her Hollywood boyfriend. The world of Dune had been unleashed upon my impressionable, youthful sci-fi nerd brain and I was dutifully impressed.

When my dad told me I should read the book I was wholly gobsmacked. “There’s a book?! I must read this book!”

Soon after I started reading Dune, I had the privilege to be retroactively disappointed in David Lynch’s movie. This is the complete opposite experience for most people who love Dune. I believe my example proves more the undeniable genius of Frank Herbert than any backwardness on my part.

Dune, which is richly saturated in all manner of religious allusions, has become an exceptionally abundant goldmine for me. The flakes of Buddhism are shiny and plain to see.

At the beginning of the novel, Paul Atreides, the son of the Duke of Caladan, must undergo a special test. It’s a test that will help determine if he is the Kwisatz Haderach—a prophesied messiah in the “Duniverse” who is said to have the power to bridge time and space and inherit the memories of all his ancestors. The test, which involves placing your hand into a black box and feeling it burn with incredible unbearable pain, is designed to test one’s ability to see through fear, and therefore determine your human-ness (as opposed to “a machine created in the likeness of the human mind”—the ultimate sin). The box itself is nothing more than a box, but through “nerve induction,” you are made to believe that your hand is burning up inside.

Fig. 2 Walk without rhythm, you won't attract the Worm

During the test, Paul repeats the Litany Against Fear over and over in his mind and passes the test, never jerking his hand out of the box because he realizes that his fear is unfounded. He is the first male in history to pass this test, which makes the Bene Gesserit suspect that he is the Kwisatz Haderach.

The fear Paul experiences is just an altered perception of reality. Buddhism suggests that all of reality is perception. The key concept of the Diamond Sutra—so-called because it cuts through illusion as sharply as a diamond—is that nothing is what it seems.

Fig. 3 The Diamond Sutra is the Buddha's best friend

The Diamond Sutra invokes the example of a rose. What is a “rose?” It’s made up of thorns, petals, a stem, water, chlorophyll, some perfume. But each of these things alone is not a “rose.” That object we call “rose” is actually an amalgam of parts that constitute a “rose.” Just as we are not fully ourselves without our body parts and a soul or an ego and the people who surround us and call us by our name, a “person” is a combination of things. Nothing, except perhaps subatomic particles—and we can’t even be sure of that—is independent of other things.

We meditate upon this and discover a simple, yet weighty philosophical equation: a “rose” is a “rose” because it is not a “rose.” That’s Buddhist math for you.


Fig. 4 Kyle MacLachlan IS the Messiah because he is NOT the messiah... especially if he can't beat up Sting

A through-line theme of Dune is that the mahdi “Messiah” or “God-Emperor” involved is not simply a messiah or a god-emperor. Frank Herbert writes of “a world being the sum of many things.” The prescience and “other memory” of all the messiah’s past ancestors makes the messiah everything and everyone, dependent on everything and everyone. Muad’dib is Muad’dib because he is not Muad’Dib.

Muad’Dib, being the wise and prophetic man he is, would have agreed with Buddha implicitly: “There exists no separation between gods and men, one blends softly casual into the other.”

The preceding essay is in no way exhaustive of Dune’s spiritual ore. I promise it will surface again and again in the future, like a tea leaf stirring around and around, up and down in a hot teapot. Mmm spice tea...

Fig. 4 Dune in-joke du jour

Jesus Is Just Alright With Me

“And though I am a committed Christian, I believe that everyone has the right to their own religion, be you Hindu, Jewish or Muslim. I believe there are infinite paths to accepting Jesus Christ as your personal savior.” 
--Stephen Colbert

Fig. 1 Jesus: the best first round draft pick for running back

Somehow, in one of my random best-friends-only college era gatherings, someone came up with the placeholder moniker “Jebus Crisp” for use as a mild curse, and it stuck pretty permanently in my mind (this is me not taking the Lord’s name in vain). Oddly enough, several years after that memorable occasion, Homer Simpson yelled “I can’t be a missionary! I don’t believe in Jebus!” Proof positive of that collective human mind field Deepak Chopra’s so hot about.

Sometime after my Buddhist revelation, someone once asked me what I think about Jesus.

"Jesus is cool," I thought. "He's wise and good and genuine. I have no beef with Jesus."

I also know I prefer Willem Dafoe Jesus over James Caviezel Jesus. Or "Imma only make a cameo in Ben Hur" Jesus. That's just lazy.

Fig. 2 The Last Temptation of Scorsese

I love Jesus more now than I ever did as a Christian. Maybe that’s my fault, since I know plenty of people can love Jesus and be Christians at the same time. It’s probably meant to be that way, actually. Some people’s boats float better in different liquids.

Still, I’m all for listening to hippie types. He told off the authorities and chilled out with prostitutes and gave outdoor “God is love” sit-ins on grassy hills. Jesus had the long hair, threadbare clothes, was always wearing Birkenstocks and bumming food off of people while fighting with his father. “Dad, I’m gonna die for these people whether you like it or not!” I believe is what he said while he was dragging the cross through those thirteen stations.

Jesus is the ultimate treehugger. Don’t tell Greenpeace about that one time he cursed a fig tree for not bearing fruit and it shriveled into a barren twig.

“I curse you for not bearing me any fruit!” *poof*

His apostles all trade looks, then one asks, “Dude, what did you do that for?”

*cough* “Well, umm… Anything is possible when you believe in God!”

