The Earrings of God: The absurd among us 9781463243609

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The Earrings of God

Perspectives on Philosophy and Religious Thought 20

Perspectives on Philosophy and Religious Thought (formerly Gorgias Studies in Philosophy and Theology) provides a forum for original scholarship on theological and philosophical issues, promoting dialogue between the wide-ranging fields of religious and logical thought. This series includes studies on both the interaction between different theistic or philosophical traditions and their development in historical perspective.

The Earrings of God

The absurd among us

By

Fortunato Pasqualino Translated and Annotated by

Gabriel Lahood

gp 2021

Gorgias Press LLC, 954 River Road, Piscataway, NJ, 08854, USA www.gorgiaspress.com 2021 Copyright © by Gorgias Press LLC

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise without the prior written permission of Gorgias Press LLC. ‫ܝ‬

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2021

ISBN 978-1-4632-4359-3

ISSN 1940-0020

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A Cataloging-in-Publication Record is available at the Library of Congress. Printed in the United States of America

TABLE OF CONTENTS Preface.................................................................................... vii Acknowledgements ................................................................. xi A Brief Biography of Fortunato Pasqualino ............................ xv Translator’s Introduction........................................................ xix 1. Linguistic ambiguity in the book title requiring interpretation ................................................................. xix 2. Theological and philosophical concepts embedded in the book title and requiring elucidation ................... xx 3. Pasqualino’s intellectual and literary contribution ...... xxiii (a) “Nothing new under the sun”............................. xxiii (b) Pasqualino’s Holistic Search for Meaning in Existential Absurdities ...................................... xxiv (c) Pasqualino’s Literary Style ............................... xxviii 4. Translation Issues ................................................... xxxiii (a) Long Sentences Shortened ................................ xxxiv (b) Vague Terms Explained or Kept ....................... xxxiv (c) Quoting Original Sources vs. Translating Paraphrases ........................................................... xxxv (d) Latin, Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek Terms or Phrases Translated ......................................... xxxvi (e) Word Choice .................................................... xxxvi 5. Commentary Issues............................................... xxxviii (a) Methodology Applied in the Commentary and Notes ........................................................... xxxviii (b) Reference to Authors and Books Identified ....... xxxix (c) Reference to Historic Events Detailed .................... xl (d) Reference to Technical Philosophical and Theological Concepts Explained .......................... xl

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Translation ............................................................................... 1 Prologue............................................................................ 3 Chapter I. The Absurd ....................................................... 4 Chapter II. Fear ............................................................... 13 Chapter III. The Wolf and the Lamb................................. 27 Chapter IV. Heaven ......................................................... 36 Chapter V. The Ascent to the Absolute ............................ 45 Chapter VI. The Parable of Parables ................................ 58 Commentary ........................................................................... 71 Commentary on the Prologue .......................................... 73 Further Food for Thought on the Prologue ................. 74 Commentary on Chapter I: The Absurd............................ 75 Further Food for Thought on Chapter I: The Absurd ... 88 Commentary on Chapter II: Fear .................................... 89 Further Food for Thought on chapter II: Fear ............. 98 Commentary on Chapter III: The Wolf and the Lamb ...... 99 Further Food for Thought on Chapter III: The Wolf and the Lamb.................................................... 106 Commentary on Chapter IV: Heaven ............................. 109 Further Food for Thought on Chapter IV: Heaven ..... 121 Commentary on Chapter V: Ascent to the Absolute....... 123 Further Food for Thought on Chapter V: Ascent to The Absolute..................................................... 135 Commentary on Chapter VI: The Parable of Parables .... 138 Further Food for Thought on Chapter VI: The Parable of Parables ........................................... 153

Notes to Translation and Commentary .................................. 155 Bibliography ......................................................................... 227 Index .................................................................................... 233

PREFACE In this book one will find two complementary but distinct contributions, one by the Italian author, Fortunato Pasqualino, and the other by the translator/commentator. The first author’s contribution is genuinely personal as he addresses, selectively and originally, existential absurdities that have preoccupied ancient to modern thinkers from the East and the West. To these existential absurdities, Pasqualino proposes his remedy with a creative line of reasoning. The contribution of the second author of the present English version of the book consists of the translation and the commentary. Pasqualino’s contribution is creative in his search for meaning to existential absurdities by addressing religious and secular issues using a diversified form of inquiry, philosophical, theological, psychological and historical. He used the divine incarnation story of the Christian faith, which is the most absurd of all absurdities, as the focal case of inquiry that leads human beings to follow the divine example of love, and to perceive human existential absurdities in a new light that reveals a reliable and effective guidance in the midst of life’s confusing absurdities. In addressing the question as to why Jesus, the incarnate Almighty, “aspired to become a slave” wearing the symbolic “earrings” of a loving slavery, Pasqualino dealt with the absurd-sounding theological issue that had led to the redemption of humanity. In addressing the “existential condition and the dilemma in which we struggle,” he dealt with the absurd-sounding philosophical issue of the appearing-to-be completely deterministic existence and the felt-to-be freely willed human and self-guided existence. In order to settle these two issues of what appears to be and what feels to

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be the “existential condition,” we need to open up to, and see the divine love for humanity and the purpose of this redeeming love. Then, one will realize that the expected human response to the divine love should be based on a mutual loving attitude towards God that, in turn, is reflected in the individual’s loving attitude towards oneself and humanity. When divine love and human love are mutual, the existential human condition becomes meaningful, and the existential dilemma becomes not so meaningless. In addressing this theological issue philosophically, Pasqualino reveals himself as an author who is a Christian, a thinker, and a creative literary artist. As a Christian, Pasqualino justifies his faith in Jesus Christ as the archetype of a loving, slave-like but freely chosen obedience to God, the Father. As a thinker, he stimulates the reader’s mind with momentous theological and philosophical issues converging into the related question of whether man can truly make choices in a loving attitude that is inspired by Jesus Christ’s freely chosen and obedient filial love of God, the Father. As a creative literary artist, he displays his word craftsmanship and the magic of his poetic, humoristic, dramatic, and allegoric writing skills. This is why the wealth of the content of the original book was described by the Italian press at the time of its first publication as provocative, almost irreverent, and captivating (Review by Gianni Zavattieri in Vita, June 16, 1996 issue). The contribution of the translator/commentator is twofold. As the translator, Gabriel Lahood reproduced the book as faithfully as expected from Italian into English. He translated word by word, sentence by sentence, and meticulously reproduced the relevant idiomatic, cultural, and emotive nuances. As a commentator, he explained, in notes or the commentary, what needed to be explained, and discussed the Italian author’s expressed or implied thought, adding what may be somehow related and useful to know. Such explanations and discussions are thought-provoking and can provide both the specialist and non-specialist with a better understanding of the book’s message. Lahood, who studied both philosophy and theology, has added explanatory and corroborative details to Pasqualino’s main thesis. He explains and develops, as faithfully as possible, the original book’s thesis and themes, idea by idea, and links bits and pieces of various

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supporting thoughts mentioned or alluded to in the original. His contribution helps the book reach a larger audience of readers. The non-specialist reader of the original Italian text or the English translation may, due to limited knowledge of philosophical or theological concepts, not understand at once all the ideas conveyed or implied. At times, the ideas are interwoven by the logic of association or dissociation, not so much by the standard logic of mathematical deduction or scientific induction. At other times, the cultural information and the philosophical or theological concepts need to be made more explicit and accessible to the average reader. In addition, there is the literary style of the original text which, in order to be as poetic and effective as it is, had on occasion to superficially alter historical events to create a dramatic effect. All these factors justified the translator in providing necessary explanations in the commentary. The extensive notes supply further useful details that could not be included in the body of the text. All such traits of the new version of the book and the potential intellectual and spiritual benefits for the reader make the translation of the book with a commentary a worthwhile undertaking. This is why it may be helpful for the reader to read the commentary on a chapter (or all chapters) before reading the translation. Doing so may help the reader of the translation anticipate Pasqualino’s background thought and better understand the details he addresses. To complete his task successfully, the translator/interpreter used his background in philosophy, theology, literary translation, and foreign languages, plus his considerable teaching and research experience. Such a varied background provided him with the appropriate insight needed to appreciate, and elaborate on, the intricacies of the issues tackled in the original Italian text. More specifically, his special interest in the philosophy of human action and its ethical implications for human behavior makes the subject of the book particularly interesting to him and thus beneficial to the reader as well. Also, his formal education in literary translation and in Teaching English as a Second Language introduced him to the craftsmanship of words and sentences needed to faithfully render the concepts conveyed in the original book. No wonder Pasqualino requested the then-eventual translator to

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undertake the challenging task of translating such a piece of engaging literature. The translator’s knowledge of several languages—including Italian, in which he had appropriate education, teaching and translation experience—facilitated his task of translating concepts, conveying cultural allusions, and matching the meticulously crafted idiomatic expressions of the original. The contribution of both writers will stimulate the minds of the readers through an intellectual and spiritual dialogue between reason and faith with a view to making sense of existential absurdities. However, in order to achieve a successful dialogue, we humans ought to have a pragmatically positive and intellectually humble attitude and to be armed with an open mind that is receptive to the possibility of the miracle-making love. Jesus Christ, the incarnate Almighty, displayed an exemplary love and slavelike obedience by becoming himself the embodied absurd love in action, and dwelt among us to convey the Good News, and offer himself as a sacrificial lamb to redeem sinning humanity and acquire a positive outlook on an existence that appears full of absurdities. In short, The Earrings of God is a book that addresses man’s perennial search for religious and ethical meaning within confusing existential absurdities. Such a search makes the book recommended reading for students of philosophy, theology, and other fields, as well as for the educated general public who are curious to make some sense of the absurdities of life, find direction, and reach peace in their personal and communal lives. Also the relatively simplified technical concepts, wealth of information, and charming literary style make the book not only intellectually and spiritually stimulating but also enjoyable reading.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I wish to thank, first of all, Fortunato Pasqualino for asking me to translate his book, Gli orecchini di Dio, into English. In doing the translation and the related commentary, I had the well-appreciated opportunity to reflect, for my own sake and eventually for the sake of the readers, on the same existential questions that he posed and answered in the book. Besides the fact that the answers, given or suggested, are basically similar to mine, his thought and style are close to mine and only occasionally dissimilar. Luckily for me, I had the chance to meet in Rome, Italy, with Fortunato Pasqualino and his wife Barbara Olson Pasqualino. It was a weekend in mid-summer 2001, when I went to visit them in Rome. It was a pleasurable and beneficial opportunity for me to meet my teacher, Professor Paqualino, who in 1968 had taught me in a course entitled Estetica del Film (Esthetics of the Film) at L’Università Internazionale degli Studi Sociali, in Rome. In order to increase the benefit of my visit to Pasqualino, and improve my ability to translate his book, I arranged, before leaving for Italy, to take a refresher course in Advanced Italian Language and Culture in Florence, Italy. At the same time, it was a good opportunity for me to take a one month summer break from teaching philosophy and religion at the College (now University) of the Bahamas in Nassau, Bahamas. The delay in finishing this book project sooner was mainly due to a rather heavy teaching schedule, expected timely academic research consisting in writing and presenting papers at conferences, and lately offering language service for the U.S. military in the Middle East. Although I am glad that the translation project is now complete, I feel sorry that Fortunato Pasqualino could not live to see the book published

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in English translation. He passed away in Rome on September 14, 2008. I thank the Italian Embassy in Washington, D.C. and its Consulate in New York City for their generous offer of that 2001 summer scholarship to attend a refresher language and culture course in Florence. The course was a useful and well appreciated opportunity to review the Italian grammar, literature, and culture. Being in Florence that summer facilitated my visit to Pasqualino in Rome to review with him passages of my incipient translation. The scholarship offered by the Italian government is now paying off by having a piece of Italian literature translated into English. I thank Barbara Olson Pasqualino, wife of Fortunato Pasqualino, for having reviewed an early draft of my incipient translation after I had discussed it with her husband in Rome. Later, we communicated by correspondence for further clarifications. She is US-born, has taught English, and therefore had a perfect command of English. Her patience and well-appreciated assistance are now noted with gratitude. I am grateful to Dr. Patrick F. Murphy, a colleague in philosophy and a long-time friend, for the many comments he made patiently and meticulously on the philosophical content and the related form of my translation and commentary. His well-appreciated philosophical insight spared me a lot of time in writing and re-writing. I acknowledge the assistance of, now late, Dr. George Simeon (professor of ethnographic linguistics), then colleague and longtime friend, in commenting on later drafts of the manuscript. He is now missed but will be remembered with gratitude. A special acknowledgement is due to Dr. Michael C. Beard, Distinguished Professor of English at the University of North Dakota, and a translator who has made valuable remarks on the translation. His insight both in Italian and Chinese helped me correct mistakes in an earlier draft of my translation, and pointed to Pasqualino’s less than ideal interpretation of some points of Chinese thought. I thank all my professors at the University of Arkansas who trained me in the field of literary translation. In particular, I wish to thank Dr. Adnan Haydar and Dr. John DuVal who were my

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mentors during the writing of my translation projects for the MFA in literary Translation. My improved linguistic sensitivity in translation is largely due to the benefit I got during the Translation Theory Seminar and Translation Practice Workshop both directed by Dr. John DuVal. I also thank my colleagues in those seminars and workshops for their beneficial discussions of translation intricacies in the various languages translated and discussed. I thank the publisher, George Anton Kiraz, and his editing team consisting of Dr. Gemma Tully, marketing, Dr. Tuomas Rasimus, production, and particularly Dr. Brice Jones, acquisitions, for the patience in reviewing and commenting on the manuscript in terms of format, style, and other technical adjustments, and for having it evaluated by specialists. Their patience and encouragement to meet my own deadlines that have been delayed several times, assured a satisfactory completion of the project. Their contribution in making the publication professionally presentable is greatly appreciated. I finally thank my family who had to put up with my seclusion and concern to finish the translation and commentary project without extending unnecessarily the unavoidable family-related delays. My family’s patience and continuous encouragement that I finish the translation project helped relieve me from many family and house-related chores that would have, otherwise, delayed my work even much longer.

A BRIEF BIOGRAPHY OF FORTUNATO PASQUALINO Fortunato Pasqualino was born in 1923 in Butera, Sicily, an Italian island located west of the southern tip of Italy. Due to family financial need, he worked early in his youth but when the opportunity to study became available, he took private lessons, and this is how he finished high school. After having served his country in 1942 as a military during World War II, he attended in 1947 the philosophy department at Catania University in Sicily, where he graduated with the doctoral degree (Laurea) in 1951. He taught in Sardegna a few years before accepting in 1949 the invitation by Carlo Carretto to follow him to Rome. Carretto was at that time President of the Gioventù Italiana di Azione Cattolica (Italian Youth for Catholic Action). In 1955, Pasqualino decided to reside permanently in Rome, where he worked for the Italian Television Station RAI (Radio-Televisione Italiana) as a Production Director. He married in 1966 the USborn Barbara Olson, and had four children: Laura Elizabeth, Linda Maria, Dario Luigi, and Francesco Davide. While in Rome, Pasqualino taught at L’Università Internazionale degli Studi Sociali ProDeo, (The International University for Social Studies ProDeo) as a professor of Philosophy of Entertainment. It was then that the translator of the present book became his student by taking, in 1968, a course in Estetica del Film (Esthetics of the Film). In 1969, Pasqualino founded with his brother Pino a theater company, Teatro di Pupi Siciliani dei Fratelli Pasqualino (Sicilian Puppet Theater of the Pasqualino Brothers), and wrote a play, Abelardo, that earned him the Premio Pescara

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prize. His theater company lasted about thirty years, performing all over Italy. In 2001, UNESCO recognized his literary work for the Puppet Theater as a “masterpiece” of the human intellectual heritage. Pasqualino also contributed to the script of television shows and films, such as the television show Gli Atti Degli Apostoli (The Acts of the Apostles) directed by Roberto Rossellini (1969), and Trionfo, passione e morte del cavaliere della Mancia-Don Chisciotte (Triumph, Passion, and Death of the Horseman of the Mancha – Don Chichotte), which was directed in 1970 by Paolo Gazzara, and the film Durante l’estate (During the Summer), directed by Ermanno Olmi (1971) and shown at the Mostra Internazionale d’Arte Cinematografica de Venezia (International Show of the Cinematographic Art of Venice). In 1975, he received the Teatro Nuovo (New Theater) prize for his Cavallo per la sua maestà (A Horse for His Majesty), and in 1978 he received the Ennio Flaiano prize for his play Socrate Baccante (Socrates the Bacchant) that became a chapter of his published book La danza del filosofo (The Dance of the Philosopher-1992). Lahood translated in 1994 Pasqualino’s two-act play Socrate Baccante (Socrates the Bacchant) along with Avicenna’s Risālat al Qadar-Essay on Destiny into English as his translation projects for the Master of Fine Arts degree in Literary Translation at the University of Arkansas. A copy of this translation was deposited and registered on May 5, 1997 at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC, USA (PAu2-223190). Pasqualino published many books and articles, among which are: his doctoral thesis, La necessità di esprimersi (The Necessity of Expressing Oneself-1953), Diario di un Metafisico (Diary of a Metaphysician-1964), Il Giorno che fui Gesù (1977) that was translated into English by Louise Rosier as The Little Jesus of Sicily (1999). In 1996 he published Gli orecchini di Dio (The Earrings of God), also translated and commented on by Lahood (2021). His last book was: Chiunque tu sia. Con Gesù a passo d’asino (Whoever You Are. With Jesus at the Pace of a Donkey-2005). He also contributed articles for various newspapers, including Avvenire (Future), L’Osservatore Romano (The Roman Observer), Famiglia Cristiana (Christian Family), and academic as well as cultural journals such

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as Studi Cattolici (Catholic Studies), and La Fiera Letteraria (The Literary Fair). Pasqualino passed away in Rome on September 14, 2008.

TRANSLATOR’S INTRODUCTION The book title, “The Earrings of God,” raises two distinct though related issues, one regarding the literary form of the title and the other regarding the philosophical and theological content of the absurd image of God wearing earrings. While the ambiguity in the form involves the literal and symbolic meanings of the term ‘earrings,’ the absurd content refers to the inconsistent claim that God, a supernatural, that is non-material, Being, wears material earrings, thus raising a philosophical issue. The confusing literal meaning of the title is a minor issue but involves a pleasant literary device used to catch the attention of the reader and justify the supplied interpretative subtitle “The absurd among us.” As for the symbolic meaning of the image of wearing earrings, it involves a major theoretical claim that will stimulate the philosophical appetite of the reader interested in learning about existential absurdities and how to deal with them in a constructive manner.

1. LINGUISTIC AMBIGUITY IN THE BOOK TITLE REQUIRING INTERPRETATION

In order to better appreciate the intended linguistic ambiguity of the title, one may compare two structurally similar phrases such as “The Earrings of God” and “The earrings of Mary.” The latter phrase, conveying a familiar image and thus is more easily understood than the first, can be analyzed to show the extent of the ambiguity of the first. In asking Mary “Whose earrings are you wearing?” Mary may say: “They’re mine,” which means that they are “the earrings of Mary, and they belong to her.” However, in asking Mary the same question on another occasion, she may say “This time, they’re the

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earrings of my mother but I’m wearing them.” While in the first case the earrings belong to Mary; in the latter case the earrings that Mary was wearing didn’t originally belong to her. Instead, they belonged to another person who gave or loaned them to her. In both cases, however, one may talk ambiguously about “The earrings of Mary.” Next, if we consider that the one who is wearing earrings is another individual called Jesus, then Jesus may answer the question “Whose earrings are you wearing?” by saying, like Mary, “They’re mine” or “They’ve been given to me by someone else.” This is how the ambiguity arises and requires clarification, especially if we take Jesus to be the incarnate God wearing earrings, which the book offers to elaborate on. If the one who is wearing earrings were an ordinary man or woman, it would be easy to figure out the looks of the wearer and whether he or she is the owner of the earrings. If, however, the one who is wearing earrings is God, as is the case in this context, the image and the ownership become not only vague but also enigmatically obscure, requiring clarification. It sounds no less than absurd.

2. THEOLOGICAL AND PHILOSOPHICAL CONCEPTS EMBEDDED IN THE BOOK TITLE AND REQUIRING ELUCIDATION

The phrase “earrings of God” can convey a realistic or an allegorical image. The book title’s reference to the wearing of “earrings” certainly does not convey a realistic or comic image of God wearing earrings like a woman, a charlatan, a joker, a comedian, or a person who wants to break the “standard” rules of society. The reference to the wearing of earrings conveys an allegorical image. If, on the one hand, we were to understand the image of “earrings of God” as meaning “God truly wears earrings,” then we would be committing a flagrant category mistake. It obviously makes no sense to claim that a spiritual, non-material being wears a material thing such as gold or silver earrings. If, on the other hand, the one who wears them is the historical carpenter from Nazareth called Jesus, or author Fortunato Pasqualino, a professor of philosophy and employee at Radio-Televisione Italiana (RAI) in Rome, it can be assumed that both men are far from being charlatans, jokers, comedians, or men who want to break the “standard” rules of a civilized society. So, one would then need to ask: “What is

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the symbolism, or the allegorical meaning, of wearing earrings?” To obtain a meaningful answer, one should look into the historical or biblical context that the author borrowed it from. In biblical antiquity wearing earrings was the symbol of slavery; the person who wears them is a slave who serves a master. When we take this person to be Jesus, then the phrase “The Earrings of Jesus” would mean that Jesus is a slave of a master. If the one who is wearing the earrings is God, then the phrase “The Earrings of God” would mean “the slavery of God to a master.” However, since in Christian theology the historical Jesus is also God or the incarnate God, and more specifically, God the Son or the Son of God as mentioned in the gospels, then the phrase “The Earrings of God” signifies the servitude of God Jesus, or the Son of God, to God the Father. Leaving aside the issue of the Trinity (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as a Triune God), tangentially mentioned here and worth discussing in a different research material, the reference to Jesus as God wearing earrings is the absurd statement that is relevant to the book title and is worth further discussion. To be a slave entails blind obedience to a master to the point of lacking free choice that a free person supposedly has. In light of this interpretation, two questions arise, one theological, the other philosophical: Was the earring-wearing Jesus truly the slave of his Father and, as such, compelled to incarnate and suffer as a human being? If the answer were positive, then Jesus would, as a constrained slave, gain no redemptive merit for undergoing the tragedy of suffering and dying on the cross to save humanity from its sinful condition. If the question of whether human beings are truly slaves of God were to be asked and answered in the affirmative, then human beings would gain no merit or demerit in doing any good or evil deed. Thus, it would, strictly speaking, be unjust to reward them or submit them to any sort of punishment, human or divine. This is how the title of the book triggers two issues: whether Jesus had freedom of choice; and whether human beings in general have freedom of choice. These are the underlying complex issues embedded, directly or indirectly, in the intentionally and tactfully ambiguous title “The Earrings of God.” The message that the original author conveys in his book and the book title is this: Although Jesus wore the earrings of

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enslavement to God the Father he was still capable of free choice. To illustrate this point, Pasqualino described Jesus as one who would not just take the prophecies of the Old Testament and execute them as if they were a film script he had to enact slavishly. Likewise, although human beings, represented by F. Pasqualino himself as a transvestite wandering all night in the streets of Rome or on the beaches, wear the allegorical earrings of slavery to God, they are still capable of free choice. Wearing earrings of enslavement to instincts, natural laws, or biological and societal influences signifies another form of slavery. These two perceptions of enslavement, to God or to one’s bio-physico-sociological environment, may be regarded philosophically as instances of “universal determinism” or “environmental determining factors.” But in Pasqualino’s thesis, neither form of enslavement impedes human freedom of choice. Being a slave with freedom of choice is the absurdity that the author proposes to dissipate. Besides the difficulty of interpreting the book title, there are other concepts in various chapters of the book that also require interpretation. For example, some readers may not understand at once the ideas Pasqualino conveys or implies. At times, the ideas are interwoven by the logic of association or dissociation, not so much by the logic of explicit mathematical deduction or of strictly scientific induction. At other times, the addressed cultural information and the philosophical or theological concepts need to be made a little more explicit and accessible to the general educated reader. In addition, the literary style, in order to be as beautiful and effective as it is, alters occasionally and superficially historic events to create a greater dramatic effect. By the way, one should not understand this occasional lack of explicit logical relatedness or consistent historical accuracy to indicate an inability on the part of the author to display systematic thinking or historical meticulousness. It is simply that the unique style of the author has its own literary beauty and a complex theological and philosophical message to convey. All these factors justify the need for preliminary explanations, now given in the Translator’s Introduction and his commentary and notes. These provide the needed details, and tie loose ends here and there to produce an easier and more meaningful reading.

