BUDDHISM

All religions seek a Father who is all-wise and all-powerful, who will guide us, threaten us, condemn us, hurt us or reward us, according to our complete devotion to Him.

He controls everything and knows everything, but he will not tell us everything, insisting instead that we just have faith in Him, so that He eternally remains in charge, obeyed, feared and worshipped.

What a remarkable position to be in! And He did not invent the position…we did.

Buddhism, on the other hand, insists that there is no such infinite, all-powerful, all-knowing, controlling Father - there is only us, as long as we live. And we are part of an infinite energy of life existence, which is constantly changing. And we are all exactly equal, except in how our societies, our parents, and we ourselves affect our temporal existence.

This is a huge, unacceptable threat to those who seek power and dominance and worship, because it means that we, all of us, are them, and they are us. And nothing they can do to us can ever change that infinite equality of uncontrollable impermanence.

Therefore, they – political, economic, military, religious, education, medical, scientific, philosophical, cultural, and family leaders – must subjugate us, because they cannot exist in their own constructs of life if we exist independently and freely.

Buddhism is the only healthy, true way of existence, which cannot be co-opted by anyone, not even by those Buddhist leaders who use it for their own non-Buddhist purposes.

While leaders have the power to make us suffer tremendously, to die, they have no power over the true Buddhist spirit of enlightenment. All they can do is destroy things and kill us, and that changes everything and nothing, and still they lose and die.