Killing the Buddha: A Heretic's Bible
Jan 2004 · Simon and Schuster
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About this ebook
From Peter Manseau and Jeff Sharlet comes “the most original and insightful spiritual writing to come out of America since Jack Kerouac first hit the road” (Publishers Weekly).
If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him.
The 9th-century sage Lin Chi gave this advice to one of his monks, admonishing him that this Buddha would only be a reflection of his unexamined beliefs and desires. Peter Manseau and Jeff Sharlet took Lin Chi’s advice to heart and set out on a car trip around America, looking for Buddhas along the road and the people who meet them: prophets in G-strings dancing to pay the rent, storm chasers hunting for meaning in devastating tornados, gangbangers inking God on their bodies as protection from bullets, cross-dressing terrorist angels looking for a place to sing.
Along the way Manseau and Sharlet began to wonder what the traditional scripture they encountered everywhere—in motels, on billboards, up and down the radio dial—would look like remade for today’s world. To find out, they called upon some of today’s most intriguing writers to recast books of the Bible by taking them apart, blowing them up with ink and paper.
Rick Moody recasts Jonah as a modern-day gay Jewish man living in Queens. A.L. Kennedy meditates on the absurdity of Genesis. In Samuel, April Reynolds visits a man of tremendous vision in Harlem. Peter Trachtenberg unravels the Gordian logic of Job by way of the Borscht Belt. Haven Kimmel dives into Revelation and comes out in a swoon. Woven through these divine books are Manseau and Sharlet’s dispatches from the road, their Psalms of the people.
What emerges from this work of calling is not an attack on any religion, but a many-colored, positively riveting look at the facets of true belief. Together these curious minds tell the strange, funny, sad, and true story of religion in America for the spiritual seeker in all of us: A Heretic’s Bible.
If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him.
The 9th-century sage Lin Chi gave this advice to one of his monks, admonishing him that this Buddha would only be a reflection of his unexamined beliefs and desires. Peter Manseau and Jeff Sharlet took Lin Chi’s advice to heart and set out on a car trip around America, looking for Buddhas along the road and the people who meet them: prophets in G-strings dancing to pay the rent, storm chasers hunting for meaning in devastating tornados, gangbangers inking God on their bodies as protection from bullets, cross-dressing terrorist angels looking for a place to sing.
Along the way Manseau and Sharlet began to wonder what the traditional scripture they encountered everywhere—in motels, on billboards, up and down the radio dial—would look like remade for today’s world. To find out, they called upon some of today’s most intriguing writers to recast books of the Bible by taking them apart, blowing them up with ink and paper.
Rick Moody recasts Jonah as a modern-day gay Jewish man living in Queens. A.L. Kennedy meditates on the absurdity of Genesis. In Samuel, April Reynolds visits a man of tremendous vision in Harlem. Peter Trachtenberg unravels the Gordian logic of Job by way of the Borscht Belt. Haven Kimmel dives into Revelation and comes out in a swoon. Woven through these divine books are Manseau and Sharlet’s dispatches from the road, their Psalms of the people.
What emerges from this work of calling is not an attack on any religion, but a many-colored, positively riveting look at the facets of true belief. Together these curious minds tell the strange, funny, sad, and true story of religion in America for the spiritual seeker in all of us: A Heretic’s Bible.
Ratings and reviews
5.0
2 reviews
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May 20, 2016
A new way to look at religion. Smart and fun, good interesting book. Recommended
1 person found this review helpful
About the author
Peter Manseau is the author of Vows and coauthor of Killing the Buddha. His writing has also appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post, and on National Public Radio's All Things Considered. A founding editor of the award-winning webzine KillingTheBuddha.com, he is now the editor of Search, The Magazine of Science, Religion, and Culture. He lives with his wife and two daughters in Washington, DC, where he studies religion and teaches writing at Georgetown University.
Jeff Sharlet has written for numerous national and regional publications, and is a senior writer at The Chronicle of Higher Education. His articles have been featured in Slate, Arts & Letters Daily, Arts Journal, and the Armenian National Reporter, and has written for Salon, Feed, Word, Ms., Forward, Jewish Quarterly (UK), and Baffler. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Jeff Sharlet has written for numerous national and regional publications, and is a senior writer at The Chronicle of Higher Education. His articles have been featured in Slate, Arts & Letters Daily, Arts Journal, and the Armenian National Reporter, and has written for Salon, Feed, Word, Ms., Forward, Jewish Quarterly (UK), and Baffler. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.
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