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3. PASQUALINO’S INTELLECTUAL AND LITERARY CONTRIBUTION (a) “Nothing new under the sun”

Popular sayings become, at times, coined as perennial sparks of wisdom, but many turn out to be, with time, not so perennial. Among the long-lasting sayings, there is “Nothing new under the sun,” which still sounds true in the context of Pasqualino’s contribution. This saying was known and in circulation since the time of the early Greek philosophers and the Hebrews of the Bible. It resonates as a piece of wisdom mentioned in Ecclesiastes, where Qoholeth, also known as Solomon, who was son of David and King of Jerusalem, advises: “Take anything of which it may be said, ‘Look now, this is new.’ Already long before our time, it existed.” (Ecclesiastes 1:10) Similarly, one may say that Pasqualino’s insight in his book The Earrings of God was already stated long before him. More specifically, some of his statements on the miracle-making love were already made by the evangelists in their versions of the gospel. Most of all, John, the evangelist of love “par excellence,” had conspicuous influence on Pasqualino. Then, there were St. Paul, St Augustine, and later theologians and philosophers who elaborated on such wisdom of love and faith long before Pasqualino. Nonetheless, there is always something new in the manner that wisdom is conveyed at a specific time to a specific group of people who may not, otherwise, be reached; and this is worth considering as “new,” to say the least. Paqualino’s contribution, like the contribution of many other thinkers of various time periods is, however, dependent on the different circumstances that motivated the thought (the content), and the manner (the form) in which the thought was expressed. Pasqualino addresses his thought to an audience of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries in a language that is appropriate to this audience that has its own distinctive philosophical, religious, and historical contexts. It is obvious that the events of the present century may not have been considered or predicted by thinkers of previous centuries. Similarly, the mentality and the intellectual perspective of today’s people may not be exactly the same as those of the people of other ages. Pasqualino’s originality consists, then, in presenting his own perspective on everlasting issues to a

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specific audience with specific circumstances and expectations. It is a perspective of a thinker, believer, and man of letters, presented to people of his time with his personal touch and with nuances of novelty that he, not others, can express. Pasqualino addresses the theme of existential absurdities, including the most unacceptable absurdity that was motivated by love, from different perspectives, theological, philosophical, historical, and cultural. This makes his contribution unique, holistic, and nonreplicable. (b) Pasqualino’s Holistic Search for Meaning in Existential Absurdities

Pasqualino, a thinker, believer, and man of letters, offers in this book a holistic explanation of a few absurd existential claims, the foremost of which is the Christian claim that God the Almighty, as incarnate in the person of the eventually crucified Jesus Christ, became not-so-almighty. It is basically a theological claim to say that, in becoming human, God was motivated by love. Such a claim has implications that would help correct human perception of existential absurdities. Pasqualino addresses this absurd claim, and tangentially or implicitly other absurd claims, from philosophical, historical, sociological, and cultural points of view. This holistic approach makes the book an unusual renaissance product in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries in its approach to searching for ways to untangle perennial existential absurdities, be they secular or religious, in view of a peaceful, productive, and happy human existence. For example, when Pasqualino addresses in Chapter I the issue of whether Jesus was free to become or refuse to become an obedient and loving Son, he alludes to the thorny philosophical debates on whether human beings in general have freedom of choice in whatever they do. Some philosophers advocate the freedom-of-choice theory while others advocate determinism. This split in human rationality causes an uneasy, or even absurd, existential confusion, which has implication for human behavior and being. Instead of discussing specific opposing philosophical positions and offering his own, Pasqualino analyses the actions of Jesus Christ as a human person, drawing on widespread popular wisdom rather than on the narrow and less popular academic

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wisdom. Nonetheles, Pasqualino does not summarily reject or discredit academic wisdom. Pasqualino’s trust in the widespread wisdom seems to evoke the Latin saying “Vox populi vox Dei” (The voice of the people is God’s voice), as if to say, somehow arguably but interestingly, that the widespread popular wisdom is closer to be God’s wisdom, and is thus more widespread and reliable than the wisdom of a single scholar or a few. Although Jesus had a message and a redemptive mission that he was not expected to deviate from, he could choose to make some adjustments, though superficial, to “the script” he had to enact while on earth. His ability to deviate from the original script, illustrated by a few examples, is a sufficient reason to claim that Jesus had freedom of choice. Pasqualino describes such freedom as follows: “But Jesus was too much himself to restrain his behavior within the dramaturgical restrictions of a character… Jesus was free and unpredictable even to those who followed him.” In fact, when seeing a child crying, Jesus, unexpectedly and by choice, interrupted his discourse to pay attention to the child, and said: “He who brings a bowl of fresh water for this child will have his reward.” Humanity, in turn, is being asked to reciprocate the divine love of human beings with human love of God, by making choices that correspond to the Divine Lover’s invitation to human beings to comply with divine orders that at times appear, or actually are, absurd. Like Abraham, who was asked to commit the absurd act of sacrificing his innocent son to the Lord, so Pasqualino and the rest of human beings may be ordered to commit similar absurd acts. Pasqualino gives the example of his willed and chosen slavish obedience to God when he claimed to have been “overwhelmed by [the absurd divine] imperativeness” that made him, because of his love of the commanding Lord, “[symbolically] wander in Rome, squeezed in fake jewelry of feminine disguise.” Here Pasqualino implies that, had it not been for his love of God, he would not have chosen to do that symbolic clownish wandering in the streets of Rome, behaving differently from the “standard” way of others. Furthermore, he wanted to say that when there is love, there is faith that makes the lover trust the beloved by perceiving the absurd command as not-so-absurd. Consequently, when a person has the ability to make choices, as shown

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in the examples of Abraham, Jesus, Pasqualino, and others, such ability would, when willingly exercised, make the person worthy of the generous loving act of the divine redemption and worthy of reward. In Chapter II, Pasqualino reflects on the contribution of some systematic thinkers who devised a way to cope with absurd existential issues. He mentions Hegel, describing him with two conflicting attributes: “A great philosopher, but terribly sententious.” By doing so, Pasqualino points to the positive contribution of Hegel and his excessive reliance on systematic and exclusive rationality. Pasqualino praises Hegel for hinting at “the warmth of love that leads to see in the very same destiny a father, not a capricious and cruel tyrant.” Pasqualino alludes to later existential philosophers who followed Hegel’s path of existential concerns (“Hence, a whole history of the absurd emerged….”) that they too relied on the “warmth of love” that can give a functional meaning to existential absurdities. It is the love for fellow human beings that can change a sporadically harsh destiny into something more positive and constructive. Although the concept of God, the Loving Father and Ultimate Author of destiny, is absent from the thought of the atheistic existential philosophers, these believed in the necessity of creating a positively functional meaning, inspired by love, to help live through existential absurdities. In this secular but humanistic perception of existential absurdities, freewill is taken to be a springboard and basic premise for the atheistic existential argument. Other existential philosophers, the theistic philosophers, while accepting the premise of freewill, saw an inherent meaning that the Almighty God, the Loving Father, instilled in existence by matching universal order with what human beings call, due to limited human knowledge or ignorance, “existential absurdities.” In this theistic perception of existential absurdities, the Almighty, Meaning-Giving God, created human beings in His image as thinking beings because of love. Also, because of love, God incarnated to save sinful human beings. This Almighty God fashioned what appear to be existential absurdities as part of universal order so that confused man would not arrogantly and foolishly underestimate Him, arguing with rather limited human rationality as an infallable judge.

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In later chapters, Pasqualino mentions Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, and the wisdom of world’s popular literatures in their search to resolve existential absurdities. He points to the need for care in compensating for the limitations of exclusively analytic reasoning about metaphysical and even mythical matters. However, this implied critique of exclusively analytic reasoning does not mean that Pasqualino considers analytic reasoning worthless. It certainly has uplifting findings and victories, but it also has humiliating limitations of its own. The religious and popular wisdoms have one common aspiration, that is, to resolve existential absurdities, and help humans reach a happy life. But these wisdoms use different means. At times, they convey their message in fables, paradoxes, and even in claims that seem absurd. What is needed, then, is to transcend the appearance of extravagance or absurdity, and reach for the hidden wisdom either with the help of analytic reasoning or with commonsense intuition. Loving an almighty of some sort and having faith in this almighty and in other human beings’ goodwill are the two major elements of that common wisdom that most world religions, philosophies, and popular world literatures share. Like these, Pasqualino introduces the Christian wisdom of love for, and faith in, the Almighty and human beings. However, unlike these other religions or philosophies, he introduces the Christian message candidly and unequivocally as both the most absurd (“the most dramatic of the parables”) and the most sublime (“the story of Jesus is, in a sense, the story of a deluded love and a failure that, in fact, shines gloriously more than all the victories of the world.”). Love and faith are illustrated in various political situations in which one hero leader becomes a victim to save the community. When Pasqualino comments on the political situations in various countries, such as Italy, Germany, India, and Egypt, he refers to love and faith as healing many societal ills and giving positive meaning to many existential issues, ills, and absurdities. Jesus suffered, died, and redeemed humanity because of love and faith. Similarly, genuine political leaders of nations can at times become, because of love and faith, innocent sacrificial victims in their attempt to resolve their political issues, ills, and absurdities and thus to redeem the citizens of their respective countries. It is

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through the leaders and their followers’ love for, and faith in the Almighty or a humanistic “almighty” ideal, along with their goodwill and that of their fellow human beings that national issues can be settled peacefully. In this atmosphere of love and faith, conflicts among individual leaders, political parties, civil or religious communities, countries, and eventually the whole world will reach mutual understanding and peaceful cooperation for the welfare of all. Obviously, this is an ideal that normally is not always the case. But it is possible especially when love and faith are at work. Gandhi of India, who believed in “the power of love,” and Sadat of Egypt, “a brilliant statesman [who regained what Egypt] had lost… [thanks to his] wise administration of defeat,” are two sample political leaders. Because of their idealistic and patriotic love that their lives were victimized as a ransom to save their respective countries from worse disasters, and put them on the track to a better life for their fellow citizens. In short, Pasqualino’s is a philosophy of love and faith that does not necessarily and dogmatically exclude analytic rationality. Pasqualino’s philosophy can, when properly understood, be felt, and lived through a just human perception of the absurd. It follows the example of Jesus Christ, the Almighty Son and Redeemer, as the prototype of the self-sacrificing love that resolves all absurdities. Following the example of Jesus, Pasqualino’s is basically a peaceful conflict-resolution philosophy, not a confrontational philosophy that promotes conflict and warfare. In order to illustrate this redeeming love Pasqualino made his intellectual peregrination, examining the relevant insights of select philosophers, religious thinkers, and world literatures. The goal was to reach a personal inner enlightenment, and eventually to propagate it for world peace. The result came out, thanks to his writing skills, in a beautiful literary style that adds more value to the worthy philosophical and theological messages. (c) Pasqualino’s Literary Style

Pasqualino was not only a student of philosophy with a profound interest in theological issues; he also was a playwright, a film and TV show script writer, and a media educator. He also contributed to various journals and newspapers. His play Socrate Bacchante

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(Socrates the Bacchant) won him the literary award “Premio Enzi” (Enzi Award). These diverse literary and educational activities and awards obviously indicate that Pasqualino was, in addition to being a philosopher, a prolific and remarkable literary man. Pasqualino’s writing style is embellished by a rich poetic imagination that makes up for the dry logical argumentation required of the philosophical content already alluded to by the subtitle of the book. While the philosophical content requires rigidly systematic and analytic thinking, the poetic format and the fertile imagination he displays go beyond the restrictive stylistic boundaries of the content. His creative imagination, in both philosophical insights and literary beauty enhanced with theatrical suspense, is an attractive quality of the poet, the playwright, the movie script writer, and thinker that Pasqualino was. This is how he turned the book into a thoughtful and pleasant reading. To highlight aspects of his writing style, a few literary devices (elements, and techniques) that Pasqualino skillfully uses, will next be briefly mentioned. Narrator’s voice – The first of the literary elements that one will quickly notice is the narrator’s voice. Pasqualino often uses the first-person as narrator to describe events that he has experienced or witnessed to convey his thoughts and feelings with a “personal touch.” For example, Chapter 1 starts with: “That’s enough! I was told and I repeated it to myself…” and later one reads “my mother wrote me” and “my father… was smiling in a sly but affectionate way,” and in Chapter II, he states “I suppose that…” By using the first-person as narrator, he stresses his personal experience and involvement in the events he describes. This literary device helps him display his personal experience and his own deep conviction. This, in turn, gains the close attention of the reader, who will share more intimately the writer’s feelings and thoughts. At times he uses the second-person narration. For example, when, in Chapter IV, Pasqualino, speaks to himself (“You were dreaming of the ‘Open, Sesame!’”), to remind himself in a monologue form of what he has read, thought, or done. All such experienes have led him, through whatever voice he felt using, to express his vivid perception of God’s work, and his happy acceptance of God’s will in him.

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Setting – The setting of time is the literary element that regards the period during which the events took place, whether in each chapter or in the various chapters, covers various historical periods ranging from ancient to contemporary. Pasqualino’s use of the present tense to describe events suggests that the events occurred in his presence, not that they were past, forgotten, and later remembered events. This literary element makes the reader and the author appear like witnesses to the event. As for the setting of place of the events described in the book, it covers various geographical locations from East to West. This is done for a purpose. Although Pasqualino lived in Italy, and wrote basically for Italian readers, he addresses issues that can be considered perennial, transcending both time and location. Plot – The plot element that Pasqualino uses to display his philosophical or theological message is sketchy and occasional like the plot of a short story or a fleeting anecdote. Pasqualino uses many plots spread in the various chapters of the book, and for that reason they are not as unitary as would be the case of a standard novel or short story. Each chapter has a philosophical or theological theme with more than one story or anecdote, thus suggesting that there are many non-standard plots. However, all stories in the various chapters have an internal sequential thread of specific philosophical or theological ideas organized like individual mini stories with their respective mini plots. They all lead to one major goal: to convey the Christian message of love and faith that may, somehow, be similar to the message of love and faith conveyed in various religions and philosophies, each offering to resolve existential absurdities. Characters – The characters that emerge in the various chapters of the book are many but there are two major characters that shine throughout the book: Pasqualino as the narrator and Jesus Christ as the main and ideal character whose teaching and example seem to have inspired all other characters. Among these other characters, whose concern is to resolve existential absurdities, are select political leaders and select popular tales from diverse parts of the world. The characters of political leaders illustrate the practice of love and faith in the political arena to benefit not only one or a few individuals but a whole country and possibly beyond.

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There are also the characters of popular tales that also illustrate how love and faith are the result of the human search for a happy life. All these characters reflect, though by accident, the fundamental teaching of Jesus Christ, the ultimate teacher of love and faith. Besides these sample literary elements, Pasqualino uses literary techniques that add enigma, curiosity, beauty, and elegance to his literary style. The following are some such techniques that Pasqualino displays artfully. Allegory – An allegory is a literary technique that Pasqualino uses to convey an abstract concept by means of a concrete image. For example, the title of the book, The Earrings of God, gives a concrete image for the abstract concept of slavery. There is here an implied reference to the biblical story of the Hebrew slave who, in the beginning of his sabbatical year chooses, because of his love for his master, to continue serving as a slave by wearing the earrings of perpetual enslavement to that master. This allegory refers to God the Almighty taking the humbling role of a slave and Son of the Father and, by extension, a slave to the Father’s love for humanity. It also refers to human beings who, like the Hebrew slave, are invited to serve, with love, the Almighty Master. More specifically, the image of the earrings can be explained by an analogy. Just as the ring (or chain) links the slave to the master, so love, like a ring or a chain, links the lover to the beloved. The implied message, developed later in the book, is that God, the Lover, loved humanity so much that God voluntarily and absurdly became a slave who is linked to his alleged beloved master with a ring (or chain). Obviously, the book title’s image of God becoming a slave, and humanity becoming the master, is allegorical, depicting an absurd role exchange. The allegory becomes here a powerful tool that draws the attention of the reader to something truly extravagant but worthy a serious consideration. Paradox – A paradox is a technique that past Far Eastern thinkers used, especially when explaining the absurdities of life by means of even more confusing and illogical statements. Paradoxes need, however, to be untangled from the contradictions they involve before one can understand their respective messages.

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For example, towards the end of chapter IV, Paqualino quotes samples of paradoxical Eastern wisdom such as: “And the meaning of the four noble truths?” “They are empty, and nothing truly noble is in them.” and “… He who doesn’t know knows it. But who knows it doesn’t know.” Pasqualino mentions Far Eastern paradoxes with a view to gradually preparing the reader to learn about the most intriguing Christian paradox of divine incarnation, encapsulated in the concluding words of Chapter VI: “the story of Jesus is, in a sense, the story of a deluded love and a failure that, in fact, shines gloriously more than all the victories of the world,” which resonates with Lao Tse’s wisdom displayed in his Book of the Way and Virtue. Contrast-Contrast is another literary technique Pasqualino uses to accentuate the unexpected co-existence of contraries. For example, human vanity in wearing golden crosses or jewels, described in the Prologue, nowadays makes people show off or take pride, whereas in ancient Roman times the cross was nothing but a symbol of shame, not of pride or vanity. Humor – Humor usually embellishes serious, tension-causing talk, making it pleasant, enjoyable, and meaningful. This literary technique changes the attitude of the reader from being concentrated on understanding deep and abstract philosophical or theological concepts to becoming relaxed and ready to understand. Pasqualino often surprises the reader with a comic description of a serious subject. The image of God wearing earrings is the first comic example found in the title of the book. Also, when describing himself in the beginning of Chapter I as doing things out of love that supposedly normal or ordinary people would not do, Pasqualino depicts himself as wearing “high heels, [in] disguise and chains,” or spending “the full-moon night… on a deserted beach, naked, [his] hands chained behind [his] back and large gold circles dangling from [his] ears.” When describing Moses, Pasqualino makes him humorously look like a criminal when in fact he was the savior of his Hebrew people: “He [Moses] began his career by killing an Egyptian.” When Jesus was asked to decide about whether an adulteress should be stoned according to the Mosaic law, Pasqualino describes him somehow comically:

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“Bent down and writing with his finger on the sand, Jesus must have asked his divine Father, almost as if he were joking: ‘Father, what would you say?’” Sarcasm – Friendly sarcasm is a pleasant technique that is not rare in Pasqualino’s writings. For example, in Chapter II, when Jesus felt it was time for him to go to Jerusalem and face the drama of his passion, Pasqualino describes Peter sarcastically as a clumsy adviser to Jesus: “Peter took him aside and told him to forget about going to Jerusalem, where the worst would happen as foreseen.” Towards the end of Chapter I, when describing Jesus facing the upcoming capture, humiliation, physical pain, and crucifixion, Pasqualino insinuates sarcasm in writing “Jesus demonstrated a faith that was weaker than the one he himself had brought to earth,” sarcasm that a contemporary of Pasqualino described as “almost irreverent” of the religious thesis Pasqualino is advocating. When Pasqualino describes the lack of faith of some priests, for example as in the beginning of Chapter III, Pasqualino occasionally does not lack sharp sarcasm: “One can also understand the drama that for certain priests it must be to face the altar with certain perplexities and a definite lack of faith unless these have the ease of those many who flaunt being ‘practitioners, not believers.’” In the middle of Chapter III, Jesus is blamed for cursing the fig tree that did not bear fruit out of season: “How then could Jesus commit the foolishness of cursing and drying up a tree guilty of not giving fruits, an expectation that was contrary to its nature, to give fruits out of season?” Sarcasm was used not to humiliate the object of the sarcasm but to express a natural human reaction to situations that raise justified question marks. Moderate and thoughtful sarcasm can enhance the credibility of the author. The above literary traits are just illustrative samples of Pasqualino’s writing style throughout the book. These traits make the reading suspenseful and enjoyable, thus enhancing the thoughtful content.

4. TRANSLATION I SSUES

Besides the theoretical issues and historical events addressed in the commentary and the notes, some of which were just pointed

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to, there were also literary issues that I, as a translator, encountered, and had to settle during my translation. Some consisted in deciding between being faithful to a literal translation that would make little or no sense in English translation, and being concerned with an equivalent idiomatic translation, without betraying the intended meaning conveyed in the original. In such situations, rather than being slave of the literary form, I carefully used translator’s discretion to convey meaningful content. In what follows, I will address some translation issues that are worth mentioning or investigating. (a) Long Sentences Shortened

At times, the Italian sentences are long, filling several lines. Long sentences require, generally speaking, greater concentration on the part of the reader than do shorter sentences. To avoid possible concentration difficulty and confusion, I decided in such cases to translate the long Italian sentences into smaller English ones. For example, the second sentence in the beginning of chapter two, starting with “Di paura tra gli apostoli…” and ending with “… e non l’uomo per essi,” is a five-line sentence. I translated it in three easy-to-read sentences. In chapter six, page 68 of the Italian version, the second paragraph on that page starts with a seven-line sentence that was slightly confusing to read if translated in English as is, without breaks. I divided it into four sentences. However, for clarification and connectedness of sentences and ideas, I added, for example, after “The Gospel according to John…” the phrase “relates the story of…” for a smooth and easy English story-telling inexistent in the Italian version. (b) Vague Terms Explained or Kept

In the original Italian, there were some vague terms that I had to decide as to how to translate, for example “Il cielo,” the title of Chapter IV. A literal translation would be “Heaven.” However, when reading the chapter, the educated reader may realize that the reference is to the Chinese ‘Tao’ found in the book titled “The Book of Tao,” (also known as: “The Book of the Way and Virtue) by Lao Tse. To translate the Chinese ‘Tao’ as ‘Il cielo’ would not be easy for the average non-Chinese reader to understand. To

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translate it as “The Way and Virtue” may somehow be meaningful but cumbersome when translated many times in the same chapter or even in the same paragraph. For this reason, I opted for a faithful literal translation of the chapter title as ‘Heaven,’ despite its vagueness. (c) Quoting Original Sources vs. Translating Paraphrases

When Pasqualino refers to biblical events or statements in paraphrases, I decided to quote the Bible directly in order to avoid the translation of a paraphrase which may be problematic in terms of accuracy. I also provided, at times, an endnote exploring related explanatory details. Doing so may better satisfy the critical reader who would want to check the original biblical source. Sometimes Pasqualino uses a term that does not literally correspond to what the Jerusalem Bible (JB) text uses but has an intended stylistic function that does not betray the meaning of the original biblical text. In such cases, I translated the Italian literally, and referred, in a note, to another biblical text that justifies Pasqualino’s choice. For example, when Pasqualino refers in the Prologue to St. Paul’s epistle to the Hebrews (Heb 10:5), he uses the phrase ‘You have pierced my ears’ when the corresponding Jerusalem Bible’s text reads “You… opened my ears.” However, Exodus 21:5 in the JB reads: “His master shall pierce his ear with an awl,” which suggests that Pasqualino’s choice of the verb “to pierce” is appropriate. For a few reasons, I preferred to consistently quote the Jerusalem Bible version, rather than other versions, when a biblical quotation is needed. First, Besides the fact that The Jerusalem Bible is the product of scholars who are specialized in various fields of biblical studies—which is also the case of other versions—the Jerusalem Bible has many scholarly footnotes, helpful in clarifying certain terms or biblical events. Second, The Jerusalem Bible uses a contemporary language, when other versions, such as the equally respected King James Version, use older English that may sound less familiar to our twenty-first century ears. Third, Pasqualino is a Roman Catholic, and it would make better sense in the context of his thought to refer to a translation that is consonant with the Catholic Church’s teaching.

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(d) Latin, Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek Terms or Phrases Translated

When Pasqualino uses a Latin word or phrase within the Italian text, I kept the Latin as is and gave the English translation either in my commentary or in a note. In the middle of Chapter III, Pasqualino refers to the Latin word “Summae” (plural of Summa) that refers to two treatises, the Summa Theologica (Summary of Theology) and the Summa contra gentiles (Summary [of Theology] against the Gentiles/Unbelievers), that St. Thomas Aquinas (c. 1225-1274) wrote in Latin, and I found it proper to keep the original Latin titles. Similarly, a couple of lines below the mention of the Summae, there is a reference to the Madonna Advocata nostra, which I also kept in Latin and translated as “Our Advocate” in a note with the relevant explanation. In Chapter V, Pasqualino uses the Latin mystical phrase “cupio dissolvi” that has been translated in parenthesis (I yearn to be dissolved). Similarly, when I encountered a Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic, or Arabic term or phrase, I kept the word or phrase in the original language, and added a translation. When these were repeated, I used the foreign word or phrase the first time it occurred only to avoid cumbersome and needless repetitive explanations. My rationale for keeping the foreign language in the main text or in a note is that there may be readers who can read and understand that foreign langue. Also, doing so would give the original flavor of its relevant ancient or medieval thought and culture. (e) Word Choice

Pasqualino’s poetic imagination and his desire to speak in a contemporary language made him at times use terms and concepts that contemporary readers can appreciate. For example, in Chapter II (Fear), page 21 of the Italian version, he quotes Proverbs (Pr 15:17) in Italian translation somewhat freely but acceptably: while the JB refers to a ‘dish of herbs,’ Pasqualino makes it a more delicious-sounding food by writing ‘a dish of vegetables’ (un piatto di legumi). In my translation, I preferred to keep the biblical term with the rather pastoral flavor of “herbs” rather than the “more civilized” choice by Pasqualino. Also, despite the vagueness of the Italian title of Chapter IV (Il Cielo), I chose, as mentioned earlier,

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to translate it with an equally vague English title,”Heaven,” to avoid excessive translator’s use of discretion. Furthermore, in Chapter III, page 31, line 16 of the Italian version, Pasqualino uses “due popoli” (literally, “two populations”) but the context refers to “two nations,” which is closer to what is intended. At times, I had to add a word or reformulate an Italian phrase with a clearer or less ambiguous phrase in English. When Pasqualino says in chapter VI, page 71, line 8 from the bottom of the Italian version “il Dio Vivente di Gesù,” which literally means “the Living God of Jesus” that may suggest Jesus to be a mere human being, I translated it as “the Living God taught by Jesus.” At other times, it was necessary to supply the subject of the verb to convey a more meaningful English translation. On page 72, paragraph 2, line 6, the Italian reads: “l’Onnipotenza da cui si “viene”…” which literally means “the Omnipotence from which one comes…” In order to avoid the even fuzzier literal translation, I opted for translating it as “the Omnipotence from which every thing originates…” Besides words and short phrases, there are idiomatic expressions that are, usually, difficult to translate as they may lead to nonsensical literal translation. In this case, it was necessary to find an equivalent idiomatic expression used in the target language. For example, in chapter III, page 35 of the Italian version, there is the Italian expression “brucciare la terra per cavare la predica” which literally means “to burn the ground in order to make up a homily.” Instead, I found an equivalent idiomatic expression in English that conveys the meaning of the Italian: “to knock the tar out of a homily.” Similarly, on the same page, there is “fuoco di paglia,” meaning “hay fire,” which, if translated literally, makes no sense in that context to English readers. It has, however, an equivalent expression in English that conveys the same connotation: “flash in the pan” that I chose. Furthermore on the same page 35, the English reader may have difficulty understanding a literal translation of the Italian “non si dimentichi che, fuori della realta delle cose e di noi stessi…” literally translated would be: “one should not forget that, outside the reality of the things and of ourselves…,” which makes little sense in English. The context there is that if the homilies and other theological and

xxxviii THE EARRINGS OF GOD: THE ABSURD AMONG US pedagogical discourses are not concise and without needless digressions, they would not catch the fleeting attention of the readers or listeners. This is why I had, after some deliberation, to translate the sentence using the recommended “translator’s discression,” supplying what was not explicitly supplied in the Italian text. Then, the sentence became in English translation as: “one should not forget that if these [digress] outside the [concrete] reality of the [subject being addressed], and [do not take in consideration] the reality of our [attention span],” the homelies, the theological and pedagogical discourses would become like a short lived “flash in the pan.”

