Skip to main content

Jesus v. the Buddha

As I was watching the Buddha special on Lifetime, (or whatever crap station I had on last night,)  it occurred to me that a face off with Jesus might be cool. A gentle adversarial give and take of spiritual ideas that would allow viewers to make  informed decisions concerning their religious choices  – a free, though sponsored, marketplace of an idea, filmed live in the belly of the moneychangers, for a small fee.

I see it in as a point-counterpoint, a real big time Hollywood production, because, really, what’s the true of anything if it’s not backed up by the muscle and weight of pretty words and pictures? How can you know what to think if you don’t have two poles of thought to swing from?

To increase the drama, and boost the ratings, I see it as a two-parter – the first a theoretical debate, with flashbacks and CGI reenactments. The second a show chock-a-block full of practical miracles – Jesus walking on water, turning water to beer, (can you say “product placement”,) and the leper thing, if one could be found at a reasonable price.

And the Buddha could just have flowers fall from the false ceiling as he sits and doesn't think hard.

I see a large audience; with each guest holding a large foam thumb they will use to judge the winner in the very last minute of the show, after the appropriate dramatic pauses and endless Nike commercials.

I would use that fellow who plays Gregory House on the TV series, “House,” to be the master of ceremonies – he bias doesn’t seem to be focused in any particular direction and he has the outward appearance of being smart.

Before each two-hour show, I would have a four-hour pre-show that consisted of a panel of talking heads, with hands. The panel could consist of any three trendy or popular stars, but hopefully they would all fit the stereotypes of implied conduct that each and every individual member of the great masses could identify with.

I’m thinking: Sandra Day O’Conner, Paula Abdul and Pee Wee Herman.

(Sandra is unemployed and would give the moderate right a well deserved voice. Paula is unemployed, yet still has expressive, though tremulous, hands for the wringing. Pee Wee is unemployed, but is trying to make a well-deserved comeback, and would supply the much needed comic relief.)

After the shows, I would have a two-hour wrap up of what it all means to our future, by future I mean Fortress America. Patrick Jane, from that wonderful show, “Mentalist,” could discuss with Mr. House what Jesus and the Buddha meant in their choosing to use the words they chose to use, and then could evaluate whether or not they made their respective points with enough conviction. I see an old fashioned chalk board being used for the tabulating of points.

I would keep Mohammed out of the show, what with the troubles… though if the show turned out to be a hit and developed into a reality series, who knows?








Comments

This STILL slays me, and I've read it 10 times. Laughing till I'm cryin'

Popular posts from this blog

Explain nothing, except your self

Explain nothing, except your self. I feel like the last of a tribe struggling to keep my identity a secret from the mob, one step ahead at best, reduced to hiding in bushes from the monsters waiting to snag and devour me. Sort of a delicacy and a poison – a non-specific drug that exudes memes instead of hormones and physical highs – subconscious, primitive analog get-off-ness apparently responsible for some weird competitive advantage consolidating over geological time out of our mixed genus ancestors, or maybe Texans. At the same time, I feel like spasmed dots from gods own printer cartridge ejaculated onto the canvas of a great emptiness, the thought of which is expressed in the three-dimensional representation of the position I’m braced into while doing the splatting -- all hologram like but only juicier and used -- like an in and out burger wrapper chewed on by a trashcan opossum. Or better, a goat in a pickup heading for a quinceanera debating Schrödinger with the

Free Willy

“…Some say it's just a part of it We've got to fulfill the book.” B. Marley Before I completely run away from the point, the subject of this essay is free will, or, more accurately, the illusion of free will. It will be interesting to see if free will even comes up laterally over the next few hundred words now that I’ve set it up as a specific goal.  The imp of the perverse makes it a sure thing that I won’t – but that surety might also double back and force  me to stay on point. There are no dogs to pick  in this fight and it’s not a fight,  and if I’m right, none of this is anything but documentation for a litigious god that will never see it. Like quantum mechanics, life is about either time or place, never both, and how we choose to pretty up our choices is neither the point, or even a choice – it’s after the fact punctuation we use to justify and make sense of our ontological messiness.  (Science has proven that we decide things with our body before the brain