Fig. 3 Jesus caused the first Fig Newton shortage in history

Even Buddhists squash ants in forgetful moments, so no one is about to fault the Savior of a third of this planet’s population for having a black thumb. The rest of his hand could heal water of its non-wineness, which, understandably got him invited to a lot of parties.

Fast forward a couple thousand years and he’s still on the top of the A-list, but he’s one of those people who has so many friends from so many walks of life that some of them can’t be in the same denomination together.

This makes for sometimes awkward housewarming shindigs. The Baptists roll their eyes at the Catholics for paying too much attention to the Virgin Mary. Fundamentalists sneer at the Episcopalians for bringing that gay guy into the clergy. Methodists stare at the token Jehovah’s Witness who stands in a corner and tells himself that everyone else is just jealous because he doesn’t have to go into debt every December buying Christmas presents. But even the Witness is surprised when a Mormon shows up and most everybody is pretty sure no one sent him an invite.

No matter what the party, some people tend to forget that Jesus sends everyone an invite.

Fig. 4 Jesus loves viniculture

In Acts 10:34-35, Peter says “I see very clearly that the Jews are not God’s only favorites! In every nation he has those who worship him and do good deeds and are acceptable to him.” I also recall some stuff about Jesus having sheep that are not of his fold, and that they will hear his voice (John 10:14-16.) Jesus knew God spoke to people outside the Euphrates River Valley. It wouldn’t make sense not to somehow clue in the rest of your creation, after all. Talk about lazy.

This is the Jesus I love. The Jesus who informs a Christianity of the red letters, not the accusatory finger. The Jesus of the healing hand, not the fist and the sword. Buddy Jesus from Kevin Smith’s Dogma. The smiling, thumbs-up Jesus who walks and talks with you.

Fig. 5 Jesus loves you, man!

Jesus, like all spiritual figures, is a Rorschach test. In my eyes, the inkblot represents a man of revolutionary compassion who reaches out to the impoverished, condemned and criminalized people of the world, then lifts them up with all the strength they already possessed within themselves. The strength of God. The strength of the Universe. The strength of human kind.

Hollywood goes back to Arabia?

"The desert is an ocean in which no oar is dipped."
--Peter O'Toole as T.E. Lawrence in "Lawrence of Arabia" (1962)


Fig. 1 Peter O'Toole & Omar Sharif... be still my throbbing heart!

Just a few weeks ago, while seriously enjoying some frozen custard at Rita’s with my parents, we were discussing our favorite epic movies and biopics. We raved about how much we loved Kingdom of Heaven (the Director’s Cut, of course) and my all-time personal favorite, Lawrence of Arabia. We somehow landed on the absurd controversy of the Darwin biopic, Creation, which is currently having difficulty finding a distributor in the U.S., to the chagrin of intelligent Americans everywhere. Perhaps some people prefer the adventures of Alfred Wallace in Indonesia over Charles’ pedestrian Galapagos research? Perhaps I give some people too much credit.

 
Fig. 2 & 3 What do Americans have against Paul Bettany's career? Come on.

Intellectual embarrassment aside, immediately upon hitting this subject, I thought of other historical figures I’d love to see portrayed on the silver screen: Irving Thalberg, Einstein, Buster Keaton, Queen Hatshepsut, etc. But the first thing that came out of my mouth was: “Too bad we can’t portray the Prophet Muhammad because he had an absolutely riveting life story.”

My parents, being curious individuals, asked that I give them a summary. I tried my best to wrap it up in the fifteen minutes it took to drive home from the ice cream shop. I’ve read a dozen books on Islam and Middle East politics in the last three years, so fifteen minutes was easy to fill, but it did the subject little justice. It is a story better suited for books and, ideally, some cinema-oriented treatment.

This week, several of my usual Twitter news feeds lit up with commentary on the news that not one but two bona fide Hollywood biopics of the Prophet Muhammad are in the works. One is supposed to be a remake of The Message(1976), and the other will be backed by epic producer extraordinaire Barrie Osborne of Lord of the Rings/The Matrix fame. As a student of all religions, I am excited to hear such a development. As a student of Islam, I am cautiously optimistic.

Fig. 4 I can't wait to see who Andy Serkis will play. A CG camel, perhaps?

The restriction in Islamic culture of not portraying the Prophet is understandable, given the ancient Arab tendency to revere physical idols and imagery. This was the environment the Prophet was born into, and he had to find many ways to distinguish his revealed religion from the others surrounding him in Mecca at the time. He never claimed divinity, only prophecy, and didn’t want to be treated like a god. As a result, traditional Islamic art and architecture has favored expressing the beauty of God through intricate geometric designs and exquisite calligraphy often seen in mosques and textiles. The focus is on the written script of the Qur’an—the words of the Prophet—and grand physical expressions of the glory of God.

 
Fig. 6 Inside the Sheikh Lotf Allah mosque in Isfahan, Iran.


Fig. 7 Artisans decorating the kiswah covering for the holy Kaaba in Mecca

The filmmakers promise not to show the Prophet onscreen or even use his voice as a measure of respect toward the Islamic boundaries. I know from hours of Lord of the Rings Special Edition DVD extras that Barrie Osborne is a visionary guy, and a producer who respects the original material he uses to tell a story, so I’m inclined to trust his involvement in his biopic project. I’m also anticipating the novel tactics and plot devices they will have to conjure up in order to tackle this influential man’s story without ever actually affording themselves a single cameo appearance. Here’s hoping that a lot of research and respect goes into these film projects, and that the limitations provide the same creative inspiration to them as it has for Muslim artists throughout history.