5. COMMENTARY I SSUES

In the commentary part, I focused on the conceptual content, clarifying ideas and historic events referred or alluded to, but not explained in the original Italian. The supplied explanations are mostly for the curious educated non-specialist. For that reason, I dedicated to each chapter a corresponding commentary with extensive notes that are useful complements to the commentary. (a) Methodology Applied in the Commentary and Notes

In the commentary and notes, I addressed various relevant conceptual issues. Some needed clarification, others needed to be interconnected, still others needed to be translated from the poetic or dramatic format of Pasqualino’s text to a logical format that the average reader can more easily relate to. The major issues were addressed in the body of the commentary, while minor or side issues and simple clarifications were placed in the notes. Regarding the clarification of specific philosophical, theological, historical, and literary concepts that Pasqualino mentions or alludes to, I had to use discretion in choosing what to address. To avoid confusing the reader with unnecessary, though informative, digressions, I selected a limited number of issues and topics from the many that could have been addressed. For example, with the philosophical and theological concepts that Pasqualino conveyed in a poetical or dramaturgical format, I extracted the focal issue and discussed it in a logical manner. More specifically, when Pasqualino describes in Chapter I the conversations of Abraham,

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the prophets, and even Jesus with the dictatorial-sounding “Don Yahweh, [who] orders the prophets to do shameful acts,” I linked the philosophical issue involved with what philosophers had said on the subject. Some philosophers argued that human beings are free to choose the specific actions they want. Others argued that human beings are simply determined by factors beyond their control in all that they do. Even thinking is no exception to being determined as in a chain of interconnected intellectual causes that eventually impose on the individual to think and act in a specific way. Here, the focal issue is whether Pasqualino, the prophets, and Jesus truly had freedom of choice in obeying God Yahweh or whether they were determined in what they did or said. In either case there are important related logical and ethical consequences. Regarding the relatedness and progression of Pasqualino’s ideas in the translated chapters, I wrote, in the beginning of each chapter (except the first) of the commentary part, a small introduction to connect each chapter to the previous. Then, I commented on the ideas of the chapter in question. The commentary on the first chapter is introduced by an explanation of terms and concepts that lead to the theme of the existential absurd that Pasqualino dealt with in chapter I. At the end of each chapter (except the last) of the commentary, there is a sentence or a short paragraph that connects the chapter to the next. (b) Reference to Authors and Books Identified

One of the specific commentary issues involves the identification of authors and books that were not clearly identified in Pasqualino’s Italian text. Another specific commentary issue involves the clarification of concepts that Pasqualino assumed to be clear or assumed to be unnecessary to identify. When Pasqualino refers to, without quoting, an idea, a person, or an event, I researched it, and placed it in its original context by quoting the author or identifying the text. Chapter II starts with a reference to “a great philosopher” without mentioning his name. In my commentary, I identified the name of the philosopher (Hegel) and gave in a note the title of the book (Phenomenology of the Spirit) and the section (“Self consciousness”) in which Hegel wrote about the “unhappy consciousness.” Such a topic was one of the most

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immediate precursors of existential thought. Also, when Pasqualino mentions a biblical event or teaching, I quoted the original text directly from the bible. Moreover, when he refers to world literatures, such as La Chanson de Roland, or One Thousand and One Nights, I clarified some of the relevant details and identified some of the major protagonists for those interested in further reading. And when the name of a protagonist is mentioned, I placed it in the context of the original literary work. For example, when the name of Ulysses was mentioned, I wrote a note clarifying that Ulysses was a major protagonist in The Iliad by Homer. (c) Reference to Historic Events Detailed

Another commentary issue that I had to deal with was the reference to historic events mentioned without details or clarification. When Pasqualino refers to past history, using a word, a phrase, or an allusion, I identified the referred-to historic event. For example, in Chapter II, Pasqualino mentions a “difficult time for humanity,” which I clarified in a note as referring to World War II. When the name of the Saracens was mentioned, also without a clarifying detail, I gave, in a note, a brief history of the invasion of the Iberian Peninsula by the Arab Saracens of North Africa. (d) Reference to Technical Philosophical and Theological Concepts Explained

When dealing with technical concepts, I discussed similarities or dissimilarities between related events or related theoretical statements. In Chapter IV, when Pasqualino refers to Gandhi’s political philosophy, I took the opportunity to compare briefly Gandhi’s political philosophy with that of Socrates. Both agree on the general but paradoxical principle of renouncing the “I” and the “my” to eventually gain both. They differ in that Gandhi revolted, though peacefully, against Britain, the oppressing foreign government at that time, to save his country from unfair oppression, while Socrates accepted being an innocent victim by accepting the hemlock even though he was given the opportunity to escape unfair punishment. When Pasqualino mentions “a history of the absurd,” I clarified, with some succinct but useful details that the reference was to the two main schools of existential thought the

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atheistic and the theistic existentialism. When Pasqualino mentions in Chapter I the “imperatives” that troubled Abraham, Jesus, and others, Pasqualino wants to bring attention to the question as to whether these and other human beings had freedom of choice. This issue is one of those perennial philosophical issues where universal consensus is hard, if not impossible, to reach. When the issue involves Jesus, it becomes a theological issue of prime importance. If Jesus had no choice but to execute his mission like a slave, then he would have no merit in redemption. In this respect, I explained in some detail Pasqualino’s thesis that Jesus had freedom of choice and that his obedience to the Father was a free act of love. Besides these examples of philosophical and theological issues, more such issues are spread all over the book. In order to make the commentary of a manageable proportion, I clarified, analyzed, or discussed only some of the matters that I deemed important to comment on, leaving other matters for the intellectually curious reader to dabble in for further research, learning, and personal enlightenment.

TRANSLATION [The bracketed Arabic page numbers in the translation refer to the page breaks in the Italian version]

PROLOGUE

Humanity loves jewels and their respective vanities. In religion, it has even turned the crosses into ornaments. So, the gods, heroes and sacred images are all shown adorned with a lot of gold, diamonds and pearls, and the most abundantly adorned with jewels from head to toe is the Buddha of the future.1 Jesus, however, did not wear jewels. Yet, he could have enjoyed at least a finger ring, the ring of the prodigal son of the parable, which the father wanted in the end his son to wear. Instead, earrings and pierced ears that were imposed on him, not by the soldiers of Pilate in the mockery hour, but by those who, following the guidance of the prophecy, have intended to celebrate in him The Absolute obedience of the slave-son to The Absolute master-father (Adonai). That is why in Paul’s Epistle to the Hebrews we hear Jesus reiterate the words of the psalmist: “You have pierced my ears because of my perfect and constant fidelity until death on the cross.”2 The perforation of the ears was, as we know it, a Hebrew custom whereby the slave renounces the freedom given to him at the beginning of the sabbatical year3 and chooses, instead, perpetual slavery. But is it true that Jesus aspired to become a “slave,” not a “son” who had his own freedom, not to mention the great love and respect he had for his father? This is the question to which an answer is attempted here, not merely to find out what Jesus has eventually become, but to find out the existential condition and the dilemma in which we struggle, each one with his own jewels, more or less “indiscreet” and revealing, whether from within or outside the various religious creeds. Besides, it has already been written somewhere else that nothing is new and everything is renewed in every moment as we proceed, day after day, towards that eternity of infinite nothingness or infinite wholeness, whatever this means, whether the omnipotence of nature, destiny or perhaps the divinity invoked in prayer, each one according to his hopes.

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[Page 3 of the Italian version]

CHAPTER I. THE A BSURD

“That’s enough!” I was told, and I repeated it to myself: “Enough with your story of earrings, high heels, disguise, and chains. You’ve discredited yourself well enough. Stop all this nonsense once and for all.” As if I could but didn’t want to liberate myself from the mania that was rising up again and again from the deep within me to grab me, strong by its impulsiveness and my consequent discomfort. As if we were the masters of our being in this world and that each one of us could truly say: “The body, the mind, and the heart are mine, and I can do with them whatever I please!” As if the very “I” belonged to us, were not a slave of our passions, our follies, our conscious and unconscious conditioning, and were not bound by the shackles of its own limits as was the case with the prisoner of the mythical cave.4 This prisoner was conscious of his own condition. He asked himself the reason why and tried to liberate himself in an attempt to alleviate, as much as possible, the pain such a condition occasioned. Well, perhaps nothing belongs to us but the realization that we are basically unable to take charge of our own selves. Here is the mad imperative coming back, joyous and obsessive, to impose on me earrings and the rest of the ceremonial odd mystery. And here I am led to re-write one more time the usual short silly dialogue: “You must!” “But this makes no sense. It’s ridiculous and I’m ashamed.” “To make sense, to be ashamed, that’s your business. I’m not asking questions of logic or morals.” “What’s the purpose?” [4] “I don’t care for purposes. You find one.” “Who are you?” “Is it necessary that I be someone or something? You must, and that’s all.” “Who gave you so much power?”

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“Don’t ask anymore questions. I won’t respond and won’t even listen to you anymore. Even this very dialogue you yourself invented.” The imperativeness as presented here can, one may say, be likened in certain respects to a little monkey5 of the Biblical God clinging onto my back. God in the Bible escapes the idea of being someone or something. He forbids that one picture Him by means of images. He has no face or, if He does, no one can see it without dying. Of Himself He only says “I am!” He could in the end reject, as vain human inventions, all the dialogues that may be claimed to have taken place with Him and all the discourses that have been attributed to Him, no matter how divinely inspired by, or agreeable to Him were the hearts, the minds and the mouths of those who claim such events. He orders the prophets to do shameful acts and exposes them to mockery. He doesn’t care if they become embarrassed or disgusted. He doesn’t pay attention to the demands of the senses, the logic and morals of man. He requires that He be obeyed at any cost. He orders Abraham to sacrifice his son for Him: what a horrible crime, for which who knows how much the patriarch has been tortured, even as an “extremely obedient servant” of Yahweh, jokingly called “Don Yahvè” by one of our Sicilian theologians using a Mafia title. This is how the principle of “believe, obey, and sacrifice” (sacrifice others and oneself), dear to totalitarians of every sort, has spread worldwide, impregnated with a great deal of credo quia absurdum est”6 that has surfaced among the fathers of the church as a sign of the socalled “madness of the cross.” Hence, a whole history of the absurd emerged along with doctrines and schools of mysticism that leap into [5] the absurd, a culture and politics of absurdity that have no end. I attempted, right in the beginning, to reach a compromise with the little monkey or the thorn of the mysterious omnipotence that has us in its fist. In exchange for a margin of liberty and normal life, I gave myself up to theatrical and fictional oddities reported in the first person. I let myself be photographed, painted, and sculpted with earrings. Not only that, but I wore, even long before these became men’s fashion, high heel shoes as well as wearing gold earrings, always more and more conspicuous. I did,

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in fact, disguise myself as a woman and wandered by night in the Eternal City, mimicking the famed prostitute of the Apocalypse, “the woman [who] was dressed in purple and scarlet, and glittered with gold and jewels and pearls.”7 I was desperate. But then, I laughed at myself in front of the mirror, and while I was laughing, the significance, if not the true meaning, of the senselessness that was chasing me into those clownish scenes occurred to me. It has been written that we all are since birth potential “polymorphous perverts.”8 In fact, normality is a little too tight for us. One has a certain need, at least imaginary, to come out of it and behave foolishly. But why so? We have learned from Plato to Freud to make use of mythological tales in order to explore some of our own deep conflicts with the higher ideals of our nature and the base and material tendencies that are the most “insensitive to the purpose of the art” of the spirit.9 All the myths reveal something about us. As for my case, it seemed to me explicable in terms of the Gnostic Song of the Pearl, according to which the Son of God was really to wind up in the brothel of the world and find himself fitted in the “clothes of shame.”10 In Roncesvalles, Roland11 recalls in the puppet theater being born in a cave “like Jesus.” In that regard, the archbishop Turpin (who, according to the puppet tradition, is only a priest, not also a worrier as the Chanson) explains: “Each one of us, wherever he was born and however he has lived, relives the life and passion of Jesus.” And maybe here is [6] the knot of a mystery, a knot that always becomes tighter instead of looser when we try to liberate ourselves. Jesus himself has been a victim because of it, even the victim par excellence. Certainly he could have wanted to untie or cut that knot once and for all, for his own sake and for the sake of others. The obscure imperativeness seemed to have been satisfied. I could, in fact, maintain a double life, the normal daily life and the whirling, theater-prone and fantastic life, thanks to the fact that I worked in the State Corporation for Radio and Television after having developed courses on the philosophy of the dramatic arts at university institutes in Rome. Then, the puppet theater, besides its match with my passion for the arts nurtured since my childhood, helped to release the heroic spirits that were moaning

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inside me like the legion of imploring demons whom Jesus chased out of the Gerasene12 man. There are experiences that, when experienced within our minds are much harsher and are engraved in us much better than when they are experienced in the so-called reality of facts. Such was the full-moon night that I spent on a deserted beach, naked, my hands chained behind my back and large gold circles dangling from my ears. Teasing myself with a sad dissonance, I repeated the words of Jeremiah: “You have seduced me, Yahweh, and I have let myself be seduced; you have overpowered me: you were the stronger. I am a daily laughing-stock, everybody’s butt. Each time I speak the word, I have to howl and proclaim: ‘Violence and ruin!’ The word of Yahweh has meant for me insult, derision, all day long. I used to say, ‘I will not think about him, I will not speak in his name anymore’. Then there seemed to be a fire burning in my heart, imprisoned in my bones. The effort to restrain it wearied me, I could not bear it.”13 Fatal attraction, irresistible concupiscence, the imperativeness overwhelmed my resistance to theatrical pretense and to playing on the string of a certain delight while I was wandering in Rome, squeezed in fake jewelry of feminine disguise. The night on the beach was much worse when I recited with the little irony that was left in me: “Here you are, O Lord my God, your slave is awfully naked in jewels and in chains!” I knew of the [7] law of Leviticus and the servant who, if he did not find something better or less evil than remaining in slavery at the arrival of the sabbatical year, would have his ears pierced and earrings appended to them. This symbolized, according to the biblical book of Proverbs, the sacred wise fear of God.14 The slaves had to have both of their ears open to listen and follow the voice of the master and that of God, which together became, by means of the rite, just one. It is significant that, in the Exodus, “all the people,” women and men alike, when they rebelled in the desert against Moses, who did not know where he was chased out to, removed their earrings and handed them over to Aaron, who made of them the golden calf. People have always attempted to consider as a vile act of idolatry what, in fact, was only a spontaneous, peaceful, and even festive rebellion. Through such a rebellion, people attempted to shake from their backs a dictator who

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pretended to represent the supreme Law and to possess the sacred power of the “I am” as the magic scepter of dictatorship. The order of such an authority has in fact been established with certain measures that, in the jargon of dictatorships around us, were called ‘purging,’ ‘disinfecting,’ ‘final solutions.’ In short, out of such blood shedding ‘exterminations,’ the ferocious Levites, the slaughterers of neighbors, brothers, and friends, came out “sanctified.” I did not think that Jesus could have had anything to share with anybody with respect to wearing earrings of perpetual slavery. It was almost by accident that it occurred to me to read one day in the Theologico-Political Treatise of Spinoza the passage about the Psalm of David (Ps 40:6), where God pierces the ears of man;15 an account that later has been correlated in a prophetic analogy with the body’s pierced hands, feet, and side16 of the crucified Jesus. At first, I was pleased with that encounter with Jesus on the path of imperatives about which I had been debating helplessly with myself. But later, the matter shocked me. On that interpretation, Jesus would [8] have then matched the condition of the slave of the Leviticus law and of the servile obedience of Abraham. Has then nothing changed? Was the New Testament simply dissolving in the Old? For what purpose? To prove everything that happens in the New was foreseen and announced in the Old? And would this prove the truth of the New? Instead, it raises suspicion to say that on the basis of elements from the Old Testament, purposely handpicked and elaborated, one could set up a kind of iron-cast film script, where the acts, gestures and words of the characters and whatever happens are set as if they were a film to shoot. In fact, while reading the New Testament, one may have the impression that Jesus and the others move and express themselves, like characters of a drama, according to the script written by the prophets and referred to continuously. But Jesus was too much himself to restrain his behavior within the dramaturgical restrictions of a character. Even with respect to the religion of the fathers and that of the gentiles and others, he was thinking, acting, expressing himself with such liberty that he irritated and scandalized those who needed a script to follow in order to feel they were acting properly and were

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justified in their roles. Jesus was free and unpredictable even to those who followed him. While he is engaged in a lofty discourse on the apostolic mission, he sees a child who was crying because he was thirsty. He interrupts his discourse and says: “He who brings a bowl of fresh water for this child will have his reward.”17 When the crowd squashed him, he asks, “Who touched me?” It was a woman. She had barely touched the fringe of his mantle, hoping that would be enough, as in fact it was, so that she could get well from her illness. The language of Jesus was a true language dealing with ongoing mundane and extraordinary facts. It is this particular and concrete way of operating and expressing himself that one needs to look into if [9] one is to understand the personality of Jesus and the spirit of his teaching, holding back as much as possible the doctrinal impatience that, in its eruptions, often ends up burning or polluting the data of the reality itself of Jesus. In a rather difficult time for humanity and in particular for us,18 my mother wrote me a letter to encourage me in her own way, concluding with: “Knowing that we cannot do our will, let us try to at least do the will of God, even when, in times like ours, we don’t know anymore what the will of God is.” In my reply I agreed with her but claimed that it was equally necessary for us to try to exercise, within our limits, our own will. Otherwise, where would our freewill and our very being end up? We should then claim with Plotinus “if by chance we happen to be nothing else but nothingness, it would be so because nothing seems to be left for our freewill.”19 I went on with a short lecture on metaphysics, which led my mother to ask me when we next met: “But you, my son, do you really understand these things you write? I read the Gospel, and Jesus spoke of eternal truths, which I understand, whether I understand them well or not. Even the apostles understood him and they, who were by no means literate people, followed him. But you....” I promised her to try to write in such a way that I would understand something. As for the existence, she explained, it was there even when there was no freedom; and then, it was more perceptible and weighed more, but when we were free of needs, miseries, suffering, and were subject to no one, it was light and pleasurable to live. “Is it not so?”

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The invitation or even the challenge to spell out his own thought on the subject was addressed to my father, who was smiling in a sly but affectionate way. He wasn’t interested in religious matters and didn’t even go to church. He let her, “the prophetess,” take care of the issue of God, from which he got away, more or less, by saying: “If it were true that no [10] leaf would move without God’s will, and if everything were in His hands—life, our minds, this very opening of my mouth to say the things I am saying—we couldn’t do anything, be it good or bad, that wouldn’t be by his own will. Why, then, worry ourselves? The wind blows and the leaves shake in spite of everything? If truly God existed, and if He truly wanted what’s good for us, why all these superfluous bows? He would be offended if we were to treat Him as if He didn’t know or wasn’t able to do certain things or as if He wouldn’t want to help us.” My mother counterargued saying that it was not God but we who would feel the need to pray, as babies cry when they suffer or fear something. Much more radical was Baruch Spinoza. He considered even man’s pretense to exist a blasphemy. According to him, God alone “IS” and He is precisely that Absolute whom he called Deus sive natura.20 And what about human freedom? It is exercised when we choose slavery because of the love and fear that tie us to the “natural and divine law... [that is] almost innate in us” and inscribed in the hearts of all beings, which are nothing but “modes of being” of the Divine Absolute Being. In his Theologico-Political Treatise, our philosopher shows that the psalmist offered himself joyously to the state of enslavement to God in his “new hymn,” which was placed on his lips by the same God: “You, who wanted no sacrifice or oblation, opened my ear, you asked no holocaust or sacrifice for sin; then I said, ‘Here I am! I am coming!’ In the scroll of the book am I not commanded to obey your will? My God, I have always loved your law from the depths of my being.”21 It is extremely important to notice the fact that God does not accept “sacrifices or oblations” anymore. He even shows later on, in Isaiah, disgust towards sacrifices. The philosopher took advantage of this to deliver a blow to the idolatry of religious “ceremonies,” which he viewed as means used by this or that nation to realize their social and political agendas, so that “none of them should

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pretend to be chosen by God to the exclusion of others”22 (one may infer from such a statement the reason why the philosopher was chased out of the synagogue and [11] excommunicated23 by the Church). Besides, according to Spinoza, Deus sive natura pierces the ears of everybody—whether they want it or not, whether they know it or not, whatever the case may be—and hangs on them the earrings of the sacred fear, which is the beginning of wisdom. Many people don’t even notice it. In appearance, they don’t show any sign. In the mirror of their personal lives, they don’t distinguish between what is vain and what is futile. They are, thus, even more slaves of the divine Omnipotence because they are deprived of the consciousness of being such. Moses could ask Yahweh not to do things which His divine heart would, in the moment of mercy, regret. He asked and he knew it would be granted. The Pharaoh lacked this privilege. He had the power over Egypt but not over his own heart, which the Omnipotent had hardened in order to display His tremendous divine greatness. In contrast to the psalmist, who exultantly sacrificed his own freedom to comply with the divine will, Jesus did not accept with joy the cup of his own sacrifice; nor did he show any liking for ending up being crucified on Golgotha, where he felt abandoned by God. Some of the supporters of the “spontaneous and perfect obedience” would have gladly removed from the gospels the garden of olives and deleted the question shouted by the crucified Jesus: these being locations and moments in which one might say that Jesus demonstrated a faith that was weaker than the one he himself had brought to earth. The martyrs, chanting, faced martyrdom as a door open to eternal felicity in paradise. It is also known that Socrates, who drank lightheartedly the cup of poison after his condemnation, sounded as if he was drinking a pleasant medicine with which one would be healed from every evil and led into a world of ideal goodness and endless wisdom. Buddha thanked the one who gave him poisonous mushrooms to eat as a way for him to enter nirvana. Jesus does not have the tranquility of the philosophers, of the Buddhas, or of his own followers. He “has nowhere to lay his head,”24 right from [12] the beginning. He is agitated. He sweats in Gethsemane. He confides that he is sad to death. He asks his disciples to help him in his prayer. But

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these, discouraged and exhausted, fall asleep. Jesus falls prostrated on the ground imploring: “Abba, Father, everything is possible for you. Take this cup away from me.”25 Seeing there is nothing else left to do, he concludes by saying: “But let it be as you, not I, would have it.”26 Since then, and even before, for always and in all cases where nothing can be done except to submit to the will of God, there are a few drops of that bitter cup.

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[13]

CHAPTER II. FEAR

A great philosopher, but terribly sententious, held the view that the unhappy consciousness of the world,27 that has originated in the split within itself into a dominating consciousness and a servile consciousness through the various individual and collective alienations, would not be able to find its own essence and spiritual reconciliation until it had overcome its “absolute fear” of the senselessness of destiny with the warmth of love. That is, a love that leads to see in the very same destiny a father, not a capricious and cruel tyrant, and in us children, not submissive or rebellious servants, victims or accomplices of an absurd power. Fear among the apostles? Yes, there was fear along with questions, doubts, needs, and hopes, while they still were following that same Jesus who seemed to find pleasure in prodding the religious fanatics and their meanness. These fanatics were scandalized when they heard that the Law, the Sabbath, and the Temple were made for man, not man for them. The disciples probably enjoyed themselves picking ears of corn in a cornfield and refreshed themselves on the day when the faithful in the observance of the Hebraic law would, as they still do nowadays, not even take an umbrella if it rained.28 But when Jesus announced that it was time for him to face Jerusalem with all that was waiting for him there, Peter took him aside and told him to forget about going to Jerusalem, where the worst would happen as foreseen. “Get behind me, Satan!”29 Jesus reprimanded him. The fisherman was stunned as not long before Jesus complimented him: [14] “You are a happy man! Because it was not flesh and blood that revealed this to you but my Father in heaven,”30 and he was assigned to hold the keys of heaven. What has he said that was so serious to transform a God-inspired man into an infernal presence? It is human to think of the people we love and of ourselves when we are about to face risks. But Jesus insisted: “You are an obstacle in my path, because the way you think is not God’s way but man’s.”31 It was natural, very natural, for Peter to think and express his human concerns rather than his divine concerns. He was then all human, especially in his worries and in his fears. He

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knew he had compromised himself, even his soul, with Jesus. But right then, with these keys of the kingdom of heaven, spiritual keys, yes, but clinking and visible to the evil-intentioned people, he was justified in fearing also for his own life. His thought had reverted to the question that Jesus had earlier asked his disciples: “Who do people say the Son of man is?”32 And then: “But you... who do you say I am?”33 Why did Jesus ask these questions? Did he not know and did he not read hearts? What need did he have when he asked such questions? Perhaps he may, first, have asked himself the question: “Who am I?” Then, he has addressed the question to the others. Having received from Peter the desired answer, he may have been cheered and gratified. But then he was scandalized in hearing that human, very human, advice to avoid the destiny that was waiting for him in the Holy City. Jesus saw clearly. Peter has touched the wound with his finger.34 In him, there was a greater evil tempter than the one previously faced in the desert, and a whole humanity of flesh and bone, not just of spirit, was moaning—a humanity of an immense multitude of the poor, the afflicted, and the desperate, to whom the beatitudes of The Sermon on the Mount were liberally bestowed. Then, the humanity was urging and gripping the Son of man with the only sense that it could possibly have: its human sense. Like the time when he asked his disciples the question about himself and waited for the answer that he had desired to hear, Jesus waited for someone [15] to say: “Let’s go!” It was Thomas, the realist, who stood up to say it. He had courage, as it was later seen even after the death of Jesus. When the other disciples stayed hiding because of fear, he, instead, went outside in the open. He had courage, but most of all he loved Jesus. That is why he followed him despite the doubts and the questions that strained him. Thus, the messianic march set out towards Jerusalem. Arms? Later, two rusty swords will spring out which was worse than remaining completely defenseless. Jesus was afraid. In the holy script written with the help of the prophets, his anguish and premonitions will be called “announcements of the passion.”35 The first announcement has already been made.36 Peter was to pay for it. The second took place in Capernaum, where Jesus was

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asked to pay the toll, and the apostles discussed who was going to have the first place in the kingdom they would be conquering.37 The third announcement was evident with the disarming of the military forces of Jesus at the gate of Jerusalem.38 From the way he and his followers were treated during the march, that is, among mockery, stone-throwing, despite all the miracles performed everywhere by Jesus, one could tell that he would end up in the hands of the scribes, the Pharisees, the high priests, who would use any method to have him arrested and removed from amongst them. The fact that Jesus introduced himself as a Messiah may have induced people to think that it was a craziness that would be resolved in a joke that was to be condemned more than a blasphemy would. Upon hearing that he and his followers came from Galilee, the people would have laughed had they not witnessed those wonders that could not all be explained away as tricks or games of the devil, and had he not had a certain kind of charm and had he not captivated with what he was saying and what he was doing. The high priests were alarmed. They were afraid that he would be able to shake the people, the “rabble,” incite them to rebel and provoke the Romans who were ready to take issue with any incident and react harshly as rulers. [16] Jesus went with his disciples to spend the night on the Mount of Olives, where he used to spend the night in the open air. The high priests could not forbid him to enter Jerusalem. The people received him waving olive and palm branches. But who truly was he? One who was possessed by the devil? A prophet? Was he really the Messiah? What novelty did he bring? “This is my commandment: love one another, as I loved you.”39 Like the voice rising from the burning bush on Mount Horeb, Jesus affirms: I am! That is, his being is one with God. God is love through Jesus, and when, in turn, we love one another our being in God and God’s being in us become realized. Jesus could say to himself and to each one of us: I love, therefore I am. Thanks to him, our being “children of God” is revealed to us, and thus we can realize, beside our humanity, our divine identity through and by means of love. There was the last supper. The great fear invades the apostles. Jesus notices it. He tries to comfort them: “Do not let your

