Killing the Buddha: A Heretic's Bible

A wicked and wonderful blend of beliefs and doubts, accounts of freaks, saints, sinners, holy men ( & ladies!) and con artists. The first chapter -- Genesis, of course -- is slow going, but don't skip it if you want some serious ideas about what religion IS, from the perspective of one who has fallen away. From there the book moves like a roller coaster, up and down between journalistic sections about a road trip Peter Manseau and Jeff Sharlett took around to the far corners of faith, and stories by novelists. Not up and down in the sense of good and bad, but up and down in the sense of a ride with thrills and heights and scares. Killing the Buddha is a scary book, although don't let the title throw you -- it's Buddhist itself, in its way. It's scary because it cuts so close to the bone, because it leaves no belief unscorched. Not an innocent book, but a brilliant one.

I saw the authors of this read last night in Portland. I liked them as readers, and they seemed like good folks, so I went home started reading, and except for some sleep, I haven't been able to put it down since. Manseau and Sharlet set out like pilgrims without a destination and returned with this tale of amazing sights (a Buddhist food fight, "prophets in pasties," a gathering of military pagans) and profound insights about the nature of belief they manage to relay without preaching. This ought be enough, but interspersed with scenes from their journey, they have included 13 chapters of new "scripture," books of the bible re-written by novelists like A.L. Kennedy and Francine Prose. I was disappointed by a couple of them, but mostly they are are beautiful, worth a book themselves. And yet what makes this book something of a miracle is that this interweaving of voices seems so seamless. Manseau & Sharlet say in the introduction their aim was "cacophony," but in that they failed -- there's a wonderful harmony to the way all the pieces of this story of what Americans believe flow together. I have two more chapters to go, but "the spirit moved me" to recommend this book now to "heretics" and true believers and the rest of you who are like me, book lovers who belong to the church of great writing and terrific stories..

I'm not usually interested in explicitly spiritual or religious writing, but I loved this book, perhaps because it's unlike anything that's usually described by the impoverished term "spiritual" or shelved in the religion section in your local bookstore. The stories in this book range from precise yet emotionally intense reportage, to challenging essays on theology, to absorbing fiction, to sensual, stream-of-consciousness prose. I particularly loved the contributions of Eileen Myles, Darcey Steinke, and April Reynolds. Manseau and Sharlet's treatment of contemporary beliefs especially impressed me--they manage to be both empathetic with the faithful they encounter, yet also sensitive to what is strange, raw or just plain hilarious about their belief systems. Presenting a contemporary pagan festival alongside meditations on the books of the Old Testament allows Sharlet and Manseau to avoid the pseudo-objectivity of social science and the hysteria of political journalism on religion in order to show belief in action--arbitrary, contradictory, and still meaningful.

"Mortal, eat this scroll" is how the book begins, and whether you mean to or not, you will. Perhaps figuratively, perhaps literally (I haven't yet decided what to make for dinner tonight). Guided by skepticiscm and spiritual wanderlust, Sharlet and Manseau lead a chorus of talented writers in creating a work that is beautiful, dangerous, and above all - nourishing.By no means a feel-good fuzzy of new-age spirituality, each book of scripture asks those questions that make any good religious skeptic sleep with the night light on. In response, each book of psalms brings forward a look at the funny, strange, sad, and sincere quest that is America in search of the divine. Together the voices that emerge - those of the authors, their subjects, and the reader - create a sound that is new and truly original, authentic and unapologetic.For myself, a life-long skeptic of all religions, this is the only bible I've ever felt inclined to call my own.

I picked this up because I'm a Rick Moody fan and he wrote this "heretic's bible"'s "Book of Jonah." It's as good as I hoped -- maybe one of his best stories -- and alone worth the price of the book, but the whole thing turned out to be a delicious surprise, almost like a great novel, even though the chapters by outside writers like Moody trade off with chapters by the two main authors, Manseau and Sharlet. Their chapters are called "psalms," and even though these psalms are nonfiction journalism, they're like poems describing all the fascinating ways people love god or hate him or her or check the box marked "other." Their trip across America, from a church near Ground Zero not long after September 11th to rural strip club where all the strippers are religious prophets is inspiring, and the other writers they bring in to join them are provocative. My favorite is Moody's, but don't miss any of them. I'm not religious, but Killing the Buddha makes me believe in the power of stories.