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hearts be troubled40... There are many rooms in my Father’s house41... I am going now to prepare a place for you, and after I have gone and prepared you a place, I shall return to take you with me; so that where I am you may be too. You know the way to the place where I am going.”42 The apostles must have looked into each other’s faces silently. As usual, Thomas cut in: “Lord, we do not know where you are going; so how can we know the way?”43 Jesus responded: “I am the way, the truth, and the life;”44 and also: “If you know me, you know my Father too.”45 Then Philip requested with extreme candor as if Jesus had the Father in his pocket: “Lord, let us see the Father and then we shall be satisfied.”46 “‘I have been with you all this time, Philip,’ said Jesus to him ‘and you still do not know me? To have seen me is to have seen the Father...’”47 Then Philip and the others must have turned instinctively around, looking to see on Jesus some visible sign of the Father and of the place where to end up going to. They did not think of looking into themselves. Jesus spoke of himself but, as he often used to do, he involved the others and identified himself in the others, identifying them in [17] himself. Each one of us is an alter Christus. An extreme case would be a “poor Christ,” who is, thus, “the way,” that is, he moves on a road, originating from who knows where, not that he came all by his own will into the world, but he was brought by a superior power and by other wills foreign to his own, all of which have decided even his own birth. Each one of us reaches himself coming from infinity and goes along,48 becomes then “the road” and “the life,” and follows the sign of “truth” that we, nonetheless, do not know well whether it is a despotic destiny, a fatherly destiny, or something else. The apostles sensed Jesus as having a certain anxiety, when he unexpectedly left the table and started washing their feet. Peter joked saying: “You shall never wash my feet!”49 The disciples did their best to sadden him with exaggerated confessions of faith. Peter made a show with his being ready to follow him until death. The others professed to have then understood and to have believed that he truly “came from God.”50 Jesus asked Peter—with a smile not mentioned in the gospel—to wait and calm down until the rooster crows; and to the others: “Listen, the time will come, in fact it has

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already come, when you will be scattered, each going his own way and leaving me alone.”51 Job, who dared to interrogate the Creator over why the innocents suffered and perished while the worst crooks enjoyed themselves despite all principles of justice, had friends gathered around him to console him. They asked him mockingly if he participated in “God’s council” before the creation of the universe. Well, yes. In some mysterious way, Job and we must have been virtually present in the divine mind that presided over that council of super-celestial omnipotence and omniscience. Then, there was nothing in the abyss of nothingness, a time when the Divine Love has, in that beginning of all beginnings, given us the ideal possibility to choose between being and not being by asking each one of us: “Do you want to be?”52 From the fact that we do exist, we deduce that our answer was positive. While we are underway, [18] in the very long flight through the nights of the unconscious, we forgot that because we were in the middle of cosmic events and world events that were entrapped here and there in the wings of the deep memory of the soul, almost like pieces of dreams that were mistakenly taken by the fanciful for reincarnations. This is not, though, without a good deal of truth because of the fact that to be here and now, one has to live all kinds of realities, thus justifying the statement Homo quodammodo omnia est (man is somehow everything) according to which the individual repeats in his development the evolution of the species and even the universe.53 To Karl Marx, there was, even in the atom, a kind of arbitrariness. A precious “deviation” from the universal laws of mechanics through which he could see, as written in his doctoral dissertation, the principle of human liberty.54 On the other hand, there was also a Church father who discovered in nature the free leap of prayer and chant by all beings in response to the invitation to exist addressed to us by the Creator. Regarding this point, many contrasting philosophical and religious views agreed that in essence we are the true artisans of our destiny.55 But the matter is debatable. The original question that we were asked to answer, while we were a nothing in nothingness, continues to emerge in us, which is a sign that until now the question has not been completely answered. This question is usually

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asked in the form of the dilemma “To be or not to be?” a question that was asked by Parmenides56 in philosophy and by Shakespeare in Hamlet.57 Clamor-less and silent, the dilemma underlies our daily lives in the uncertainty of existence that one would not know well whether it is true reality, painful or joyful, or it is deception in dream and appearance that fades away continuously by itself. In short, one continues to live suspended between being and non-being with what I would call perennial philosophy of the perhaps, of the feared, of the desired, of the probable or possible;58 in short, of that third term which Aristotle committed the error of omitting from the [19] Logic, but had to admit in the Psychology,59 the Poetics,60 and the Metaphysics,61 where the pathos and the living reality of passion reign sovereign over the principle of the category of passivity, where both action and passion coexist in one reality. At the historic level and facing the dilemma of being and non-being, our West has, generally speaking, opted since antiquity with Parmenides for being, for the will to exist, to act, to do, to live perhaps beyond the limits of the time and space of the world. Instead, the Orient has chosen, particularly with Buddha, the non-being, the non-doing, and the non-willing of anything but Nirvana, the “marvelous abyss of our Non-being anymore.” Parmenides imagined to reach, while riding on the chariot of the Sun, accompanied by young girls of shining beauty, the gate of the great dilemma, where a goddess would take his hand and invite him to choose between the well “rounded” truth of being and the confused trails of thought of the other horn of the dilemma.62 He made his choice with triumphant assurance. The sophists,63 however, who were skeptical about the existence of the gods and our relationship with Heaven, doubted whether one could succeed this way in picking within or outside us the fruit of being that would not seem to be recognizable, expressible, or communicable. They thought that in all matters, there must be a measure of humanity and civility, essentially congenial to us that would dispense us from pretending to have, or be able, to disturb the Olympus at every step we make on earth. They said “measure,” métron, meter, palm, or foot, which does not mean centrality of man in the universe, as some compilers of the histories of

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thought do interpret it. Different from the sophists were the pessimists—among whom the closest to us is Arthur Schopenhauer64—who deny the very possibility of human and civil measure of existence. They attack heaven and proclaim, as the philosopher just-mentioned has already done: “Creation is a folly without meaning, due to the recklessness of the Creator... It is good that [20] we unanimously liberate ourselves from Him by re-entering non-being.” The ultimate pessimist, who thought that he had found The Absolutely true negative meaning of the world and the adequate solution of its meaninglessness, was wary, however, of giving with his suicide the green light to universal suicide. He was living in the terror of plagues, contagion, and death. At night he used to jump out of his bed at every rustle, ready to shoot with his pistols. A pessimist, no less radical and whom Jesus carried on his shoulders, was Qoheleth,65 “son of David, king of Jerusalem.”66 This one burns existence right in the beginning by declaring: “Vanity of vanities,... All is vanity!”67 According to him, there is “nothing new under the sun” at all and “foolishness is in the heart of man.”68 Battled between boundless avidity for richness and power, and the consciousness of the vanity of these, he came up, from time to time, with statements of wisdom similar to the pauses of throwing up that some patrician Romans used to give themselves between one state of excessive satiety and another. He concluded with the invitation to fear God and observe His commandments: a grand finale similar to the standard homage to the dictator and the party that the Russian actors under Stalin used to give on stage at the closing of the play. I suppose that Jesus would have removed Qoheleth from the Bible. Or, surely, he would have left it among the books of Wisdom69 just to direct the choir of the foolish, whose voices prod in unison the so-called “codex of the impious.” To Jesus, all days are blessed and are always new under the sun. The sun itself, as Heraclitus has said it, “is always new.”70 And we too are new every time we wake up. An infinite number of cells renew themselves continuously. Spiritually, we are even richer with endless novelties. Jesus loved humanity. Where Qoheleth sees only vanity, where Buddha sees pain and death,

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and the philosopher sees senseless stupidity, Jesus perceives life and the meaning of a passion that is both [21] human and divine: a passion of love, at times overwhelming, capable of creating a hell, in addition to a purgatory and a paradise, but it unites us in a perennial communion to infinity. Jesus chose to be man to the end. He extended the measure of humanity and civility in doing things beyond the limits set in Greece, where Socrates believed himself to be made for the law, not the law for him. Jesus extended that measure to the reign of God, with himself being the “Son of man.” He confronted, “with open eyes,” the pain of the world, identifying himself with whoever was suffering the most. He did not escape, as Buddha did, to confine himself within the little fortress of the cult of himself, “free” from the impulses of the flesh, the heart, the mind, reserving for the others the detached “compassion” of the enlightened sage who, while standing above men and gods from the high bank of the river of lives, waits to see the corpses of everybody pass by. Jesus meets the others and offers himself to their service. He exalts life even in the little things, in the little Lamb that gets lost, in the lily that shines with a beauty that is greater than that of King Solomon, in the tree that needs to be helped with a hoe and fertilizer so that it bear fruits; and why not in a good meal as well? He knew that the biblical statement “Better a dish of herbs when love is there than a fatted ox and hatred to go with it” was correct. Crazy Francis of Assisi enjoyed a crust of bread received in charity and eaten on a rock lighted by the sun, near a little stream with clear fresh water, even though it was not, properly speaking, the Wedding of Cana with the good wine of the vine of men followed by that excellent wine of the miracle. Over that joy, Jesus preferred, instead, the pleasure of staying at peace with his Brother Scribes and Pharisees, suspending the disputes that certainly did not lack within the large Hebraic family; particularly with him who was able to disrupt even the sacred hours of meal, given his being allergic to the observance of the Sabbath [22] and the usual ablutions before sitting at the table, not to speak of his tendency to receive every intruder needing to be helped by being healed from some evil. It should not be surprising to see him be taken for a heavy drinker because he enjoyed eating and, in

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particular, drinking. The fact that he had a special liking for staying with the sinners raised suspicion. But he, as he said it, came to the world for these, not for the saints. Everybody knows that with the sinners there is always better food than with the saints and the prophets. Also, there is a further reason to be happy among them, especially if there is, along with being served and cheered up with perfumes, one of those women who come from a place of prostitution rather than from a temple, one who pursues him continuously since Galilee. From one of those has come out the beauty of seven demons. But were the fasting, the penance and the corporal and spiritual hygiene important for him and his disciples because these sinners could corrupt them? If we were to ask him this question, he would have responded saying that the people among whom he was mixing and operating, such as publicans and prostitutes at their head, will precede all others on the way to salvation. “And would this be the Messiah?”71 murmured the people in Jerusalem. The dissent among the people was increasing. The possibility of justifying and defending him in the Sanhedrim was continuously diminishing, a place where, nonetheless, he did have a friend or a sympathizer. The majority of the priests, scribes, and Pharisees took advantage of the situation. The guards were asked to arrest him, but the guards did not move. Undisturbed, he used to move away in the evening to the Mount of Olives, where he had his little headquarters, and return early in the morning to go to the temple, where people were waiting for him. The scribes and Pharisees brought him, one day, a young woman and said: “Master, this woman was caught in the very act of committing adultery, and Moses has ordered us in the Law to condemn women like this to death by stoning. What have you to say?”72 Jesus understood their intention [23] to corner him. If he said “Stone her!” he would have been arrested by the guards for having committed the crime of offending the Roman law that prohibited the Jews to carry out capital executions that should be decided by the Romans themselves and carried out by their own means. If he said “Do not stone her!” he himself would have been killed by lapidation by the fanatics of the Mosaic law, despite Rome and the guards, as it eventually was the case with Stephen,

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the first Christian martyr. Bent down and writing with his finger on the sand, Jesus must have asked his divine Father, almost as if he were joking: “Father, what would you say?” He stood up and said: “If there is one of you who has not sinned, let him be the first to throw a stone at her.”73 A grumbling followed, then a deep silence. The stones started falling from their hands. The eldest, being the most attached to the Mosaic Law, had given up first. The others followed. Jesus bent again. He must have written with the finger on the ground only one word addressed to the Father: “Thanks!” He said to the woman, who was left alone: “Where are they? Has no one condemned you? ‘No one, sir’ she replied. ‘Neither do I condemn you,’ said Jesus ‘go away and don’t sin anymore.’”74 Since that time, Jesus must have liked his association with that kind of people who demonstrated themselves to be greater than Moses himself. On the other hand, the people were grateful to their son who, with his own response, has opened the way to a superior law, not yet written nor could it possibly be written, but certainly signed and alive in the heart of man. Maybe people have hoped that just as these stones fell from the hands of men, so the Omnipotent would, He too, let fall into nothingness the rock of destiny suspended over everybody? Jesus must have prayed for us. He also must have seen, while the stones were falling from the hands of the elders and others, how the opening of the door of a mystery of love and light was by far more important than the stairs between earth and heaven that Jacob had seen.75 But then, that door seemed to be closing again. Not a few showed to be almost sorry for having let the stones fall from their hands, with which they should have buried under [24] the same heap both the adulteress and himself. And to say that that moment would have been a good beginning, it would be so only if the will of God was there. But truly, the Omnipotent did not give the impression as being ready to release His tremendous boulder. Maybe He detested following the example of man. In the Bible, no less than in the texts of other religions, the human is despised, distrusted, and shunned. “A curse on the man who puts trust in man,”76 one can read there. The Creator must have regretted having created him,77 and that was almost his only error in Creation. Jesus took upon himself all the guilt of the human beings. Thanks

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to him, says Saint Augustine, that the presumed divine error and the sin of Adam became felix culpa (fortunate sin),78 the occasion for the Creator to realize Himself79 in man and for man to realize himself in God in view of a greater expansion of love and goodness, both divine and human. In reality, that tiny falling in love, or tiny harmony, between Jesus and his people culminating in front of the temple with the absolution of the adulteress, was at once interrupted. Jesus would eventually address the Father directly, praying Him to let go into nothingness the bulk of condemnation that was hanging over man: “Father, forgive them; they do not know what they are doing.”80 “Surely! he could have continued but did not say anything more in that painful moment of prayer. Could those, who do nothing but your divine will, consider themselves guilty? Maybe the Pharaoh was the master of his own heart. Why have You hardened it for him? And now, why do you harden and stupefy the hearts of our people? What sense did it have sending Moses to the Pharaoh, when You on the other hand made it such that the Pharaoh would not pay attention to him? And now, what sense is there in bringing me here among brothers if you have already predetermined that instead of listening to me and understanding what I say, they make fun of me and crucify me? What use were the miracles of Moses if You already wanted and knew that they would be in vain? And now, [25] for what were the miracles done by me? Omnipotent Father, don’t abandon us.” As for the trial of Jesus, Herod in a simple way and Pilate in an energetic and spectacular way thought of resolving the matter in a kind of farce that would satisfy the Jews, amuse the crowds, and leave to the victim the possibility of being left alone at the end. Herod wanted to meet Jesus. He had heard about him, particularly from his administrator, the wife of whom, Joanna, was with Susanna and Mary the Magdalene among the disciples of the Nazarene. He noticed that Jesus would not pay attention to him and to the high priests who were humming morosely with no intention of taking the matter seriously. It was a joke and a laughing scene. Then, Herod, the “wolf” as he was called, turned to insulting and mocking Jesus. He ordered his mercenaries to dress him up with the dazzling cloak of mad people and returned him to

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Pilate who had sent him.81 He, Pilate, would, as a good Roman expert in the massacre of Galileans, take care of Jesus. He, in fact, has already demonstrated his violence during the slaughter in the temple that Herod still remembers as a good Jew. Pilate, who had the power to kill, would also satisfy the high priests and the others who wanted this poor “Christ” killed at any cost. Pilate set up the final blow and appreciated at the same time the humor of the joke. First, he tried to get rid of Jesus—letting the Jews do what they wanted. He said to them: “Take him yourselves and try him by your own law.” But they answered: “We are not allowed to put a man to death.”82 Thus, they have condemned him to die. They were only waiting for the secular arm of Rome to execute their sentence. Pilate immediately became certain of the innocence of Jesus. It was useless to tell and repeat it to every high priest and everyone in the crowd that had seen no reason for him to condemn Jesus. Not only no one did listen to him, but they even threatened him. “So, you are a king then?”83 Pilate asked Jesus during the dialogue, not so much as an interrogatory, that he had [26] with him. “‘It is you who say it’ answered Jesus. ‘Yes, I am a king.’”84 Pilate was moved. Jesus must have appeared to him like an innocent big boy who plays the king of a celestial kingdom at the edge of a precipice. What could he have written to Rome? Dear Caesar, here we have someone, called Jesus and known as the Christ, who is being tried. The priests, who claim to be your subjects, assure us that this man is an agitator of the people of the region extending from Galilee to Judea. The man says: “love one another, as I have loved you.”85 Love your enemies. This is exactly what he says to his people, to love even us Romans. The big agitator teaches to give you, Caesar, what is due to you, and even to pray for your good health. He healed with the simple power of thought the young servant of one of our centurions who was seriously sick at his house. He did not ask for anything in return, not even to leave our religion, that is, according to the Jewish people, made up of false gods and liars. Similarly, he let a Canaanite woman, whose daughter he healed, go her way. To ask him what religion he belongs to, that of his fathers or of the others, he seems to respond: “To all if they bring us to the love that unites us; to none

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if they divide us and separate us from one another.” If people were ever to listen to him and follow him, the columns that uphold the vices by which the world is governed would fall. The arms would fall from the hands of our legionaries. It would be the end. It would be better that he die, as his own kind want it. Tomorrow, being a feast, I have to release in your name a criminal, and I will propose to the Jews to choose between him and Barabbas. This one, yes, he is a well known agitator against us and a killer. I said to my wife, who said she had a dream indicating the innocence and sanctity of Jesus: “Would you bet that they will ask me to release the assassin?” Pilate didn’t even think of writing to Rome. There was no need to do so. He was hoping that the farce and the show would end. The soldiers were amusing themselves with reciting, as in a play, the parts of the subjects of that [27] king, a play which they have concocted on the spot as a joke. The show culminated at the moment, when Pilate presented Jesus in the front of the stage with the words: “Ecce homo!” The expected laughter was not there, nor the applause. The cruel “crucify him!”86 rose from the crowd. Paradoxically, it would have been even worse for Jesus if the whole thing was resolved in a prank. In that moment, in which almost all of his followers vanished for fear, his best supporters and upholders of his gospel were exactly those who took him so seriously that they wanted him dead at any cost. Concerning death, Jesus abhorred even the name of it. He alluded to it in various ways, but he rarely named it. Of Lazarus, he says “He is sleeping, and I am going to wake him up.”87 Similarly of the daughter of the chief of the Synagogue Jair he says: “The little girl is not dead, she is asleep.”88 The same occurs with the son of the widow of Naim: “‘Young man, I tell you to get up’. And the dead man sat up and began to talk.”89 Now, the crucial moment has arrived for him. To Peter, who had pulled the sword and injured the ear of the servant of the high priest, Jesus, by this time arrested, said to replace the weapon in its sheath.90 He confided to him saying that, if he wanted, he could have asked his divine Father for more than a dozen of legions of angels who, by then, were ready to descend and help him out. Here, a typically human hope rises in him: that in the last moment, there would be

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the great dramatic turn of events: A divine counter-order, similar to the one that had stopped, right on time, the hand of the patriarch brandishing the knife over the son.91 But the angels did not stop the hands that crucified him. He must have then feared never to have been who people had thought he was. He must have thought with the psalmist, the prayer of whom he then made his own, that he was “more a worm than man, scorn of mankind, jest of the people”92 which everyone made fun of saying: “He put his trust in God; now let God rescue him if he wants him”93 The question of the mocking people became then his own. “For the parched throat [28] and the tongue that is stuck to his palate,”94 he put up with the vinegar, that he had first refused, brought to him in a sponge on a stick. He must have gone over the psalm of human desperation,95 from top to bottom, while the others continued to insult and mock him with words and gestures as found in the sacred script written by the prophets. Speaking of proverbs, all the psalms finish in glory. That of the prayer of Jesus on the Golgotha is reversed: It must have had the beginning at the end, where it is said that all “is work of God,” and the conclusion at the beginning, where the question asked by the Crucified: “My God, my God, why have you deserted me?”96

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[29]

CHAPTER III. THE WOLF AND THE LAMB

This is why we continue to go to church, even when we don’t know anymore with which of the many names used in religion we should address the mysterious presence. Such a presence makes, at certain moments, its presence felt among us even when we don’t succeed in reciting any creed. We mutter, instead, the usual “why?” of the world and of ourselves with the same obsession perceptible through the repeated holy syllable “OM”97 of the Oriental rites. It is comforting to remember that the poor man of Assisi used to spend whole nights “crying helplessly until the morning and repeating continuously ‘Oh my God, Oh my God,’ and nothing else.”98 One can also understand the drama that for certain priests it must be to face the altar with certain perplexities and a definite lack of faith unless these have the ease of those many who flaunt being “practitioners, not believers.” Among these, there are not just a few pastors in the New World to whom whether God exists or not, it doesn’t matter. Paul VI has already confided that the faith in the genuine giving oneself up was a rare thing. The new faith is “testable, extremely testable,” often to the limit of desperation, while it is considered by Saint John of the Cross in his Dark Night to be a step short of perfection. [30] On the 2nd Sunday of the Advent, one can hear in church, at the opening to the Liturgy of the Word,99 the prophet Isaiah announce: “The wolf lives with the lamb, the panther lies down with the kid; the calf and the lion cub feed together with a little boy to lead them... The lion eats straw like the ox. The infant plays over the cobra’s hole; the young child puts his hand into the viper’s lair. They do not hurt, no harm, on all my holy mountain, for the country is full of knowledge of Yahweh...”100 But until that day comes, the beasts will continue to tear each other to pieces. The lambs, the kids, the calves, the chicken will continue to fall every day in great numbers, slaughtered and devoured by the most voracious of all animals: man, who, unlike the lion, will probably never settle for feeding himself with hay. With the community you repeat in church: “Happy are those who listen to the word of the Lord.” You observe the necks in line before you,

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leading to the bright shape of the celebrant and the playful little altar boys near the altar. You raise your eyes towards the Crucifix, there in the end, where everything seems to conclude in a mystery of pain. You turn around pretending you’re looking for someone, but in reality you turn around to see if there is a sign of the happy day announced by the prophet. The faces do certainly not promise days different from those that continue to be lived the same way since time immemorial. From the reading of the Gospel, a man springs out, half naked, with a rope tied around his waist, shouting: “Brood of vipers...”101 “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is close at hand.”102 He is John the Baptist, a figure who, although from the Old Testament, announces the New. His intransigence must have cost him his head in the evil palace of Herod. He says that someone who is more powerful than he will come to baptize “with the Holy Spirit and fire.”103 In the sermon, the priest makes resound, amplified at the highest volume, the voice of the prophet who shouts in the desert. He screams “Repent!” so loudly that the pillars shake. The people protect their ears by covering them with their hands. The shrieks of the orator now invade the desert that once was faced [31] by Moses. Compare the liberation of the Jewish people from Egyptian slavery with the liberation of humanity from sin. Jesus is the new Moses. The high volume of that voice makes you sick. You cease to think of Moses the prophet, the legislator and leader of the people of God. You take him to be the dictator who inflicted himself and his people with the Egyptian terror. He began his career by killing an Egyptian and intervened arrogantly between the Jews who were fighting among themselves. Sniffing the scary traits of this man, the Jews reacted saying: “Who made you a chief and a judge over us? Do you want to kill us as you killed the Egyptian?”104 Between terroristic raids and flights back to Median, where Moses and his associates used to take refuge,105 Moses and his associates compromised and in the end destroyed the good relations between Jews and Egyptians that had lasted since the time of Joseph. That was the time when peace and harmony were established not only between the two nations but also among the members of the same Jewish family, the brothers by whom Joseph was sold as a slave. That the actions by Moses and

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his associates were unacceptable even to the Jews themselves are confirmed by the Bible, where one reads about the scribes who clearly said, when they met Moses and his brother Aaron: “May the Lord see and judge you: you have caused us to be hated in the eyes of the Pharaoh and his servants. By doing so, you have incited them to mistreat us more and more, to the point of killing us.” Moses seemed to have understood. He reflected on whether he should or should not continue. The voice of Yahweh prevailed, coinciding with the uncontrollable and dictatorial ambition of Moses himself. The natural phenomena, such as the desert wind or the Khamsin that, with its dense clouds of sand obscuring the sky, the red discoloring of the Nile by means of certain seaweeds, the seasonal arriving of the locust and other plagues passed for punishment by God against Egypt. These impressed the Jews but were more or less normal phenomena to the Egyptians who knew well their own land and its climatic fluctuation. This, however, was not the case with the slaughter of [32] the firstborn males of men and animals, from the palace of the Pharaoh to the prisons, to the stables: a terroristic act with which Moses wanted to culminate the sequence of the so-called plagues that terrified Egypt. The ritual ruthlessness of the execution did not leave any doubt as to who the authors of the massacre were. The Pharaoh arranged to offer gold, silver and whatever Moses and his followers wanted, provided that they leave Egypt as soon as possible. But Moses had already ordered the Jews to pillage from the homes of their neighbors all what they could find of gold and silver. It was with gratefulness that the Egyptians let themselves be stripped, so horrific was their fear of Moses and even more so their desire to liberate themselves from him. They were even competing in offering what they possessed and, as the Bible reads, “in the eyes of the Egyptians, it was a gift conceded by the Lord to His people.”106 But in fact, this was also for the ties of affection between Egyptians and Jews. There must have been between people on each side hugs and cries because of the final separation. Not having yet completely left Egypt, and wishing to stay, the Jews said to Moses: “Why did you make us leave Egypt? Why didn’t you leave us work there in peace? Haven’t we perhaps said to you: it is better to stay and work in Egypt than to leave and die in the

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desert?”107 And slavery? The historians have finally found out that there had been no slavery in Egypt.108 It would suffice to read attentively the Bible to realize that the Egyptians and the Jews were next-door neighbors. It was the Egyptians who got rid of slavery, slavery to a kind of terrorism, while the Jews were trapped in a dictatorship that would transform them into a horde of plunderers during the long and excruciating forced march through the desert towards the mirage of a “promised land where milk and honey flow.”109 You were amusing yourselves with such thoughts in church during the homily when the preacher was making the trumpets of the Apocalypse110 shriek—the trumpets that he had already used in the mass of the previous Sunday, [33] for the opening of the liturgical year. Jesus appeared as the new Moses but by far more terrible than the Moses of the Exodus. The priest summed up the comparisons of Jesus with the Flood; with the thief who enters at night in a house while all are sleeping; with the master who ruthlessly punishes the slave who, scared by the harshness of the master, had preserved untouched the talent that had been given to him instead of investing it or depositing it in a bank and gaining some interest on it; and with the long awaited groom who, when finally arrived, slammed the door in the face of the poor virgins who had been found with extinguished torches. Carried away by the heat of the sermon, the priest was far away from asking himself what the God of love had ended up doing, He who is expected to protect and rescue His own creatures when the cataclysms strike; when his creatures are sleeping and vulnerable; when they are afraid of losing the little they have, guarding it so that they return it to the one who gave it to them; and when, during the long waiting, the oil that was feeding the lamps has been burned. In almost all religions and philosophies, there is this story of the guilty sleep of men and of the fact that only a few elect succeed to stay watchful and awake with their lamps lit in the right moment around the extremely awake and illuminated master: the Buddha who, with his doctrine, assures his disciples the conquest of a power superior to that of all gods; the philosopher who reprimands us for acting like sleepers, even when we look awake,

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ignorant of our running into the obvious truth, or logos, that he reveals; the master of the science of the mind who exhorts us to come out of the darkness of recklessness or individual and collective unconsciousness, in the slavery of which we toss between dreams and foolish behavior. About foolishness, recklessness and the wordly dream, the preacher of the lengthy speech of that Sunday of the Advent made the divine voice be heard loud and clear: “Here I am coming to you like [34] a thief! Happy is the one who stays awake so that he won’t be left naked and let his own shame be noticed!”111 It seemed that He had something against you, I mean you-me, obviously. It was impossible for you not to remember the full-moon night, a night of nudity, in chains, with earrings, spent on the beach. He was staring at you. He was seeing us all naked with the shame of the external appearance, running around, whirling, under the tubes of the strident trumpets of the angels, around the fig tree that was damned and dried up by Jesus. This fig tree, the preacher waved it in the face of the many, very many, trees conceited with leaves but were fruitless and taking up the vineyard of the Lord. The moral lesson was accepted. But the poor tree could have been saved. One can read in the Gospels that “the time of figs was not yet,”112 and Jesus knew it. He lived in a society of farmers, shepherds, fishermen, skilled craftsmen and others, who had daily contact with nature that Galilei would call a Book written directly by God before the very Bible. Agriculture is dominant in the discourses of Jesus who says: “I am the true vine and my Father is the vinedresser.”113 With him, the products of the earth, the bread and wine consumed on the altar and in dining halls replace the flesh and blood of the victims of the past. How then could Jesus commit the foolishness of cursing and drying up a tree guilty of not giving fruits, an expectation that was contrary to its nature, to give fruits out of season? To show that with faith one can move mountains? But it could have been sufficient for him, as he did on another occasion, to compare the faith that could move mountains and valleys with the seed of mustard. As a matter of fact, when moving away from the gospels of Matthew and Mark to that of Luke, one will notice a Jesus who, while still consistent with the good common sense and his own true

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personality and manner of expression, relates: “A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard, and came looking for fruit on it but found none. He said to the man who looked after the vineyard, ‘Look here, for three years now I have been coming to look for fruit on this fig tree, and finding none. Cut it down; why should it be taking up the ground?’ ‘Sir,’ the man replied ‘leave it one more year and give me time [35] to dig around it and fertilize it with manure: it may bear fruit next year; if not, then you can cut it down.”114 Unfortunately, the tendency ‘to knock the tar out of’ a Biblical passage115 in order to make a sermon would lead to missing the meaning of things and the reality of ourselves. I don’t mean here to say that one has to reject the homilies, the commentaries, and the theological, pedagogical, allegorical or other discourses, but one should not forget that if these digress outside the concrete reality of the subject being addressed, and do not take in consideration the reality of our attention span, they will become nothing but a “flash in the pan.” This was the case with Saint Thomas Aquinas who, with exemplar humility, had in the end to abridge his own Summae of theology.116 From the parable of the fig tree that has been helped with labor and fertilizers to produce fruit, one can draw out a very comprehensible and sound teaching. One can recognize in the Madonna advocata nostra117 the farmer, the priest, and the saint; and in the fertilizers, the grace. The tree is each one of us. It should give fruits with only the natural virtues, called “cardinal virtues.”118 Then, if with the fertilizing grace and the “theological” virtues it does not give fruits, it must truly be a wretch. On the contrary, the episode of the dried fig tree, given just to portray the Master of the vineyard in an arrogant act of omnipotence, can only inspire the crazy or the criminal to set a whole forest119 on fire with a match. In the sermon, the “Kingdom of God”120 is already close at hand, given to us as a threat by John the Baptist, has thwarted the happy day of the universal reconciliation of men and beasts, prophesied by Isaiah. The fig tree reappeared, but as a privileged tree that, germinating together with other plants, announces the coming of the summer, the season of the great sun, the sign that the Kingdom of God is at the doors of the temples. The priest concluded saying that not even Jesus knew the day and the hour

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of the immense ruin in which all would be accomplished “as if it were a flash of lightning darting from one pole of the universe to the other.” The priest appeared to have reached the consecration exhausted from the very hard words uttered. With the host in hand, [36] he had the serene resignation of one who stretched out to say: “Jesus, Jesus, all is here?” Then, at the moment of praying to Our Father who is in heaven121 and even higher up, we ask, after glorifying His name, that His will of doing good among us be done, and that we be given our daily bread for today, tomorrow and always. We pray Him to forgive us and to pity us, as we try to do with others. We finally ask Him not to lead us into the temptation of certain fruits that, if we collect and eat them, would damage both our stomachs and our lives. Besides the good relationship with Him, we ask Him, in short, to deliver us from evil... Once the Mass122 concludes with the holy benediction and while returning home, you could be thinking of the wolf of the prophecy. Perhaps also because of the slight remorse you may have for having eaten the Roman lamb in low spirits the evening before, during supper with friends. You find yourselves siding with the wolf and daydreaming over what the animal would have been able to say to the Omnipotent: “I am a poor beast in the obscure of your divine mysteries. But tell me, Lord, why did You want me to be the way I am, with this ferocious hunger and this muzzle? Why didn’t I come out of your hands an herbivore? What need would there be for waiting until the day announced by the prophet? You could have created us in such a way that I would live in peace with the lamb forever, the panther with the kid, the lion with the ox. How beautiful would it be to see a child play with the snakes! Instead, You have cursed these poor reptiles since the beginning. What is our fault if we don’t do anything other than live according to our nature? And man, why did You create him such to become so ferocious? Why did You want some of his species to be weak, naive, victims since birth; and some shrewd, pitiless, worse than any beast?” Well, do You know what I was thinking in church, while looking at the painting in which one can see a Jesus in tears of blood under a boulder in an olive

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grove? You already know all! I was thinking, You know, of our brother in the fable with the lamb drinking from the stream. [37] And You too stay up there, and Your discourse sounds like that of he who said: “Why do you soil my water?” to which the lamb answered: “How can I, Sir, soil the water of this marvelous stream of Creation if it is you who are upstream and all the water gushes and flows from your side towards, between, and beyond us?” You then, Sir, answer: “Someone from your species offended Me, and for that reason I am going to punish you!” What is left to all the victims is, then, to unite with that Christ, Your own beloved lamb, and offer themselves to You, hopefully “with joy!” Upon your return home, the only thing missing would be for your wife to ask you: “Why do you have such a long face?” Maybe the wolf has spoken for too long. Only one remark was left for the lamb on the same line of the one who uttered in the fable, which in its conciseness, void of any religious references, is full of insuperable smiling tragedy. On the other hand, sticking to the Greek proverb, great disgrace is deaf. Jesus did not even respond one word to the accusations by the high priests and the elders with a word. The others saw in his silence the usual fulfillment of the prophecy; of the servant who, “being mistreated and humiliated leaves himself like a lamb to be sheared and led to the slaughterhouse without saying a word.”123 It has been willed that Jesus be an extremely obedient and extremely docile slave of Yahweh until the end. One would say that in him the lamb would aspire to be devoured by the wolf, which he, not rarely seems to identify himself with. For example, Jesus throws apocalyptic menaces in the Old-Testament fashion, in a strident contrast with his own nature, his spirit, and his style. Was he perhaps a wolf disguised as a lamb, or rather a lamb in the skin of the wolf? But if he took sides with the stronger, why then was he found naked, scourged and laughed at more than the others in the hour of their nakedness and shame? And if, on the contrary, he was siding, as seems to be evident, with the weak—and he himself was weak—why did he attribute to himself so much [38] power and why did he threaten in that manner? How came he to ignore the day and the hour of the worst for the weak and the triumph of the Omnipotent if he was the living incarnation of that? Maybe

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the lamb felt he was already eaten by the wolf and, having become in it flesh and blood, was thinking of being able to look through the eyes and the mind of his devourer and look at things from above. He may have said to himself: “With me in him, he will feel satisfied and will not devour anybody. He will be good and amiable.” A dream? A hope? In the vision of the Apocalypse, the lamb has been given the privilege of opening the book of the destiny of all.

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[39]

CHAPTER IV. HEAVEN

“Heaven arms with love those whom It would not want to see destroyed... It arms without arms of war... He who loves loses every day... But the true victory belongs to the one who suffers. The other victories should be celebrated with a funeral rite.”124 This thought, taken from The Book of the Way and Virtue by Lao Tse, is of comfort to those who were, and continue to be defeated because of love. More particularly, it can help us understand that greatest of all the defeated for love, namely Jesus. In this respect, one can trace signs of his prophethood back to the China of the Book of the Way and Virtue, or simply The Book of Tao by Lao Tse, no less than to the Greece of the measure of the humanity of things125 and to other countries and cultures of the world as it is given to us to see during our journey in search of what is dear to our heart. Sublime is, in that thought, the tactful use of the “would,” the conditional used by Heaven, almost respectful of our freedom even when we choose ways other than the right ones. Certainly, the daily losses that one suffers along the path of love are striking. But they are losses that always enrich us, even until the complete final defeat of the one who, because of love, has already lost or, one may say, donated all of himself and gained at the same time more than that very same totality. True then is the statement by Lope de Vega126 that says “Love has only what it gives.” Thus, if you love, or even if you don’t, certain losses are preferable over victories, particularly when one encounters some [40] wrong roads and it is good then to correct one’s course. This advice is sensible not only for individuals but for nations as well. Among all the wars fought by Italy since its national unity to the present day—about a dozen in less than a century—the last one was crowned with a defeat that seems to have been providential. Thanks to such a defeat, Italy was—as a matter of fact like Germany and Japan—liberated from a sad regime and has since then joined the other democratic, more developed, nations. Beaten by Israel, Egypt has, thanks to Sadat, a brilliant statesman, and the gifts of the millenarian civilization of its people, succeeded in

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regaining what it had lost and gained, moreover, the respect of its fierce enemy. This was due to a wise administration of defeat. The unarmed and non-violent forces of the India of Gandhi beat, in their fight for the independence of their great Asian country, the armed forces of the British Empire. At this point, you may also allow yourself the pleasure of remembering to have set aside the Platonic dialogue “Crito” in favor of “civil disobedience”127 and non-violence, during the confusion of the Italian military forces during the last world-wide conflict. Then your little daughter Laura asked: “You, Italians, have declared war on the Americans and have lost. Why, have you, Dad, married Mom who is an American?” And you solemnly answered: “To continue losing, my dear child, but with love!” As for the Way of Heaven that has been revealed to us by Lao Tse, there are here at home, in the West, Rousseau and Kant who agree with him, though they may have not recognized themselves to be as such. The Way of Heaven is, in their opinion, harmony with the spontaneous natural goodness of man and with the moral imperative, in addition to being in harmony with “the ultimate goodness found on earth, being reason,... the touchstone of truth.” Schopenhauer did not think so,128 even though he claimed to be the disciple of Kant, the “European Master,” whose bust he kept on his desk near the statue of Buddha, the “Oriental Master” who is [41] surrounded by carved dogs. Moreover, one may find masters as well as disciples engaged arm-in-arm with Lao Tse despite the disagreements among themselves. There are, though, strange reversals in The Book of Tao. From the thought that Heaven arms us benevolently with love, one moves on to read about the opposite behavior: “Heaven treats the world with no humane feelings: It treats all as sacrificial watch-dogs. And the wise man who conforms to the heavenly commandments is cruel. The whole is like a bellows or a flute with infinite sounds, always empty but inexhaustible. The words and codes are inadequate and vain, and we are caught in the middle.”129 As for this thought and the other, we have used five of the many versions of The Book of Tao. All these versions became more or less arbitrary from the moment one broke the laces that kept together the little tables of bamboo or other wood on which the

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original text was written, assuming that such a text has ever existed. Perhaps it was Heaven itself that broke the laces and dispersed the tables like leaves falling from the vortex of a whirlwind so that the “Mystery of the Great Destiny,” from which all beings spring constantly and by which they are absorbed, remains a mystery. Or else, it was an elf that, to mock everything and everybody, left to each one the possibility to draw from the text, whose verses are shuffled without order, whatever one wants it to mean in terms of good or bad. Thus, one can read in The Book of Tao that, among other things, it is possible even at an elementary level of wisdom to laugh at everything. In one celebrated passage, even the importance of being stupid has been exalted. We know that there is no book on religion, philosophy, or science, where there is nothing that regards us, even without reaching the state of that extreme case of the individual who found himself inflicted by the symptoms of all the sicknesses described in the treatises of medicine he had found. With its One Thousand and One Nights,130 the Orient thrived in its infancy while it still was in the arms of its stupendous taleteller mother. [42] It extended from the islands of China and India to the Sea of Gela, known then as The New Land,131 and had Baghdad for the capital. The stories start with “In the name of God, the Beneficent and Merciful,” and have almost always good endings, that is, the reconciliation of all, even the monsters who, as soon as they are released from their sad witchcraft, become humane. There were in those tales people of all races and conditions: kings, princes, people of all arts, and from all parts of the world. The first Ulysses132 became for you133 Sindbad the Sailor.134 And Aladdin135 joined Giufa and Ali Baba136 even before Pinocchio,137 Snow White,138 Little Red Hood,139 and the Cat With Boots,140 You were dreaming of the “Open, Seasame!” and the magic lantern. Then came the holiday of March 19, the day in which you were chosen in your land141 to be Jesus,142 and you discovered the suffering and the great need of men for miracles. Thereafter, you shifted from the Orient of the One Thousand and One Nights to the West of the Puppet Opera, a West in which the nations were fighting with arms against one another. The world of that era was split into Christians and Saracens,143 elected children of the Lord

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and pagan “dogs,” children of the Devil, as was the attitude in the Old Testament, in the Middle Ages, and then among the nations. You became Roland144 who was capable of beating the “beasts” of the Valley of the Five Islands and the “Draunara,” a whirlwind, one that is now believed by some people in Sicily to be a monster that sweeps the earth with its long hair that flows from heaven, unless it holds on to its anger or its hair is “cut” and smashed onto the ground with a knife of magic formulas or strange short ejaculatory prayers that you must have recited more than once.145 Then, the Draunara is released in rain-pouring tears and returns to its place like a humane and normal person, as if he were coming out of a nightmare. Even when you were in your adult age and didn’t believe in formulas and rites, in Alabama you released, by these formulas and rites, the “phalanx of angels of death” of a tornado that was about to hit Birmingham where you had your little daughter hospitalized. Now, worse than The Book of Tao with broken laces and tablets [43] combined by sheer luck, heaven146 is—so people say— acting naughty endlessly, especially since it was helped by humanity itself in foiling the seasons, a humanity that no more thinks lucidly, neither when it is begged nor when it is cursed. “It’s Saint Peter’s fault who might have lost the keys147 given to him by Christ or who might have played ‘hide and seek’ with them,”148 your father said jokingly.149 With the loss of these keys, the good relationship that was established with God, the Lord, has ceased. Your mother was laughing. As for her Orient of the “One Thousand and One Nights,” he offered as an alternate account the story of his voyage prompted by the Tientsin issue,150 which made one more imagine than believe that he had accomplished in China as a soldier in the rifle regiment along with his detachment, He said that there was the land of the most flourishing agriculture in the world, a land full of hills to the south, “where they eat rice,” and the extensive planes to the north, along the Yellow river, “where they eat spaghetti.” The people, very courteous, follow one law since antiquity: “Do not do to others what you don’t want others do to you.”151 And for that reason, they respect and help each other in a civilized manner. The two Orients at home were not always in agreement. During the discussions, his Orient used

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to yield, when he, at times, came up with the witty remark to his wife: “You’re right! You, my dear, are always right, especially when you’re wrong.” And she used to conclude, as it was proper to leave for her the last word: “Do you believe that in saying so, you’re right?” It was like traveling throughout the whole world looking for something that was to be found in a corner of the house; or like discovering things that were far, very far away, without even leaving one’s own home land. Ulysses recognized, while waging wars far away, beyond distant lands and seas, the infinite sweetness and peace of the smoking chimneys of home that he had left. Einstein discovered constellations while seated at his desk with a pencil in his hand. Well, you’ve discovered in China the meaning of the funny stories of your father. As an appendix to the Zhuangzi,152 a store of stupendously wise short stories, where a dialectician of the [44] Ming-chia says: “I will leave today for the State of Yuhe, where I arrived yesterday.”153 As for the similarly-sounding joke at home, it regards the soldier of the rifle regiment who was gone one day for a mission from Monza and arrived in Rome a week before that day. Along the line of the Chinese-style paradoxes and an exaggerated form of the theory of relativity, one can untangle at once the enigma of identity and diversity, of the one who is high and the one who is low, and of the one who eats and the one who is eaten as described in the story of the wolf and the lamb, read at the Sunday service of the Advent.154 The most paradoxical of all such paradoxes is about Jesus who offered bread and wine during the Last Supper. They were at the same time his own flesh and blood, and he could eat and drink them with his disciples.155 Having left the Alpha and the Omega156 before the beginning of creation of the universe and beyond the end of all times, he came to earth, where he was already the Word157 since the beginning. He was certainly capable of saying that he was the vine of the grape tree that was planted and cultivated by the Heavenly Farmer, and at the same time, that he also was the juice of the bunch of grapes that we, his offshoots, offer and drink with him in brotherly human and divine communion. At the account of the paradox of paradoxes that he gave, the Jews became ironical: “What? This man wants to give us his flesh

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to eat?”158 Most of the other people left him in large numbers. From among the Churches that were born out of his revelation the Catholic and the Orthodox continued to celebrate the paradox of paradoxes.159 The others160 reduced it to mere symbolism or they simply abandoned it. This paradox is, though, more real than the reality of the things of ordinary daily transaction: the sign of the supreme Eucharist with which the essential communion of all beings is realized in this principle that is at the same time the actualization of the destiny of every being of all times, now and in the eternal always. A certain language of paradoxes animates the history of the Chinese thought since its beginning. Already Confucius, the founding father of, among other things, the universal ethics that involves principles such as the one that commands “Do not [45] do to others what you would not want others do to you,”161 said exalting the mythical emperor Shun: “Everything under Heaven, Shun governed it by means of Wu wei, of the Do Nothing, of the Don’t Act. How? Very respectfully, he sat down facing the south. All is here.”162 According to Lao Tse or “The Old Young Boy,”163 as he was called, the paradox breaks through every limit, especially for the Zhuang-zi164 and the dialecticians of the Ming-Chia, and even more so for the Ch’an Buddhists (in Japanese, Zen), among whom there is a spirit similar to that of our Franciscanism,165 of the Islamic Sufism,166 and of the Jewish Hasidism.167 For the latter, the wittiest puns and jokes reach us directly from Heaven. With the paradox, a childish game goes along, which is fundamental in the thought of Lao Tse, according to whom: “He who has fullness of virtue resembles a child who does not fear venomous insects, the claws of wild beasts, or the beaks of birds of prey. He has tender bones and tendons, and yet he grasps things with tremendous strength... In everything he does, he is full of the spontaneity of life.”168 Is it a sign of universal reconciliation announced by the prophet? You would say ‘Yes’ had you not read in the same Book of Tao what seemed to be an autobiographical confession of the same Old Young Boy: “All are genial and happy like when they climb a tower in the spring to enjoy themselves. All are illuminated and move around, confident of themselves. I,

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alone, live in obscurity, not knowing where to go. All have something to look at and they know where they are going to end up, while I am more ignorant than a farmer: different from all, I don’t know what to do other than to let myself be steered by mother nature.” Despite its fragmentary format and the absence from it of a discourse that is logically woven, the Book of Tao is, on the whole, on the side of the lamb: “He who is short will win him who is tall... He who is low will see at his feet him who is high above him, [46] like the river and the sea into which the waters precipitate from the mountains and valleys.” The great weakness will become great strength, tenderness will prevail over harshness: “The weak and the yielding will overcome the rigid... The great things will be subdued thanks to the smaller things,” the difficult thanks to the easy, the grand strength thanks to the extremely delicate things, so that: “you may become a female, like a chicken, in front of the opening door of Truth.” Here the little monkey, that disregards, right at the beginning, all logic and meaningfulness in favor of a new imperative of foolishness or wisdom, plays its own role the way it pleases. Stroking your shoulders, it amuses itself by whispering in your ear the cue of that ancient comedy where the servant of a braggart asks at a certain point something like: “Are we going to bet that whatever is happening here is truly not happening here but somewhere else, in another location? And that we are not we who are discussing right now but others, and who knows where?” While dreaming, a state when one is outside any specific place and any specific time, though one continues sleeping in some location, you see yourself all at once in the clothes of the well known whore, full of jewelry, not as much possessed by the devil as by the “spirit of the mysterious female of the valley,” flapping its wings “like a chicken” in front of the gate of Truth. The monkey enjoys the scene completely, quoting from the Book of Tao and the Ch’an, where one can read: “He who asks makes a mistake, he who answers makes a mistake too... One can argue one’s whole life without reaching a conclusion... If you have a stick, I will give you one; if you don’t, I will take it from you.” “And the meaning of the four noble truths?”169

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“They are empty, and nothing truly noble is in them.” “But who is he who responds in this way?” “I don’t know. He who doesn’t know knows it. But who knows it doesn’t know.” “Who is the Buddha?” “The common mind. Three pounds of hemp. A stick to remove the excrement. Something moves.” [47] “The winds? The flag.” “It is the mind that moves. Every moment is beautiful!” “Tell me, what is the meaning of the act of the one who comes from the West?” “Wasting one’s energy in the practice of meditation.” “Master, aren’t you preparing to accomplish something sublime? “Yes! I’m going to shovel the snow in front of the gate.” “I beg you, explain to me the doctrine.” “Have you eaten your share of rice? Well, go now and wash the bowl.” “The disciple went away. And while he was washing the bowl, he was illuminated.”

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[48] (Blank page in the Italian version)

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[49]

CHAPTER V. THE A SCENT TO THE ABSOLUTE

It has been related that the Old Child,170 tired of endlessly preaching peace and goodness in the clashing States of China, decided to emigrate westward. At the border he was asked to dictate his thoughts; and thus, the Book of Tao was born. Then, “he went away, and thereafter nothing is known about him.” It is assumed that he must have gone up along the Blue River, or the Yangtze Kiang,171 that originates in Tibet in tortuous gorges and beneath the tips of the most elevated and largest chain of mountains on earth where the Indus,172 the Brahmaputra173 and the Ganges174 emerge. Now, only with imagination can one track the already legendary path taken by the Old Child. One could say that the watershed on the Himalaya marks the frontier between the religious and the lay, between rivers destined for people with divinities and priests and rivers for an agricultural society with practical rather than sacramental goals. The Ganges, a kind of a great Jordan River, and India, an immense Israel, to whom one can reiterate the words of the Bible: “Maybe you are not all gods, children of the Almighty!”175 There, one can in fact find nothing but divine beings, incarnations, manifestations, the avatar176 of The Absolute and the Ultimate Truth. Such an Ultimate Truth, incommensurably jolly or crazy, has the power to attribute values and meanings to the infinite in the game of the many, too many holy playing cards with which Masters, Divine Graces, Holiness, and believers of the boundless monastery of India and of its spiritual colonies that are scattered in Asia and other continents, play games [50] of chance with the Mystery, dogmatically certain of winning and attaining their own union with The Absolute to the point of a personal identification with Him, the Impersonal, the Most Perfect. The waters that gush from the elevated sources of the Himalaya onto the Chinese slopes seek to irrigate the humbleness of field work and the wisdom of he who becomes enlightened while washing a bowl. On the slopes of India, however, everything becomes sacred and exalted. Everything is divine. Whatever is called human is left to mean almost only affair of the untouchables.177

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Now, if we move away from the geography of the holy and the profane rivers to the world map of thought and spirit, we could say that we would be approaching that which is considered to be the highest peak of the Orient and probably of the world: the Bhagavad Gita or Chant of the Blessed.178 In order to dare this poetic and theological Everest, we will make use of a special guide, Gandhi himself.179 Meanwhile, escorted by the timely scientific expedition headed by the eminent orientalist Professor Giuseppe Tucci,180 we treat ourselves to a stop at a Buddhist monastery in Tibet. They eat healthy fresh fish. There and then you ask: “But isn’t there a commandment, common to all religions of the Orient and of Buddhism in particular that prohibits the killing of animals? Can’t one not see these days monks walking around with their fans to help the midges avoid a bad ending and shielding their own eyes with it to avoid seeing women, with whom devil Mara181 attempts his attack on illumination and chastity?” Then, someone explains to you that the principle of respect towards every being prohibits killing. This principle, though, allows eating the flesh of animals that are killed at the hands of others or are killed as a result of some natural law. Then you are shown how the waters of the Manasarovar River182 dump a great number of fish on the river banks, when its waters become agitated due to the wind that always blows whirling. It is then that the monks collect the fish without breaking the religious precept. “Thus, one’s religious belief and his stomach are safeguarded,” notes the professor. Trying to slip away during their agony on the gravel, the fish [51] seem satisfied with ending in the stomach of the ascetics. You can find signs of such a familiar mentality among us. On the one hand, you see us hurrying to rescue the little dove fallen from its nest, and on the other, you also see us consuming quietly at dinner tables the meat of animals that slaughterhouses and butcher shops serve us every day. Let us then not wonder if Dario, our child, who was convinced that meat was a fruit of the earth as much as bread, grapes and honey, scolded us when he discovered the truth: “What’s this, you make me eat animals?” and then he, disgusted, threw away the piece of meat he had in his hand.

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Our stop at the monastery that belongs to the school of Druga Kunleg,183 the “insane” mystic of the XVIth century, brings us to talk about women. Contrary to the misogynous norms of orthodox Buddhism,184 he indulged in feminine pleasures and in alcohol. He considered himself above the requirement to stay celibate established by the Buddha,185 according to whom a relation with women is absolutely incompatible with monastic life. “One must always distrust women,” stated the illuminated one, “as for every wise woman there are a thousand insane or perverted women. The woman is more treacherous than the Way, ... ferocious like a bandit, shrewd, and liar to such a degree that she does not distinguish between truth and a lie.” It was only later that the Buddha took in consideration the religiosity of women and permitted them to have their own female communities but under strict male control. He felt, however, sorry for that decision. The explanation given is found in a popular Tibetan chant in which a monk, making a shield with his fan for himself, explains to a young girl the fact that women are the source of the worst temptations and that the world has been condemned to death because of their fault. This seems to be the same struggle of those Fathers of the Church who doubted that women had souls.186 Here at home too,187 one can find many such sacred fixations, including even the breaking out of extreme opposites that reconciles the sanctuary with the brothel which is far more a brutal reconciliation than our own reconciliation of little clowneries. [52] The holy man of the Druga sect188 passes in front of you in a hieratic mood with his herds, his caravan, and his large family of wives, sons, and daughters. In the monastery, a huge brass lamp with seven arms, identical to the one used in Jewish liturgy, fascinates you. Then you recall the speculation according to which Jesus did not die on the cross but, having survived death, emigrated to the Orient, where there was already a Jewish community,189 and where there may be someone who even nowadays presumes to be the reincarnation of him: not only in the Tibet, Pakistan, and India, but even in Japan. The claim that Jesus did not die on the cross but was narcotized and, thus, “donated” by Pilate to Joseph of Arimathaea190 would be proven by the fact that one had to remove the stone that closed the tomb so that he could

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come out. Then, there is the fact that Jesus, being sore and just revived, did not want to be embraced or touched by the Magdalene.191 Add to that the appetite for food he showed on various furtive apparitions.192 All these factors were truly not dispositions of a being capable of flying towards heaven. One may, obviously, ask the question: How can it be that, being resurrected from the dead, one continues to be hungry and thirsty? It would be sad if we had to drag with us in the hereafter the slavery to certain physiological needs and the necessity of being preoccupied with what to drink; and it is equally sad if we had to show the signs of the wounds in order to be recognized. Pilate was surprised to learn that Jesus, who was on the cross, died quickly. He nonetheless believed that Jesus did not die. But in order to appease the boisterous demands of the Sanhedrin, that did not want bodies of crucified people displayed on Saturday, he ordered the legs of the so-called thieves broken, but not those of Jesus, whose life he wanted to spare right since the beginning of the trial. As for Jesus, they had only to imprint on him the ritual mark, not so deep and mortal, of a lance. Did the resurrection therefore not take place? Not at all. As for the paradox of paradoxes, one can say in the usual reversal of tenses, it took place in the future. [53] Meanwhile Jesus continues to stay with us as the last one of our dead and us because his love forbids him to abandon us, and that is why he is still with us until all of us are resurrected with him. Despite the naive peace of mind of those who continue categorizing us into races, religions, philosophies, and cardinal points, you will discover, when traveling from one continent to the other, that the very banal proverb according to which “The whole world is a small village” is always true. There is no need for the Chinese man to examine himself, as it once has happened among friends joking in a bar, in order to show that he too has a navel. Besides certain value judgments about esthetic or physiological particulars embedded in the bare naked humanity of flesh and bone, there is a very common nature and the same destiny. With this in mind, it is not intended to deny or under-estimate the distinctions, differences, and inequalities, often excruciating, of life, thought and language. On the contrary, one may say that in our

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very being such, inclined to fomenting differences, discriminations, disagreements, and hypocrisies, there is in the greatest part the “elective affinities” that unite us. As for the different forms and names, you may find in Tibet a short story that is ours as well. Like Christianity here, at home, Buddhism is a religion that comes from a holy land, India, where it was born and it almost doesn’t exist there anymore. In the past, the Buddhist monks were not, and presently do not promise to be, less fanatic than their counterparts in other religions. In Tibet there are monasteries that were sacked by opposing sects. The Dalai Lama193 has always been opposed to the Panchen Lama.194 With the arrival of the Chinese communists, the latter was happy to side with them and chase away the former who fled to India, then to the West where he was well received and rewarded. Although in reality the caste system in Buddhism remains strong, it happens to be, like the social classes in Christianity, abolished in theory with respect to The Absolute and to the final resolution in the hereafter—a final resolution [54] in the sense of a liberating dissolution of the painful existence on earth which even the most unfortunate portion of human kind will also reach. Certainly, our brothers in the Orient are much more daring than we are in the use and abuse of the hereafter as a solution to the problems of life. To them, the passage of man on earth counts nothing when compared to the Immutable Supreme Truth, on which, they imagine, the empty throne of the Buddha stands. The Perfect Being is represented in the Indian school of Amaravati as an adorable emptiness seated on the empty throne under the tree of Knowledge. Emptied of his proper human being and of every human attribute, he has nothing to fear of the snares of devil Mara by whom he was tempted during enlightenment. More expeditious and coarse was Origen195 who liberated himself from the temptations by submitting to castration. Something similar seems to happen to some unfortunate child in whom superior signs of Buddhism were recognized. Certain young monks of that Orient remind us of the altar boys of our present-day seminaries and, in a sense, of the white voices of the pontifical choirs of the past.196 Did you see that child wrapped up in sacred vestments in the

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middle of adoring monks? He had gazing eyes, full of a sadness that was as immense as the Orient. Buddha was a doctrinaire more than he was a humane thinker. He used to say to his monks: “He who sees the doctrine sees me,” and “You do not have to think of me as much as of the doctrine.” One would say that the religious, poetic, and philosophic India is, with its cultural provinces, an enormous doctrinal machine. The human event is swept away and overwhelmed by the relentless riding party of divinities, semi-divinities, and legendary heroes. The natural is overwhelmed by the supernatural. The historical memory is superseded by the mythical memory. Taken between rites and techniques of yoga that are supposed to lead to the “union,” the “reintegration,” and the “total fusion” of the individual in the Universal, of the relative in The Absolute, man’s time is dissolved into the divine and the liturgical. In certain cases, the cupio dissolvi (I yearn [55] to be dissolved) of the mystical drunkenness seems to be pushed until the explosion of one’s own being, as if by means of the annihilation of oneself one would emerge to Become The Absolute Itself. Almost all sacred scriptures—and not only those of the religions that are offshoots of the Indian stump—insist in various ways on self annihilation in order to reach the fullness of being of The Absolute, on self humiliation so that one can become exalted, on the necessity of losing one’s own life, one’s own soul if one is to save it. At the crossroads of religions, Gandhi repeats it for us: “We will not succeed in conquering the evil that is in us as long as we don’t reduce ourselves to nothingness. God asks for nothing other than self abnegation as the price for the only possible liberty that is worth having.” A literal understanding of such statements that Gandhi extends from religion to politics, to economy, etc..., amounts to having to conclude that one is truly free when one renounces not only the “I” and the “my,” but also one’s own existence, and that is, to the point one is reduced to nothing. If the China of Lao Tse has delighted us with its paradoxes, the India of Gandhi invites us to climb the summit of the absurd above and beyond the excursions completed between Africa and Europe in company with the fathers of the Church.

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The little monkey197 of the senseless imperative returns here to play its role between the “preciousness” of the Buddhas and the extravagance of jewels of the hundreds of millions of gods in the Hindu Himalayan Olympus. In Gandhi, who comes to us “rigid like a nail, with extremely penetrating eyes and fluttering ears,” the monkey of imperative points to his perforated ear lobes. They have been pierced for him when he was a child “to keep away the evil spirits.” One obsession equals the other in the sense that they both converge into the same cherished slavery. Differently from the many other Spiritual Guides, Saints, Divine Graces, avatars, etc..., he feels and professes to be, and in fact he is, simply a man with his own limits, with his own dreams and errors, each of which is, according to his own description, “as huge as the Himalaya.” He was still [56] a child on that day when his mother said to him: “Don’t you play with that boy.” He asked why. “He is an untouchable,” explained the mother. Since that moment the rebellion started growing in him, and so did his attraction towards the prohibited fruit of the love for poor people to the point of identifying himself with them: “I would not want to be born again, but if I were to, I would want to be an untouchable so that I can share their hardships, their sufferings, and try to liberate myself and them from misery... I don’t want to have any power in the world, nor do I want to go to heaven or reach Nirvana.198 What I ask in my prayer is to succeed in alleviating all sorts of pain of those who suffer... I believe that the power of love is the very power of the soul and of truth... When the practice of love becomes universal, God will rule among us the same way He does in Heaven.” Thus, in the Babylonian pantheon of religions, Gandhi selected for himself a divinity that suited his great soul and the love he nurtured for others: a divine omnipotence of infinite kindness which is the only vital need one feels to have: “a personal God for those who desire His personal presence, a God in flesh and bones for those who feel the need for a caress.” And he even included that which the atheists believe in, a divinity arising out of one’s possibility to exist and not to exist at the same time, to be and not to be above and beyond the being and non-being of the human dilemma. How would Gandhi reconcile his own way of thinking and doing—in a historical reality that has always

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produced, especially here at home, violent wars and revolutions—with bolshevism, fascism, and nazism, regimes that would have made a fool of him? Then, and in particular, turning away from history to the truth as it was “revealed” to him by the Bhagavad Gita, “the Gospel of India,” how did he put together nonviolence, conscientious objections, and the civil disobedience with the teaching of that sacred text which promotes divine violence that takes place [57] without the least respect to human or animal life and all lumped in one unique and immense massacre? From the steps on the banks of the Ganges199 the little monkey snarls to notify you that the spectacle is about to start. A theater of Indonesian shades: shades of colored skins of donkeys. It specifies “of donkeys,” not of other animals; and repeats the word “shades” with a poignant allusion to you who are going to be (so you are told) among the other actors as well as among the spectators. You will, in short, watch the representation of your own life, “as if it were in a mirror.” In the beginning there is the prayer, with Ganesh,200 the friendly god with the head of an elephant, the Chief of the servants of Shiva,201 the dreadful god in the Hindu epic. He shows himself to be scorched in the fire of the forest, where he enjoys himself, along with other deities, watching people and animals dancing from fear in the flames that engulf everything. He applauds himself piously. Arjuna, the great warrior with the gleaming crown, enters the scene,202 riding on a military chariot steered by Krishna,203 the divine teacher, the personified Absolute. Against the chariot of the divine, there are armies of parents, friends, and others who are attacking. The great warrior scrutinizes the armies and lowers his head. He is sad. He does not show any sign of his super-human dreadfulness with such a feminine profile, topped by a crown, refined by earrings and necklaces that dangle all over his slender body covered with jewels from head to toe. Even the bow and quiver look like ornaments more than arms. Who knows why this makes you recall that frail disciple of the Japanese sect of the Supreme Truth,204 photographed with one finger placed over a button, seeming to press it, which could blow up his entire country.205 Arjuna restrains the impatience to fight of his charioteer saying: “Stop my chariot, Krishna. Give me time so that I can see well these warriors who

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come in closed ranks to strike against us. They are teachers, fathers, sons and daughters, uncles, brothers, and friends, all of whom belong in various ways to our family. [58] How can I kill them all? What advantage are we going to gain out of this? I do not aspire to win a throne, to have the pleasure of destroying them. What would we do with the victory and the glory won at the cost of so many murders, so much cruelty, so much infamy? No, Krishna, I do not want to strike them, not for the ruling of three worlds, and not even if they were to strike me.”206 Having uttered this and other discourses in the same tone, Arjuna has—as one can read in the Bhagavad Gita—tossed his bow and arrows and collapsed in the bottom of his chariot, his soul being very distressed.”207 At this point Krishna intervenes. After having been hammered with seventeen lengthy sermons or chants uttered in a dialogue form, Arjuna yields to the “believe, obey, and fight”208 imperative of the sacred dictatorship of the Omnipotent Divine Spirit that lies in the hearts of all beings and animates all with the supreme power of His magic, “like robots,” dummies, puppets, and shadows. Then, the Omnipotent says: “He who [behaves] alike to foe and friend, also to good and evil repute, and who is alike in cold and heat, pleasure and pain, and who is free from attachment. He who holds equal blame and praise, who is silent [restrained in speech], content with anything that comes, who has no fixed abode and is firm in mind—that man who is devoted is dear to Me.” (B.G. XII, 18-19).209 Really without any pity towards those who are being killed? The Blessed Lord answered: “Even without thee, all the warriors standing arrayed in opposing armies shall cease to be. Therefore arise... and gain glory... By me alone are they slain already. Be thou merely the occasion, O Savyasacin (Arjuna).” (B.G.XI, 32-33).210 Then the Blessed Lord showed himself to Arjuna “[in] His Supreme and Divine Form[,] of many eyes and mouths, of many visions of marvel, of many divine ornaments, of many divine uplifted weapons[, w]earing divine garlands and raiment, with divine perfumes and ointments, made up of all wonders, resplendent, boundless, with face turned everywhere.” (B.G. XI, 9.10.11),211 He said he was the beginning, the middle, and the end as well as the existence of everything, the first and the last sacred syllable of the language

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of sacrifices, of rites, and of yoga. He became Fire, radiating Sun, Himalaya, cyclone, lion, cows, snakes, thrones, and game dice, in a vortex of prodigious manifestations from which [59] came out the well-applauded game in the phantasmagoria of shades, flickering on the screen of the theatrical Maya212 whose participants were also the audience. Horrified and shaking, Arjuna confesses bowing: “Oh infinite Lord of all gods, you are the Eternal, the Being and the Non-Being, and whatever is beyond.”213 The great warrior with the splendid crown stood up with his bow, ready to fight. In an apocalyptic vision, the wild battle roared as it had been conceived in the Divine Mind. The ranks of warriors ended up being swallowed by the terrifying mouths of the Supreme Lord that rises in the background transformed into an elephant with “frightening tusks.”214 Human bodies “appear and disappear while their heads [are] being crushed by the teeth” of the Greatest Divinity (B.G. XI, 27).215 “As the many rushing torrents of rivers race towards the ocean, so do these heroes of the world of men rush into Thy flaming mouths [a]s mouths rush swiftly into a blazing fire to perish there... Devouring all the worlds on every side with Thy flaming mouths, thou lickest them up. Thy fiery rays fill this whole universe and scorch it with their fierce radiance, O Vis[h]nu!” (B.G. XI, 28, 29, 30).216 In the end, the Supreme Being takes the shape of an anthropomorphic monster from the body of which the sequence of castes came out in a procession of prayer: from the divine mouth the Brahmins came out; from the arms, the warriors and the housekeepers; from the thighs, the merchants and the craftsmen; from the legs, the servants and the slaves. The sacred show would have ended happily with applauds had the usual rejoicing one not stood up at the end. After having requested and obtained the permission to fulfill his “duty” to thank, in the name of Europa, the Theater Company and particularly India, he said using the words of Yogi Ramacharaka: “Greetings, India, Holy Land of the great religions, of the great Philosophies, of the great Spiritual Cultures! Cradle of Sanskrit, the Primordial Language of the World! Homeland of the Arians, forefathers of the Germans, of the Latins, of the Celts, of the Greeks, and of the other Elected [60] of humankind! Sovereign Mistress,

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who with your Saints, with your Thinkers, with your Teachers...”. There was an explosion of screams and whistles. So much the better, a flash of lightning and a thunder opened the sky to a predictable heavy shower that forced the public to vacate the steps. From the banks of the Ganges, where you were enjoying in spirit and thought the live spectacle of the Chant of the Blessed (read and meditated in multiple versions), you found yourself in Villa Medici in Rome, caught up by the sight of some devout people from Srila Prabhupada, who say: “Don’t kill! Why do people kill millions of cows in slaughterhouses? And you, Christians, claim to love God?” They preach the “return to Krishna.” You vainly try to remind them, as you have seen it in the show, of Krishna commanding Arjuna to massacre all men and beasts alike in the battle; and he is nonetheless the Blessed Lord who has condemned us from being victims of viruses to being victims of orca whales, to being victims of the food chain.217 While you were returning home, the wolf you read about on the second Sunday of Advent made itself heard. Take it easy with the Hare Krishna missionaries.218 But again, how could Gandhi reconcile love, the non-violence, the conscientious objector, and the civil disobedience, that were so dear to him, with that sacred text of mad omnipotence that is horribly destructive? And how could he say he had found the Bhagavad Gita to be the greatest of all holy books, in which he used to find comfort and illumination in difficult times? If you were, one day, to read his Commentary on this holy book, you would discover that he escaped the objection, neither more nor less successfully than our theologians, Fathers and Doctors of the Church, by using the technique, common to them, of dodging everything behind allegory, symbolism, and internalization. But what about the monstrous massacre of men, parents, friends and others, executed by Arjuna? It is simply “the most invisible of all invisible wars” that each one of us declares, more within himself than outside himself, on passions, desires and thoughts that, as taught by Dante219 in his “divine”Comedy, are condemned to hell so that [61] the spiritual part, the better part in us, survive. That is, the part which is worthy of purification and salvation in view of eternal felicity. Even before Dante, there was another poet and master of spirituality, Jalalud-Dīn Rūmi,220 and then the Sufis and

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the so-called “twirling dervishes”—whose high moral and civil prestige has been affirmed even in India—have interpreted the Islamic imperative of the “holy war” as a command to face and restrain the internal conflicts and practiced such a command. Such an interpretation is similar to that given in the parable of the army leader who, after having fought several battles dictated by hate, discovered to have in himself the true enemy and, after he had discarded his old armory, he committed himself with love and a great spiritual passion “to fight the new holy war within the labyrinth of his own heart.” Unfortunately, the Chant of the Blessed was not understood and complied with by the fanatic who assassinated Gandhi the night when Gandhi was going, as usual, to pray. One afternoon, Gandhi was asked by a journalist what he would do if he saw an atomic bomb being dropped from a plane over his city. “I would look in the skies placidly and pray for the pilot—he answered. Would you say I am insane? Yes, indeed, because wherever I go, I attract the eccentrics, the maniacs, and the crazy people.”

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[63]

CHAPTER VI. THE PARABLE OF PARABLES

If, after wandering between the sacred rivers that originate in the Himalaya and discharge in the Indian Ocean, you reached the banks of this modest stream of running water that springs out of the Lake of Galilee and discharges in the Dead Sea, you may bump into that one who has been exalted at Villa Medici.221 He is the one for whom the Judeo-Christian religion is—when compared with the oldest eastern religions and philosophies that you have just left behind—little more than just a “fable for children.” He defies you to contrast the succinct dogmatic theology of the Word,222 contained in the prologue of the gospel according to John, with the lengthy theology of the Universal Spirit known as Sabda,223 the Supreme Word, the Word that is the creator and animator of all beings, the Divine Voice that one has within one’s soul, a very Sweet Sound, a Cosmic and super cosmic chant, a Harmony. He asks you if you know the hymns of the Rig-Veda224 and the Chandogya-Upanishad.225 You quickly answer in the affirmative, and he insinuates: “But you haven’t understood a thing as you don’t have the Indian mind, nor do you have certain particularly charismatic gifts.” You say you have a common mind. You spare him the concise Chinese or Socratic joke which reveals that in certain matters, one knows more if one realizes that there is little or nothing to learn, except that there will only be thinking, reflecting, and asking oneself why there are so many sublime absurdities at a time it would suffice, as one would hope, for the Divine Mercy to redeem us. This is the most ingenious and elementary tale in the world which could be that of the woman who lives with her [64] little goat in a hut, at the foot of the Andes:226 She has the sun and the moon for sacred images, and sings together with the birds and other animals. The gospel delivered to us along with the name of John is, more than anything else, a gospel of love.227 Its true prologue has been offered to us in the epistle that bears the name of the evangelist. This epistle reads: “God is love, and anyone who lives in love lives in God, and God lives in him.”228 And to make sure that one understands that it is not about abstract concepts but about

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reality and the truth of living together, a further clarification has been given: “No one has ever seen God; but as long as we love one another, God will live in us, and his love will be complete in us. We can know that we are living in him and he is living in us because he lets us share his Spirit.”229 Under such a banner of the law of love the evangelic narrative unrolls from its inception, from the wedding in Cana to the encounters with the Jewish leader and Pharisee Nicodemus, with the Samaritan, with the pagan government official, to the gathering on the mount, where the multiplication of the loaves of bread was accomplished, to the festival of the tents that will have its epilogue in front of the temple with the trial of the adulteress, during which “the grace and truth [that] have come through Jesus Christ”230 will prevail over the “Mosaic Law.”231 The sending of priests and Levites by the Jewish authorities to the Baptist seems to have the character of not only an inspection but also an encounter. This man, who had sprung out of the wilderness, had been dedicated to preaching and baptizing in the waters of the Jordan, had been surrounded by disciples as well as free disclaimers of the Spirit, among whom Jesus appeared at once to be a rather suspicious individual. The occasional attention paid by the Sanhedrin was rarely a pleasant one. When he was asked by the sacred inspectors “Who are you?” the Baptist did not hesitate to declare that he was neither Elijah nor the Prophet, and far less the Messiah. He was simply “a voice that cries in the wilderness.”232 He belittled himself and his own “baptism of water.” “But there stands among you—unknown to you—the one who is coming after me; and I am not fit to undo his sandal-strap.”233 Thus, the Baptist voiced [65] a fitting testimony, and at the same time he avoided the risk of getting himself in trouble with the Sanhedrin which was overly sensitive to certain matters. But then, he committed the imprudence of touching the evil beast of the political power that was even much less kind than the Sanhedrin, thus endangering his own life. When the priests and Levites were gone, someone must have directed a strange look toward the Baptist, who seemed as if he had unloaded a weight he was carrying and dumped it on the shoulders of Jesus. Then he reinforced in the presence of everybody the testimony he had already given

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them: “I saw the Spirit coming down on him from heaven like a dove and resting on him.”234 When Jesus himself came to meet him, he exclaimed: “Look, there is the lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world.”235 He then hinted with these words to two of his disciples, Andrew and another, the evangelist himself, to follow Him.236 After leaving the Baptist, you find yourself among the invited people at the Cana wedding with Jesus and his disciples, who were joined by others, the rather thirsty and heavy drinkers. The wine was soon depleted. The mother of Jesus, who was present at the wedding, expressed her worry to her son saying: “They have no wine.”237 In other words, they drank it all. “Woman, why turn to me? My hour has not come yet.”238 Addressing his mother as “Woman” or “Lady” was a respectful way of addressing one’s mother, which is similar to the term “Vossia” (slang “Mi-lord” or “Mi-lady”), used by Sicilians, people used to call their parents and older people until recently. It does certainly not suggest disrespect or a distancing attitude. That of Jesus was an attitude of respect.239 Also, due to discretion as an invited guest and although he may have been a relative or a close friend of the groom or bride, he could not surprise them with a miraculous intervention. But, nonetheless, the miracle took place in a discreet manner, in a quiet mutual understanding between son, mother, and the service personnel. Neither the master of ceremonies nor the groom took notice of it. Even the disciples of Jesus and others, who had slightly drank too much, they too must have [66] wondered at the fact that the better wine was served last. Bible scholars have done their best to make everyone taste that unusual wine. They have transformed it in a very sophisticated mess of doctrinal symbolisms. They have made out of it the sign of divine Wisdom and the incarnated Word himself, almost to elevate the saying “in vino veritas” (In wine lies truth) to the level of dogma.240 And those who do not drink wine, those who abstain, are far away from God’s grace. Don’t fear. One should here remember that the Spirit of God hovers over waters, not over wine. John the evangelist must have been the Benjamin of the apostolic team.241 During the Last Supper, when the hour of sadness

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felt heavy, he leaned his head against the chest of Jesus. He gives the impression of having followed every event in the first person. It was he who first noticed that the wine was finished, and he informed the mother of Jesus about it. He seems to have had towards her a special filial affection. On Golgotha, we find him standing next to her by the feet of Jesus crucified. Then, he took her as his mother in his own house. His gospel account gives the impression to have been taken from a kind of diary. One feels his physical presence. He gives descriptions of places, times, and events more precisely than the other evangelists. One does not find in his gospel the polemic and accusatory tension against the Jews, an attitude dominant in the gospels of the other evangelists who seem to have been determined, right in the beginning of their gospels, by the juridical necessity to produce witnesses (two or three, according to the Hebrew Law) and procedural documents substantiating the stand of each litigant part.242 In the Gospel according to Matthew, the Baptist does not receive the Pharisees and others amicably, as is the case in the gospel according to John. He attacks them and antagonizes them, thus escalating the hostility towards them. In the Gospel according to John, there is a different spirit. Jesus appears to be freer to move about. He goes back and forth to Judea, while in the other gospels everything seems to take place in that unique voyage that concludes on the Calvary. As it is usual in diaries [67] and journals, the evangelist blends comments, and declarations of the protagonist Jesus. He tries to report the discourses with all the possible spiritual fidelity. As for the relative fidelity of material transcription, besides the fact that he lacked the means that we now have to record events, it is important to keep in mind that he had the tendency to see Jesus in a continuous transfiguration, shining like the sun and dressed in glorious light.243 John preserves for Jesus the living image of the incarnate verb, the “true light”244 offered by the witness of the Baptist. For that reason, when the disagreement with the Sanhedrin became confrontational and Jesus was arrested, processed, and crucified, John tried to render, as much as possible, the human, very human, crises which Jesus went through, from the agony on Gethsemane to the question asked from the cross. To him, Jesus will, in the end, not feel at all

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abandoned by God. The divine Master, like the one who has finished his service, would simply say: “It is accomplished,”245 and bowing his head, he gives up his spirit to the Father. We were saying of the Baptist that he would exalt the Messiah in Jesus for two reasons: To accomplish his duty as a witness and to protect himself against the not-so-gratifying attention given to him by the Sanhedrin. A suspicious person would add that the Baptist, in this way, avoided at the same time a dreadful current in the waters of the River Jordan river by giving Jesus, as a gift, a couple of disciples who were already inclined to take off with John. Strangely, the Baptist makes himself heard again from the prison, from where he sends to Jesus two of his disciples to ask him: “Are you the one who is to come (that is the Messiah), or have we got to wait for someone else?”246 But has the Baptist not shouted that Jesus was the Lamb of God who came to take away the sins of the world? Has he, perhaps, ceased to believe his own prophetic words? Or was he thinking that the Messiah could have been a kind of apocalyptic avenger who has come to overthrow the earthly thrones and liberate his people from all the chains, beginning with [68] those of the prison in which he was languishing? Jesus understood and felt compassion. The poor Baptist was suffering, and was in need of some answer. Jesus praised him highly. As for the rest, what else could he have answered? “The blind see again, and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised to life.”247 Despite his feeling of being overwhelmed by worries, weaknesses, human limitations, and on some occasions by feeling a great sadness and the fear of being the most abandoned and lonely soul on earth, John the Baptist, in the middle of so many miracles and so much faith, could not believe that Jesus was the awaited “Son of man.” All this is, however, bypassed in the account of John. He continues to consider the Baptist worthy of his testimony, and to contemplate and be fascinated by the image of Jesus glowing with resplendent light and divine grace. However, Jesus did not, properly speaking, overthrow the thrones of political power by means of the most diabolic and inhumane means. He did give Himself something to do. The Gospel according to John relates the story of capsizing the stands of

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merchants selling pigeons or exchanging money that took place shortly after the wedding of Cana, in Jerusalem, and shortly before the Hebrew Passover. He even chased with a whip both lamb and cattle drivers away from the gate of the temple, where the wretched had come through with their beasts. Here the discourse of Jesus on the temple of the Living God, precisely given as a response to the Jews, was of utmost importance. The temple was to be recognized as an image of himself, and to be retrieved in ourselves. As for the temple made of stones that can be destroyed and rebuilt in few days, it is nothing if not coupled with the love that unites us and the truth that liberates us. Mankind has always had as a law that leads us to conceive of the world as a battle field, and the people around us as “dogs,”248 enemies that one ought to exterminate, convert, or subdue. Now, there is another law, one that is imposing itself authoritatively, one that compels us to conceive of the world as a market, and the people around us as clients, whom one ought to fascinate, and competitors that one ought to baffle. The old law of brutality, the so-called law of Mammon, the law of self-interest which permeates all, [69] Jesus wanted to outshine with a new law that leads to see the world as a communal home for everybody, and the others as brothers to love and serve without discrimination into races, religions, age, sex, and ethnic groups. But is it possible to put such a law into practice? In the evangelic diary of John, Jesus uses a divine rather than a human language, a language of the City of God249 rather than a worldly city, a language that disorients, and even scandalizes. For example, during the Eucharistic discourse, almost all deserted him, except Peter and a few others who did not know where to go, or they rather preferred to stay listening to the “eternal words” of the divine Master. In order to find the answer to our question, we need to check the other gospels where Jesus uses the language that is more congenial to him: the language of parables. Let us clarify this immediately and say that the parables are not, as some may think, a vulgarization with didactical ends of his thought. They are the genre of expression and communication in which Jesus conveys his innermost thoughts—perhaps even more eloquently than in the language of miracles and his other actions. In the parables, he narrates that which cannot by itself

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be contained in the steel-like rigidity of the “script” that has been sewn for him in prophecies. Yet, he uses this very script to defend, among other things, his freedom of expression and action, like when he explains to his disciples the same parables: “The mysteries of the kingdom of God are revealed to you; for the rest there are only parables, so that they may see but not perceive, listen but not understand.”250 In short, by becoming natural and simple, “parabolic,” but far from becoming futile, the language of Jesus rises to the sublime level, touching upon “the mysteries of the reign of Heavens.” And now, in the Gospel according to Luke, here is a doctor of the Hebrew Law testing Jesus with the question: “Good Master, what have I to do to inherit eternal life?”251 Jesus asked him if he knew the commandments, and the doctor recited: “You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and [70] with all your mind. The second resembles it: You must love your neighbor as yourself.”252 “‘You have answered right,’ said Jesus, ‘do this and life is yours.’”253 Then, the man threw at him the true question that he had in mind to ask: “And who is my neighbor?”254 A Socratic colleague of the Israelite doctor would have responded by trying to extract from the term ‘neighbor’ the abstract concept and the idea of “neighbor-ness,” as from ‘horse’ “horseness,” and he would have lost us into a dialectic, according to which the real is whatever is Law, and the Law is whatever is real, be it in the universal or in the particular.255 A disciple of Saint Thomas Aquinas would have responded by resolving the case within the context of the Summa Theologiae,256 to which he would have added a supplement, obviously in harmony with the theology and philosophy of the angelic Doctor.257 Jesus responded simply by relating the story of that Samaritan who, while traveling between Jerusalem and Jericho, stopped to help a man who had fallen in the hands of brigands, been deprived of everything he had, been beaten, and left half-dead on the side of the road. Before the Samaritan, there were a priest and a Levite who also had passed by, seen, but kept away. Jesus asked at the end of the parable: “Which of these three, do you think, proved himself to be a neighbor to the man who fell into the brigands’ hands?” The

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Doctor of the Law258 answered correctly: “The one who took pity on him.”259 One may note at this point that the question of Jesus was asked from the point of view of the man who was robbed and left half-dead on the road, not in general, nor from the point of view of the priest or the Levite, both of whom represent a whole sacred history. If then, one applies on this the criterion of evaluation established by the evangelist John, according to whom he who claims to love God whom he cannot see, and does not love the neighbor whom he sees, is a liar. Therefore, one must conclude that the entire structure of the commandments given by Moses does not stand if it is not, practically, founded on the question asked by Jesus. Keeping in mind the parable of the Good Samaritan, one will discover the little altars [71] of the grand and tiny historical hypocrisies. People have roused, since Moses and Aaron, forseen in the hypocritical priest and the Levite, suspicion in many lies made when, on the one hand, they issued orders such as: “You shall not utter the name of Yahweh your God to misuse it. Do not kill. Do not steal, etc...,”260 while on the other hand, they smuggled in the name of God their own ambitions for omnipotence. They killed, stole, lied, and decieved. The sacred religious history abounds with descriptions of evil deeds committed in the name of God. Likewise, the profane history abounds with descriptions of crimes committed in the name of reason and of something else with which one replaced the divinely revealed religion. Between the thrown stands at the temple of Jerusalem and the care that the Good Samaritan took of the unfortunate man abandoned on the street, something else seems to have been thrown as well: not only our relation with the temples, but also our relation with the professions of religious faith, with the culture, with the political parties, and with the states. All these are abstractions outside our own reality, which was called the naked humanity of flesh and bones, “man without attributes;” abstractions and, practically, means or instruments for various uses and abuses. The same Gospel of Jesus that was used to interrogate, torture, and massacre was also used to love and embrace all others in one hymn of universal brotherhood. Of the Samaritan nothing was said as to whether he believed in God. He accomplished this demonstration of humanity and civility, of which neither the

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priest nor the Levite were capable, they who professed to believe in the cult of God. One would say that in this demonstration, the Living God preached by Jesus, the witnesses, and the martyrs for love, would be more present than His presence on all the altars of the world. Jesus is identified with the Samaritan but also, and perhaps more so, with the man who was robbed, stripped, whipped, and abandoned on the street. Not for nothing, on that page of the Gospel according to Matthew where the final judgment is related, he will, as a King, bless those who would have given him something to eat and drink by giving to those who were hungry and thirsty; would have healed him [72] and clothed him by clothing those who were sick and naked, and would have taken him in by taking in those who were strangers and needed to be welcomed and helped. He concludes saying that all that has been done to one of the youngest of his “brothers” would have been done to him; and that which has not been done to them would not have been done to him. In this way, the parable of the Samaritan opens up to include the whole human family, which the “Son of Man” expands the meaning of to involve the kingdom of heaven to whom God the Lord is invoked as Our Father, and we all are his children. Now, Jesus faces the fundamental problem of his, and consequently our, relation with the Omnipotence, from where we “originate,” since no one came in the world by himself. Here is the most dramatic of the parables, in which the son who asks the father for his proper share of freedom, of life, and of riches, that he will spend to benefit the world. At the end, he finds himself left with nothing, seeing no other possible alternative but to return to the father and be able to live like one of his workers.261 It has always been believed and preached that the prodigal son represents human kind, that is, the insane who squanders the grace of God and the great goodness that is freedom and life. In reality the prodigal son is Jesus himself. In order to start understanding him, it would be enough to recall the grumbling of the Pharisees and scribes who were asking: “Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?”262 It was not the first time that scribes, Pharisees, and others attacked Jesus for his scandalous friendships that were far from being inspired by the discipline of fasting

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and the norms of spiritual and physical hygiene, things that are rigorously followed by the one who lived uncontaminated in the obedience and fidelity to God, the Lord. Jesus has fought back in various ways, reducing the problem of purity and fidelity to the imperatives of truth and love of God, the Father, in virtue of which one should operate and act in the world. He also had said that his place was among the sinners, publicans, [73] and prostitutes, who would precede the others on the way to salvation. This time, Jesus responds with three parables, the third of which is precisely about the Son who came to spend his share of goods inherited from the Father in this world of turpitude, among women possessed by evil spirits, among unfortunate sinners, and even among the treacherous who did not miss being among his own disciples. As in a metaphor symbolizing his relationship with the scribes and Pharisees, Jesus feels like the prodigal son in contrast with the older brother who stayed at home, or like the lost lamb in contrast with the rest of the flock, or also like the drachma that bounced out of the safety-deposit box where the other nine were safeguarded. Jesus wants to make people understand that by his leaving the flock, the little safety-deposit box, and the house of the Father, and by his wandering with wanderers and consorting with the lost of this world, he was able to better know and live the love of the Father in all of its divine “prodigality” and resplendence. Thus, Jesus answers the others and himself; and his is an answer of hope more than it is an answer of certainty. As one may notice, the second part of the parable was yet to be verified in reality. Forced to graze pigs and provide them with some carob to feed on (The scornful allusion to the small flock of his disciples and the meager food that he had will not be missed by the Pharisees), the prodigal son “came to his senses.”263 He thought of returning to the house of his father who in the parable will receive him with great celebration, while in the case of Jesus, Jesus went to face a completely different destiny. Moses, who was sent by Jehovah, had to struggle with the heart of the Pharaoh, hardened by Jehovah.264 Jesus found himself facing the hardened heart of all the people, his own people. Once again, as the prophets and the evangelists agree, it was the Omnipotent who “let the people

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lose heart,” by blinding their eyes, deafening their ears, and numbing their minds. Moses could bend the Pharaoh by conquering with his miracles and actions both Egypt and the same Hebrew people. [74] Despite some apocalyptic cries that he would put forth now and then, Jesus, the all-loving and caring that he was to the point of becoming like a “lamb,” ended up becoming the “victim” to be sacrificed or a mock-king to be made fun of, rather than becoming a man to be feared or followed for a possible popular liberation movement. Jesus understood that it was not the fault of the people if they did not understand. As a matter of fact, he asked God, the Father, to forgive and to absolve the people as they did not know what they were doing. They were slaves of the limits of their hearts, their brains, and their actions already set the way they are by the divine Father. By his request to absolve his own people, and thus the whole of humanity, Jesus reverts all that exists or all that is done in the world to the mysterious play of the divine Omnipotence, that, like the potter—as Paul writes in his Letter to the Romans—shapes the dirt or clay of creation and forms, as He wishes, beautiful vases for noble uses or ugly vases for vile tasks. Then He fires them and lets them break against each other exercising, as was the case with Moses and the Pharaoh, compassion with the first, and hardening then breaking the heart of the second. Due to the hatred towards the Jews who were considered to be unworthy of being forgiven, some copyist may have omitted in some codices the words of Jesus “Father, forgive them; they do not know what they are doing.”265 These words, along with the prayer in the garden of the Mount of Olives and the interrogative that Jesus launched in the end from the cross, do offer the golden string, thanks to which one can recognize what the intent of the prophetic line was as pointing to Jesus himself. That is, not so much the one that points to the idealization of the slave who is extremely obedient to a master who sacrifices both beasts and humans, but rather to the return of the Son to the Father. In the garden of the Mount of Olives and on the Calvary, Jesus brings to completion the prophetic line with which Abraham tried to snatch from the Omnipotent the salvation of corrupted and degenerated cities—Sodom and [75] Gomorrah—for the sake of

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some righteous individuals who may have still been there; the prophetic line of Jacob who wrestles with God by the torrent’s ford; and then the interrogatives of Job, Jeremiah, and others, beyond the traditional explanation that reduces almost everything to the dialectic of human transgression and divine punishment. This latter explanation still subsists, and is proper to apply, but not at the cost of ousting the former prophetic line that is far more essential. As a Prodigal Son, Jesus would have been satisfied to become “one of paid servants”266 of the Father. The paid servant is not simply a servant nor is he a slave. He is a free worker. He offers his service and receives compensation or a salary at the end of the week or month. Far from receiving the welcome hoped for and dreamed of in his parable, Jesus was, instead, captured and condemned to crucifixion, the capital punishment—what an atrocious irony—that was inflicted on the slave who ran away, the deserter, and the one who rebelled against the order established by means of the evil deeds and violence of those in power. In vain he implored that he be spared that ignominious and very vulgar end. In the Garden of the Mount of Olives, he had the feeling of being oppressed by a supreme will, a feeling that is totally different from the hope he had nurtured in people. Jesus loved life, liberty, and joy. He was announced by the Baptist as the sign of “complete bliss.” In the great prayer quoted by John, he asks his Father for joy for his disciples. If it were up to Jesus, we would not have had the cult of the cross, but his request was not accepted, and neither were the heavens moved to help him on the cross. Therefore, he did not feel comfortable in the end to call God the Lord his Father. With the suggestive words taken from the Book of the Way and Virtue,267 one may conclude by saying that the story of Jesus is, in a sense, the story of a deluded love and a failure that, in fact, shines gloriously more than all the victories of the world.

COMMENTARY

COMMENTARY ON THE PROLOGUE

In the Prologue, Pasqualino draws the attention to the vanity of wearing earrings and other jewelry by people, and the respect these people display in adorning the statues of their gods and their divinely inspired human teachers. However, Pasqualino made Jesus figuratively wear earrings, not for vanity but for the entailed symbolism of a slavish obedience to God the Father. Understanding Jesus’ love and his slavish obedience to the Father will shed a new light that reveals a supernatural meaning and purpose to existential absurdities. Such meaning and purpose point to the consequent theistic perception of an eternity of “infinite wholeness” and meaning, and is contrasted with the opposite atheistic perception of an eternity of “infinite nothingness” and meaningless existence. The symbolism of earrings is conveyed in the Bible, where the wearing of earrings means obedience of a slave to a master. However, in the case of Jesus, and indirectly in the case of human beings in general, obeying a master involves also a choice that, in turn, brings about the dilemma of whether the slave, be it Jesus or any human being, has freedom of choice within slavery to unbendable existential constraints. This dilemma is one among other existential dilemmas, the solution of which can be found in the discovery of how love, divine or human, can alleviate or transform existential dilemmas and absurdities. On the other hand, human existence without love would be full of perpetually disturbing absurdities. Pasqualino acknowledges that human existence does, as a matter of fact, exhibit love, a secular love as partly described by some strictly humanistic philosophies, Far Eastern wisdom, world political history, and world literatures. This love does certainly make life somehow bearable by creating humanistic meaning and purpose when none is found at first glance. However, a spiritually inspired philosophy, such as the one brought by Jesus Christ, will make existence more meaningful, purposeful, efficient, and long lasting into an “infinite wholeness”

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that remedies, more adequately, existential absurdities for a peaceful earthly human existence and beyond. Further Food for Thought on the Prologue

For Group discussion or personal thinking and essay writing:

1- Describe one or a few forms of contemporary vanity. Analyze and evaluate their worth or worthlessness in human existence. 2- Describe the religious symbolism of certain decorative jewels worn by people or statues relative to various historic or pre-historic religions or cultures. Defend or refute the use of such decorative jewels. 3- In the Prologue, Pasqualino focuses on the religious aspect of freedom of choice within slavery to God. Explain how “obeying a master involves a choice.” After explaining this concept, transpose the religious context of slavery to a psychological context (slavery to a vice, a bodily handicap, or an illness…), a political context (slavery of a country to an invading stronger country or a political party,…), or an economic context (slavery of the poor to the rich). Illustrate your position as to whether the individual has freedom of choice or not. Choose one context. 4- Explain and either defend or refute Pasqualino’s conception of “a spiritually inspired philosophy, such as the one brought by Jesus Christ, one that will make existence more meaningful, purposeful, efficient, and long lasting into an infinite wholeness.” 5- Can love truly “alleviate or transform existential dilemmas and absurdities”? Illustrate your response with examples that support your defense or rebuttal. 6- Explain what humanism is, then defend or refute the claim that humanism without religious ideals can provide a limited quality human life.

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COMMENTARY ON CHAPTER I: THE A BSURD

Before analyzing and commenting on Pasqualino’s reflection on the absurd as expressed in Chapter I, it may be helpful to first explain the term, and elucidate, though briefly, some of the complex and perplexing issues embedded in the sub-title of the book “The Absurd Among Us.” This explanation will provide a greater insight into Pasqualino’s thought about some incomplete or erroneous perceptions of the absurd and his proposed antidote to such perceptions, with a view to improving people’s quality of life. (1) The Term ‘Absurd’

The term absurd involves linguistic and philosophical points of view. Linguistically, it is used as an adjective: “an absurd claim,” or as a noun: “the absurd.” As an adjective, it refers to the quality of a specific claim that is deemed self-contradictory or perceived as implying two claims that are mutually exclusive and, thus, cannot both be accepted as true claims. As a noun, it refers to the abstract concept of the rational impossibility and practical unacceptability of self-contradictory claims. Philosophically, the term refers to what has been termed in logic268 reductio ad absurdum, a Latin phrase meaning “reduction to absurdity,” which is a technique used to prove the unacceptability of a proposition by showing that its logical consequence leads to a contradiction, i.e., an absurdity. In Chapter I, Pasqualino takes for granted the idea of logical absurdity as self-contradiction and addresses sample themes of the absurd in existential contexts. These select sample themes are addressed in a rather poetic-creative style—themes which will now be presented in a systematic manner to make the reading of Pasqualino’s philosophical message easier through commentaries and notes. The first theme concerning the absurd refers to the inconsistent perceptions of existence found in the debates of existential philosophers. Pasqualino reflects on these perceptions as if they were his own existential worries. He debates whether existence has meaning and value notwithstanding the absurdities involved. The second theme focuses on the absurdity of inconsistent perceptions, by philosophers having opposing views and psychologists having opposing views, of human action.

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Pasqualino addresses this by asking himself whether he truly has freedom of choice to conduct his life the way he wishes or is condemned to simply exist without, or despite, his wishes or input. The third theme points to the inconsistency in the perceptions by metaphysicians269 of God’s eternal immutability and God’s temporal mutability every time human, time-bound situations change and require divine intervention. The fourth theme addresses divine justice as perceived by average common-sense individuals; and Pasqualino asks whether God is truly fair, particularly when He270 absurdly punishes those who are God-fearing. The fifth theme regards the inconsistent perceptions, by some philosophers who disagree with the Christian theologians, of the Almighty becoming absurdly in the person of Jesus like a weak and victimized innocent slave. By addressing these themes of the existential absurd, Pasqualino searches to discover the antidote to the human misperceptions of the absurd so that he, and by extension the reader, can conduct a meaningful, valuable, and enjoyable life. Interestingly and surprisingly, however, the found antidote turns out to be even more absurd than any other form of absurdity. Nonetheless, this antidote is offered, despite its absurdity, as having the healing power that would offset all mistaken perceptions of the existential absurd. (2) Absurd Inconsistency in the Perceptions of Existence

“The absurd,” as addressed directly or indirectly in chapter I, involves what appears to be outrageous inconsistencies. The first inconsistency refers, for example, to the claim that existence has no meaning or value, and its denial that existence has meaning and value, as being equally true under the same conditions, which is utterly false and thus absurd. Thinkers of various time periods discussed the concept of the absurd in the context of existence that Pasqualino alludes to when he states: “Hence, a whole history of the absurd,” which earned such philosophers the qualifier “existential.” Some of these philosophers found, due to existential inconsistencies perceived, no inherent meaning and value in existence. This is why they described existence as “absurd.” However, these philosophers offered to assign meaning and value to

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existence with the help of an assertive individual “will to be” or rather “a will to continue being,” and acting on exclusively rational, non-theistic, practical principles that would make life somehow meaningful and worth living and enjoying. Otherwise, suicide would be the natural outcome, which is a cowardly act.271 Other existential philosophers found existence to be meaningless only if perceived from an exclusively narrow rational perspective. They claimed that existence is, on the contrary, inherently meaningful and valuable if seen from a wider, theistic perspective.272 These, like the other existential philosophers, claimed that meaning and value of existence could be reached with the help of an assertive, self-motivated, “will to be” or “will to continue being,” but they differ from the other existential philosophers in that they employ a rational method that is more inclusive and open to taking in consideration various factors of human experience as a whole. To these philosophers, human rationality is certainly a major and appreciated component of being human, but when pure and exclusive rationality fails to respond satisfactorily to certain existential quests and needs, other resources are still available, such as human emotions, intuition, ideals, expectations, and hopes. Although these resources may individually satisfy individual existential quests, they may, as a whole, comprehensively entail the necessity of transcending the physical realm to a metaphysical one in order to quench human yearning for meaning, value, and guidance in human existence. To this basic existential question about life’s meaning and value, Pasqualino attempts to give a logically satisfactory, and practically beneficial, answer. However, in order to make a good case when making his case in favor of the meaningfulness and value of existence, further cases of the existential absurd would be not only desirable but necessary, and Pasqualino provides some. (3) Absurd Inconsistency in the Perceptions of Human Agency

The second theme of the logical inconsistency regards the debate among philosophers on the issue of human agency that Pasqualino addresses, and alludes to two main opposite schools

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of thought on human agency. One school proposes determinism in human actions.273 The other proposes freewill.274 Both of these schools have fueled a confusing intellectual tension about their respective perceptions of human agency. Pasqualino describes this tension and dilemma that are reflected within himself: “As if I could but didn’t want … Well, perhaps nothing belongs to us but the realization that we are basically unable to take charge of our own selves.” He illustrates the tension in a fictitious monologuedialogue combination, like in a vivid theatrical scene. He describes a “mad” dictatorial voice coming to obsess him: “Here is the mad imperative coming back, joyous and obsessive, to impose on me earrings… [in] the usual short silly dialogue: You must… To make sense, to be ashamed, that’s your business…” This dictatorial voice, Pasqualino cannot avoid or object to when it imposes on him irresistible imperatives to make him, for example, wear (symbolic) strange-looking, feminine earrings and high heel shoes. He feels as if he were a slave who had to comply with the orders of his arrogantly capricious master, which suggests the deterministic side of the tension in Pasqualino’s conflicting thoughts and feelings. Then, this voice is revealed to be that of God Yahweh: “The One Who Is”: “Of Himself He only says ‘I am!’”275 It is a voice that Passqualino describes comically with a Sicilian mafia title “Don Yahweh” who has the reputation of giving biblical figures strange and absurd orders. Abraham, for example, was surprisingly ordered to kill his own innocent son, and offer him as a sacrifice to the Lord: “He orders the prophets to do shameful acts.” Had Abraham the choice to say “No!” to such an absurd imperative? And has Pasqualino the choice to say “No!” to the absurd imperatives imposed on him? Pasqualino has initially no clear-cut answer: “As if I could but didn’t want to liberate myself,” which increases his confusion, frustration, and existential unrest. He was confused and troubled because he thought that despite his unmistakable feeling to be, at times, restrained like Plato’s mythical cave prisoner,276 unable to move and act freely as he wished, he nonetheless had also an opposite strong feeling of having freedom of choice to do “whatever [he] please[d].” Is he, then, truly free to do what he pleases? Or is he subject to various determining biological, physiological, sociological, religious, or other factors?

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Likewise, were Jeremiah and David of the Old Testament free to choose to obey, or were they led to execute, like robots or puppets despite their wills or wishes, the imperatives they were receiving from the Lord, “Don Yahweh”? These and other biblical figures, mentioned or alluded to in Chapter I, must have experienced the agony of being pulled by opposite and absurdly felt commands. The ethical implications of these two opposite attitudes have to do with whether people can direct their lives in a satisfactory manner, and whether people are responsible for their actions. If they are determined, then there should be, strictly speaking, no sense in retribution, be it in human courts of justice or in the hereafter divine “court of justice.” Also, to punish in order to deter others, as some may advance, would still be unfair towards the innocent people who are punished and have no power over their actions. If, on the other hand, people have freedom of choice, then, it would make sense to talk about human beings having the initiative to self-motivated actions and, therefore, they deserve retribution. With the inconsistency in the perceptions of human action as confusingly free for some, and determined for others, Pasqualino opens the door to addressing more confusing existential absurdities. The inconsistency in the different perceptions of God’s attributes provides more themes of the absurd. The last of those themes will, paradoxically, include the recipe for the sought antidote to the existential absurd, and will be developed in the following chapters. The select perplexing attributes of God that are addressed in Chapter I are God’s immutability, God’s justice, and God’s almightiness. (4) Absurd Inconsistency in the Perception of God’s immutability

When Fortunato Pasqualino described his mother exchanging with him ideas on the extent of human freedom within a larger framework of determinism, he described his mother engaging, and even despising, his agnostic father who called his wife “prophetess” and used a biblical quote277 to suggest universal determinism, and show his innocence in being an unbeliever: “If it were true that no leaf would move without God’s will and if

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everything were in His hands… [w]hy, then, worry… about my being an unbeliever?” Then, he took the offensive by slightly changing the course of the conversation and attacking the way people conceive of God in human terms and commit absurdities. According to these people, God is immutable but as such, God would not be affected by prayers. Also, God, as omniscient, should know all what human beings need, but as such, God would not need to hear humans asking Him to provide them with what they need: “If truly God existed and if He truly wanted what’s good for us, why all these superfluous bows?” 278 The two issues insinuated here are: (1) since God is immutable, praying would be like “superfluous bows” and God would appear to be both mutable and immutable; and (2) when asking God for favors, one would imply that God may not know of, or may not care to know about, human needs, when by definition God is all-knowing, which is inconsistent and absurd.279 To this objection, Pasqualino’s mother counter-argued saying: “it was not God but we who would feel the need to pray, as babies cry when they suffer or fear something.” There are further divine attributes that Pasqualino touches upon in Chapter I and are equally open for discussion: The inconsistent perceptions of God’s justice and God’s Almightiness. Pasqualino refers to these divine attributes without discussing them systematically but they are worth discussing. They display a larger perspective of the absurd and lead to a solution that may help both the believer and the non-believer to improve the quality of their lives. (5) Absurd Inconsistency in the Perceptions of Divine Justice

Yahweh, God of Abraham, the supposedly just God, is perceived as an absurdly unjust God who issues contradictory ethical orders and acts in such a way that He violates his own orders. To talk about God being just or unjust is talking about God’s ethical standards. And to claim that God is both just and unjust would be implying that God’s ethical standards are contradictory and thus absurd. In order to better assess the gravity of the issue that Pasqualino addresses here, it would be appropriate to explain

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what ethics is, and what ethical absurdity is before dealing with God’s apparent ethical absurdity. Briefly explained, the term ‘ethics’ (from the Greek ἦθος ethos, meaning “habit” in human conduct) refers to discussing and setting up rules of conduct that aim at establishing fair social interaction rules in view of a peaceful living among human beings. These rules of conduct also aim, by extension, at fair treatment of other beings such as animals, plants, and still nature or environment.280 When these rules are formally dictated by a state authority and reinforced by sanctions, they become two major fields wihin law studies called “civil law” and “criminal law.” When the rules are not set up and reinforced by state sanctions, they constitute “personal ethics,” and are generated by what can be called “dictates of good civil manners” or “commonsense civility” in social interactions; or they can be called “religious dictates” in interactions with the divine. The dictates of commonsense civility generate the individual’s good social behavior, while the religious dictates generate the individual’s religious beliefs.281 Ethical absurdity arises when there is one self-contradictory ethical command, or two conflicting ethical commands, one ordering to do a specific act, and the other prohibiting, directly or by implication, that very same act. Similarly, God’s ethical absurdity arises when God orders two contrary or mutually exclusive ethical commands. For example, when God Yahweh orders Abraham to kill his son Isaac and offer him in sacrifice,282 and then prohibits killing in the Ten Commandments,283 one may claim that God has issued absurd and unacceptable ethical commands. At times, God is described, both in the Old and the New Testaments of the Bible, as caring for his chosen people and for the God-fearing individuals who call Him “Abba, Father” but, at times, not so caring for Pasqualino’s human logic and morals: “To make sense, to be ashamed, that’s your business. I’m not asking questions of logic or morals.” God’s comforting promises and His inconsistent behavior seem unreliable and disturbing, especially when He punishes those who fear Him, among whom are Abraham, Job and others. In these conflicting perceptions of God’s

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good promises and His unsettling behavior, God seems to be ethically inconsistent due to His unfair and absurd commands.284 The absurdity of the claim that God is both just and unjust, along with the other absurdities just described, are preliminary introductions to the yet-to-come most absurd of all forms of absurdity. This last and focal absurdity concerns the perception of God as The Almighty who becomes not-so-almighty. (6) Absurd Inconsistency in the Perceptions of Divine Almightiness

The Almighty, an adjectival noun attributed to God, is by definition one who is all-powerful and able to do whatever he pleases without reporting to, or being questioned by, anyone other than himself. More specifically, The Almighty referred to here is God Yahweh, of whom many religions talked about, giving Him different names, and describing Him with different attributes. Religious traditions, including the Judeo-Christian, describe God in anthropomorphic terms, and “almightiness” is one, where God looks like a super human being with super human powers—an imperfect description that can be the reason for perceiving and describing Him in some troublesome and absurd descriptions. However, notwithstanding the absurdity in the Christian description of God Yahweh as The Almighty who has become an innocent victim of His human creatures, Pasqualino finds in this absurdity, when properly understood, the antidote that will fix all perceptions of the absurd, and he refers to the Bible as the source of his findings. He starts his search with an attempt to understand the concept of wearing earrings as a slavery to someone, and more specifically to God Yahweh who would provide the answer for a meaningful existence in the midst of absurdities that ended up with a more engaging and surprising finding. Initially, Pasqualino pondered over the Biblical concept of wearing earrings of slavery, as illustrated in the accounts about Abraham, David, Jeremiah, and other figures of the Old Testament who had accepted, willingly and freely, the earrings of slavery to God Yahweh. All the accounts concurred about the willed and chosen slavery by these biblical individuals to their Master. These individuals did so in faith and love, no matter how absurd

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the commandments received were. The accounts evoke the parable of the slave who, at the end of his service—the sabbatical year of freedom—had accepted the earrings of slavery, or rather a continued slavery, to his master. Such a situation of a chosen continued slavery arises when the slave has faith in, and even love for, his master. Initially, Pasqualino did not expect to end up finding that also Jesus the Messiah wore earrings of slavery: “I did not think that Jesus could have had anything to share with anybody with respect to wearing earrings of perpetual slavery.” However, when he happened to read Spinoza’s Theologico-Political Treatise, he found by accident Spinoza’s commentary on Psalm 40:6, where “God pierces the ears of man.” Then, it occurred to him the plausible correlation of the account “with the pierced hands and feet of the crucified Jesus.” Jesus, too, wore the earrings of slavery, the earrings of obedience to God, the Father. This Jesus, who is presented in Christian theology as the incarnate Yahweh, or as the Son of God, was The Almighty who became, when assuming human flesh, not so almighty. Such an absurd claim will eventually open the door to Pasqualino’s assertion that this most absurd form of the absurd will, nonetheless, provide a renewed perspective on the absurd as the sought antidote to life’s absurdities. The Bible, source of the ingredients of the antidote, tells us in both of its two major parts, the Old and the New Testaments,285 about a Messiah286 who, because of faith in his Father and love for human beings, became a human being, a teacher, a healer and a savior. However, in the Jewish perspective, the Messiah would be a messenger, a prophet or a king who would teach with forceful authority according to the prophecies of the Old Testament, heal the Jewish people from the ills caused by the tyranny of the Pharaohs, the Romans, and other political powers, and provide them with political independence from these powers. In Christian perspective, the Messiah is a messenger who would complement the teaching of the Old Testament with love, not so much dictatorial authority and fear. He would heal the damage inflicted by sin and the arrogance of human rationality that lead, among other things, to the absurd misperceptions of existence and its related absurdities. This Messiah would save not simply the Jewish people from the tutelage of foreign political powers, but all humanity

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from the tutelage of sin and exclusive narrow rationality. The result of the coming of this Messiah would also involve an offer of redemption coupled with guidelines for a meaningful, peaceful, and productive existence. Furthermore, this Messiah, Teacher, Healer, and Savior is, in Christian doctrine, God Yahweh incarnate in the person of the historic Jesus who was born at the time of Herod, and died at the time of Pilate. This Christian perception of God Yahweh is, then, what constitutes the most absurd of all absurdities: God Yahweh, The Almighty, becoming in the person of Jesus on the cross absurdly not-so-almighty. While the Old Testament describes the Messiah occasionally in vague, and at times in less vague, terms as to who He truly is, the New Testament describes Him in audacious and even absurd-sounding terms. He is described as the incarnate God Yahweh, The Savior Messiah, Son of God, and The Almighty who, paradoxically, suffered, was humiliated, and died on the cross like a criminal. Such an absurd description of God Yahweh, being the focus of the chapter and the book, deserves more detailed discussion. A typical description in the Old Testament of God Yahweh that comes close to the description of Him as “The Almighty,” is the description of Him as “The Messiah” who would dwell among his people, and would be called “Immanuel” (Hebrew ‫ עמנואל‬and Syro-Aramaic '&‫ܐ‬$#"! ‘amān hū Ēl, meaning “God is with us”). Isaiah quoted this phrasal name in his prophecy: “The Lord himself, therefore, will give you a sign. It is this: the maiden [The Virgin Mary] is with child and will soon give birth to a son whom she will call Immanuel.” (Isa. 7:14) Here, there is an allusion, not explicit, to the incarnation of the Almighty as a human person. Similarly, but with even more clarity, the New Testament makes reference to Isaiah’s prophecy, stating that this Messiah has already assumed human flesh: “Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because she has conceived what is in her by the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a son and you will name him Jesus, because he is the one [The Messiah, Immanuel] who is to save his people from their sins. Now all this took place to fulfill the words spoken by the Lord through the prophet: ‘The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and she will call him Immanuel,’ a name which means ‘God-is-with-us.’”

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(Mt. 1:20-23) There are several claims, made in the New Testament by eye witnesses such as people on whom Jesus performed miracles, by the closest disciples of Jesus, and even by Jesus himself, all affirming that God Yahweh, The Almighty, has assumed human flesh in the person of Jesus. To illustrate this, the New Testament is the best resource. When John the Baptist was baptizing and preaching by the Jordan River, Jesus came towards him, and John announced: “Look, there is the lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world,” (Jn. 1:35-36) which deserves more detailed discussion to show that Jesus was the expected Messiah. Then, when John baptized Jesus, a voice from heaven was heard affirming that Jesus was the Son of God: “This is my Son, the Beloved; my favor rests on him” (Mt. 3:16-18), which indicates a participation by Jesus in the deity of The Father. Here, the allusion to the Trinity is implicit, and evokes another absurd-sounding side issue that has been addressed more appropriately in separate treatises by Church Fathers and contemporary Christian theologians. When the demons in the two demoniacs of Gadara saw Jesus approaching, they shouted: “What do you want with us, Son of God?” (Mt. 8:28-29). The demons are unexpected witnesses to confirm the divinity of Jesus as the “Son of God.” The Centurion, who was with the soldiers who were guarding Jesus on the cross, witnessed the earthquake that took place at the time Jesus “breathed his last [breath]” (Lk. 23:46) and said: “In truth this was a son of God.” (Mt. 27:51-54), taking the earthquake as a sign of the divine power of Jesus. Martha, the sister of Lazarus, also declared that Jesus was “the Christ, the Son of God, the one who was to come into this world” (Jn. 11:21-27) confirms that Jesus was The Christ, The Messiah, and the “Son of God.” When Jesus asked his disciples what they thought he was, Peter said that Jesus was “the Son of the living God.’” (Mt. 16:16) And when Thomas, the skeptic about the resurrection of Jesus, witnessed Jesus showing him his wounds, he declared: “My Lord and my God.” (Jn. 20:28) When a skeptic, like Thomas, spells out a conviction, it should have greater weight than the claim of the non-skeptic as to the divinity of Jesus. Not only were there

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witnesses, other than the ones just mentioned, who declared that Jesus was the Messiah; Jesus himself also explained in clear terms that he was the expected Messiah. He was courageous enough not to fear the Jewish authorities who were outraged and preparing for his eventual capture, clownish trial, and crucifixion. While John the Baptist was in prison, he heard about the miracles of Jesus, and sent two of his disciples to ask if Jesus was “the one who is to come” or they had “to wait for someone else.” Jesus answered: “Go back and tell John what you hear and see: the blind see again, and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised to life and the Good News is proclaimed to the poor, and happy is the man who does not lose faith in me.” (Mt. 11:2-6) Furthermore, when Jesus was preaching in the synagogue at Capernaum on the “bread,” the manna that Moses provided his Hebrew people with, in the Sinai desert, he said: “It was not Moses who gave you bread from heaven. It is my Father who gives you the bread from heaven, the true bread; for the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world. ‘Sir,’ they said ‘give us that bread always.’ Jesus answered: ‘I am’ the bread of life” (Jn. 6:3235), which is a dangerous declaration predicting his death. Also, when the Jewish high priests were offended seeing Jesus chasing the merchants, claiming the temple to be “[his] house,” they asked him for a sign that would support his outrageous claim, he said: “Destroy this sanctuary, and in three days I will raise it up.” (Jn. 2:18-19), which would be a sign, if confirmed, of his divine power over death, and the prediction of his victorious resurrection. Finally, Jesus assured the Samaritan woman that he was the expected Messiah: “The woman said to him, ‘I know that Messiah—that is, Christ—is coming, and when he comes he will tell us everything.’” Jesus responded: “I who am speaking to you, said Jesus ‘I am he.’” (Jn. 4:25-26), which is a further explicit statement that he was the expected Messiah. Despite all the testimonies just presented, the claim that God Yahweh, The Almighty, became an innocent victim still sounds absurd. Jesus must have felt with compassion the difficulty people had in accepting this blunt claim. The New Testament tells us that Peter and Thomas, two prominent disciples of Jesus, as well

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as common followers and enemies of Jesus, all had skeptical thoughts about Jesus being the expected Messiah. Jesus foretold the denial of Peter and other disciples without much blame or bitterness: “ ‘You will all lose faith in me this night….’ Peter said: ‘Though all lose faith in you, I will never lose faith.’ Jesus answered him, ‘I tell you solemnly, this very night, before the cock crows, you will have disowned me three times….’” (Mt. 26:3135) In fact, after the capture of Jesus, some of those disciples who had declared Jesus to be the Messiah renounced him. First, they could not stay to comfort Jesus in his crucial moments when he was praying on the Mount of Olives before his capture and trial: “…and [Jesus] said to Peter, ‘So you had not the strength to keep with me one hour?’” (Mt. 26:40). Peter even denied having known Jesus: “I do not know the man.” (Mt. 26:74). Being aware of the absurdity, for the limited human reasoning, of the claim that the Almighty has become a weak human being, Jesus forgave all on the cross, saying: “Father, forgive them; they do not know what they are doing.” (Lk. 23:34) By forgiving all those who betrayed him and those who condemned him, Jesus meant to say that skepticism and fear are normal events that challenge any human being searching for coherent systems of thought and belief. And by dying on the cross, Jesus demonstrated faith in the Father’s “script” of salvation written for him since eternity. He also demonstrated love for human beings. Both faith in the Father and love for human beings motivated the incarnation. Thus, faith and love led to the glorious resurrection of Jesus and the sought redemption of humanity. Analogically, one may say with Pasqualino that human faith in the divine imperatives that at times go beyond the grasp of human rationality, as well as human love for God and fellow human beings, will both emancipate human rationality from its Platonic shackles of narrow-mindedness and misperceptions of existential absurdities. Faith and love, the essential ingredients of the recipe for an effective antidote, are only alluded to towards the end of Chapter I, but will have due discussion throughout the book.

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Further Food for Thought on Chapter I: The Absurd

1- Choose a chapter, a paragraph or a statement about the meaning of life by an existential philosopher, atheist, agnostic, or theist. Explain what the author wants to convey, and discuss the message giving your opinion with logical and illustrative support. 2- In your opinion (be it true or artificially assumed for the sake of a theoretical argument), does life have meaning and purpose? Support your perception (or artificially assumed perception) of life with a logical argument and illustrative example(s), referring to your own or someone else’s experience. 3- Take two opposing views by two philosophers with opposite views as to whether or not human beings have the ability to choose. Explain these opposite views and discuss giving your own position. 4- Explain and discuss the statement of Fortunato Pasqualino’s father “If truly God existed and if He truly wanted what’s good for us, why all these superfluous bows?” and address F. Pasqualino’s mother’s response that “it was not God but we who would feel the need to pray, as babies cry when they suffer or fear something.” 5- Someone may say: If God is just, why are the innocent, most of the time, punished, and the guilty rewarded? Discuss giving your personal opinion with some support. 6- If God is almighty, couldn’t humanity be saved from sin without needing a redeemer who becomes an innocent victim?

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Human existential dilemmas arising out of daily life’s inconsistencies, contradictions, and absurdities do scare and stress, though at different levels, every adult human being. It is the fear of making a serious mistake because of uncertainties that may lead to possible negative consequences on the individual and, by extension, on humanity. Pasqualino elaborates in Chapter II on the fear of philosophers and religious thinkers. While some saw nothing but a meaningless existence coupled with a tyrannical destiny and ended up in pessimism and depressive thoughts. In this context of fear, Pasqualino pointed to Jesus as having had already experienced, as a human being, fear, and offered to dissipate this fear by giving life a meaning under the light of God’s commandments. He gave the example both in his words and conduct, by taking a long-lasting positive attitude that promotes faith and love. In the beginning of the chapter, Pasqualino mentions, without naming, “a great philosopher,” Hegel (1770–1831), who talked about the unhappy consciousness of the world287 facing “absolute fear.” This extreme form of fear is a consequence of the struggle between the wants of the human mind and what this mind perceives to be a tyrannically cruel and at times irrational, rigid, and unbendable destiny. Then, Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) is referred to as a pessimist who sees existence as a frustrating “folly without meaning,” and the human beings who are living it live a senseless adventure. Modern European philosophers’ unhappy consciousness, pessimism, and the consequent fears can be said, as stated in the Encyclopedia of Philosophy, to be inherited from the earlier Greek sophists. The sophists questioned the Greek pantheon and earlier speculations about the origin of the cosmos. Their naturalistic approach to the study of nature and their criticism of the anthropomorphic depiction of the pantheon stimulated later skepticism, agnosticism, and atheism,288 all of which led to some form of existential fear that Pasqualino describes. Philosophers and religious thinkers had existential fears as to how to conduct their lives, whether on rational or mystical bases, in the midst of uncertainties and conflicting or contradictory existential data. How to transform, transcend or overcome such

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fear, and make better sense of one’s existence in view of reliable hopes and peaceful life? Pasqualino gives a preliminary answer in this chapter, leaving further details for the remaining chapters. It is a struggle that the human mind undertakes facing an apparently unbendable destiny. It is a struggle where the mind motivates its own will facing destiny in a world that seems deterministic. Either the will has to submit passively to its own fate, or it has to find an ideal that it can proactively pursue in order to manage one’s destiny, and make one’s life meaningful, exciting, and enjoyable. Pasqualino does not dwell on arguing a possible third answer that life, because of its oddities, is meaningless, and the best solution to this somber existential perception would be exiting it as soon as one is troubled by its stressful conflicts. He, instead, focuses on some answers given through the history of human thought, both western and eastern, and focuses on what he believes to be the best answer. To start, Pasqualino mentions, without an in-depth analysis, two ancient western philosophers, Heraclitus (535-475 BCE) and Parmenides of Elea (515-445 BCE), then other later philosophers. These two Greek philosophers, fathers of later existentialism, attempted to answer the metaphysical question that is at the source of the fear just described: “What is the nature of reality?” or, in other words, “What is the nature of existence?” Each came up with a different answer that stimulated later western existential philosophers. According to Heraclitus who said “No man ever steps in the same river [of existence] twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man,” the basic principle of natural phenomenal interaction within the universe or “macrocosm,” is change and becoming.289 Change and becoming are based on the principle that the universe involves well-balanced interaction of opposites: the day is balanced with the night, the hot with the cold, life with death, and so forth. and this interaction suggests some form of catalyst agency. Behind this interaction and change or becoming within what is called “natural laws,” there is an everlasting Logos (Word or Intellect) that manages, by means of these natural laws, the universe or cosmos. Within this macrocosm, there is man, a

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“microcosm” who too brings about change and becoming thanks to another managing, but human, logos. When applying this principle to natural phenomena, one can say, more specifically, with Heraclitus that at the level of phenomenal or physical changes and becoming, there must be a divine Intellect and a divine will, both of which permeate the world and the cosmos or universe, and bring about change and becoming. When fire is caused to burn, it changes what it burns, and it changes itself into air and ash. In turn, when applying the same principle to man’s action and reaction when facing situations in his smaller world and the larger world which he lives in and interacts with, man reacts either in automated reflexes like in inanimate beings, or in calculated actions motivated by the human logos. Such a conception of change and becoming at the levels of nature and man, indicates that Heraclitus perceives human logos of intellect and will as an agent of free choices and change. Pasqualino alludes to such logic in order to support his thesis on human freedom of choice that highlights the script for exiting fear and changing the “unhappy consciousness” to a satisfied and happy consciousness. According to Parmenides, change and becoming are, contrary to Heraclitus’ view, only appearances. Reality, as revealed by the goddess who received Parmenides in her abode to enlighten him about the true nature of a changeless reality, transcends the appearance of change in the physical world. Aristotle clarified this changelessness as belonging to the metaphysical dimension, not to the physics that Heraclitus focused on.290 Such a view seems to reflect Plato’s World of Ideas and eventually Plotinus’s emanation theory. Plato establishes in his Dialogue titled Republic an analogy between a just city and a just person, where the parts of each should perform their functions according to reason and will in view of the well being of the whole.291 Although this analogy between the city and the citizen indicates that the individual citizen has freedom of choice in order to perform his or her ethical and political functions in the city, the eternal and immutable world of ideas suggests universal determinism, which is somehow confusing as will be explained next.

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In Plato’s myth of the cave, the prisoners are tied to their chairs looking at the wall of the cave, and are unable to move until someone unchains the sitting prisoners and brings them around to help them see the previously invisible background where the real things are the eternal world of ideas, and the physical objects or the shadows projected on the wall of the cave will fade away with time. This means that the human reason needs someone to bring it to face and appreciate the real world of ideas, not to see like in a dream the shadows projected onto the wall of the cave. Thus, for the human reason to be enlightened, it needs an outside agent to help it focus on and apprehend the metaphysical world of ideas where true knowledge hides. Therefore, reason woud be determined by this outside agent, a human teacher or a divine revelation that illuminates the human intellect. In turn, the will follows (deterministically) what the intellect (reason) dictates to be true (epistemologically) or the best (ethically), thus suggesting determinism at the intellectual level. In the case of the unenlightened human reason, although it may not see the true world of ideas but may have an imperfect version of it (the projected shadows on the wall of the cave—the physical world), it also follows (deterministically) what its unenlightened reason dictates to be true or what is best, which may not be the genuine true or best. This conflict between the two theses of freewill and determinism, suggested by the myth of the cave and the disagreement between the philosophers as to how to interpret it, is what seems to have led Pasqualino to claim that the intellectual confusion and the consequent existential fear originated in ancient Greek thought, and assumed greater proportions in later philosophies. After having reviewed select philosophical positions, and showed their unsatisfactory result that led to existential confusion and fear, Pasqualino developed a theological, and particularly a Judeo-Christian, strategy that is inspired by the Bible and culminating in the teaching of Christ for an effective dissolution of all sorts of fear. From Abraham of the Old Testament until Jesus of the New Testament, there were fears that were remedied with an effective religious perspective permeated with faith that may, at times, be non-rational though not contrary to reason.

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In the Old Testament, Abraham feared Yahweh’s illogical and inhumane order to sacrifice his only son.292 However, knowing it was God’s mysterious and unfathomable order, he submitted to it willingly but broken-heartedly. Job feared God’s illogical wisdom, whereby God has the crooks rewarded and the innocent punished in this world. This is why he dared to question God’s wisdom. However, he eventually submitted to God’s mysterious wisdom that provides for everything in the world and universe of inanimate and animate beings by accepting his own supposedly undeserved suffering. Similarly, the pessimist Qoheleth, the Son of David, known as Solomon, feared God’s discomforting wisdom in creating human nature, including his own, full of vanity. This is why he was battling, in a repenting mood, his own avidity for richness and power, and ending with some statements of wisdom. In the New Testament, the apostles of Jesus, who were supposed to be the example of faithfulness to their Master, were fearful of the imminent capture of their Master and naively depressed by the possibility of seeing their own faith deceived—their faith in Jesus as the Messiah and king of the new kingdom of Jews. Also, simple-minded and ignorant as they were, they feared that their hopes in having political positions in this kingdom would be completely shattered. As a result of such fear, they betrayed Jesus on several occasions immediately before and immediately after his capture and death. Their faith had since matured and been strengthened when the Holy Spirit later illuminated their minds and supported their faith to better appreciate the mission given to them, and to firmly stand courageous in front of up-comming tribulations. Before that transformation, they were still the typically frail human beings, exposed to skepticism, lack of faith, and consequent fear. They feared for their lives when they realized that their Master had been captured and was going to die and that they could do nothing about it. They had to hide and escape shamefully or shamelessly. Thomas, who accompanied Jesus, listened to his teaching, and witnessed his miracles, feared that Jesus may have not resurrected as told by eye witnesses. As a typical skeptic, he wanted a proof such as putting his finger in the wounds of Jesus before he would believe.293 Even Peter, the head of the apostles and the rock that was supposed to be the solid

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foundation of the future church of Jesus, feared for his life, and denied three times any association with Jesus.294 In face of all forms of fear, Jesus went, as a human being, through fear too but not with the negative consequences others had. But it was not the same as the fear of the philosophers who fell short of understanding the true meaning of life; they became victims of existential fears leading to skepticism and belief in the absurdity of life. Neither was it the fear of average human beings, who are, by nature and beyond their control, victims of ignorance and emotional immaturity that make their lives appear to be full of pain and worthless. It was, rather, that natural human fear of seeing oneself betrayed by those who, ethically, are supposed to be the most trusted—his disciples. It was a fear coupled with the natural fear of death, a death that was, paradoxically, sought by Jesus as the redemptive ransom and the remedy for human intellectual, emotional, and spiritual shortcomings. As a man, Jesus faced death with trepidation. His disciples noticed that at the Last Supper they had with him.295 Also, prostrated in the Olive Garden, praying and meditating on his salvation-in-the-making mission, Jesus feared what was about to happen. His disciples were asleep, incapable of staying awake to comfort their master. Jesus was fearful when he asked: “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass me by.”296 He was fearful when he shouted in agony on the cross: “‘Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?’ That is, ‘My God, my God, why have you deserted me?’”297 By experiencing fear, Jesus conquered human fear by his willful and chosen resignation to the will of the Omnipotent and became the emissary lamb Savior. By experiencing death, he conquered death by his victorious resurrection. Existential fear is a fact of human life, but how to face it is the issue that Pasqualino offers an answer to. At times, one can prevent such fear by getting trained into facing frightening or upsetting eventualities before they take place, as the psychologist does when helping patients to prevent or courageously face the possibility of a frightening situation. At other times, fear cannot be prevented. It just happens, no matter what training or education one may have had. When that is the case, it is important to try to mitigate or suppress fear by means of an antidote, when

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available. Pasqualino presents Jesus as one who availed that antidote through his teaching and his example—an antidote consisting basically of loving one another and obeying God’s dictates, including what people perceive as unchangeable destiny. More specifically, this antidote consists in a positive attitude towards life and fellow human beings by not only enjoying life’s God-mandated licit pleasures, but also accepting, in a willful resignation, life’s unavoidable pains. Such antidote leads man to acquiring a spiritual outlook on life, people, and God as the Ultimate Cause of what is commonly called “destiny” that, as such, is or appears to be rigid and unbendable. This spiritual outlook also leads man to perceiving God not merely as dictatorial but also as a caring Provider (divine providence) who endowed human beings with an intelligence, various gifts, and a will to manage, within their respective limits, their fears, actions, joys, and pains. Jesus gave the example of how to deal with life’s difficulties, and offered himself as the antidote. Jesus loved humanity so much that he not only incarnated and lived among us, but he also healed the sick,298 mingled with the Samaritans,299 forgave the sinners,300 cared for the children301 and those who could not care for themselves, commanded people to love one another,302 accepted being associated with the criminals. He died to make the human race actively “children of God,” and to enable them to call God: Abba (Father),303 not a remote and incommunicable Almighty. When someone is in love, he or she would fear nothing in doing what would please or benefit the beloved. Jesus loved humanity to the point that his fear of seeing his disciples abandoning him during the last hours of his life was only a passing moment that ended with Jesus forgiving the weakness of his disciples. Also, his fear of the imminent death could not, because of love, deter him from accepting death and pursuing his salvation mission. This is why his last request before dying was that we should “love one another” as he loved humanity. Similarly, when a human being is in love, be it love of God or love of a fellow human being, fear would not be an insurmountable obstacle even when the lover is facing death. Jesus had a positive attitude towards life and promoted that attitude both in words and in deeds. He taught people to care for

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the sick and the needy, and did so by example, healing the sick, providing food to the hungry, and giving life to the dead. When someone asked Jesus who his neighbor was, Jesus replied with the parable of the Good Samaritan who took care of a stranger who was robbed, hurt by thieves, and left on the side of the road in pain, fighting for his life.304 On another occasion, when someone asked Jesus what to do in order to gain the kingdom of heaven, Jesus told him that he should comply with the Ten Commandments.305 One of these commandments orders the respect and preservation of life, which is reminiscent of Yahweh’s sparing the life of Isaac. When Abraham, in obeying Yahweh’s order to sacrifice his only son, was about to kill his son, Yahweh sent an angel to stop Abraham from killing his son. When Jesus and the apostles were in Gethsemane to pray and face the soldiers wanting to arrest Jesus, the apostle Peter struck out at the high priest’s servant who came to witness the arrest, and cut off his ear. Jesus asked Peter to return his sword back into its sheath.306 And when in Gethsemane Jesus sensed the last dramatic moments of his earthly life, he feared like any human being the imminent death, which indicated the natural reaction to preserve one’s life. Not only did Jesus teach and act on sparing life; he also performed miracles to show his concern to preserve life and celebrate good health and a wholesome life’s enjoyment. Jesus multiplied, in a miraculous act, the five loaves of bread and two fish to feed the hungry crowd that came to listen to his teaching.307 He even enhanced the festivity and enjoyment of the wedding of Cana in Galilee by transforming the water into wine when wine was getting short. Jesus even resurrected the dead. When Jesus was told that his beloved friend Lazarus was dead, he was emotionally moved. Eventually he called Lazarus back to life, after he had been dead for three days.308 In short, the teaching and miracles by Jesus indicate that life is, according to Jesus, a gift that ought to be preserved and enjoyed. Nonetheless, Jesus did not spare his own life, thus contradicting, so it seems, his own teaching and deeds. He did so for a sublime mission that is above human means: to save all humanity from eternal damnation, which will soon be explained and illustrated in a parable. Similarly, when human beings are equipped with such a positive attitude towards

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life, they too will preserve and enjoy it and thus alleviate or even eliminate their existential fears as Jesus did. Jesus resigned himself to the pain and death that were the way for Jesus to realize his mission of salvation. He feared pain and death but that fear did not prevent him from pursuing and accomplishing his redeeming mission. Jesus, as a human being, accepted the pain without sinking into despair about his loss, and he accepted his approaching death without becoming an unrecoverable useless past history. By accepting pain and death, he conquered both. Jesus had a mission that was stronger than his fear of pain and death. Similarly, when human beings apply their will power in accepting and resigning to their destiny of having to suffer, they will, at the example of Jesus, conquer their suffering without sinking into despair. And when they have faith in the Omnipotent’s ablity to do what is in human eyes impossible, then they will accept death with the hoped-for reward and felicity in the hereafter. Jesus had a spiritual outlook that did not negate the material world and its natural needs but elevated and even transcended them within an eschatological perspective. As the Messiah who had been announced in the Old Testament, he came to build upon and perfect the teaching of the Old Testament309 that had aimed at unifying the tribes of Judah into one people of one God Yahweh/Elohim. At that time, humanity had its own historical and cultural setup, its own mentality and needs. These conditions led the Jewish people to hope for liberation from the Egyptian and the Roman oppressive tutelage, to have their own kings and land, and to impose the retributive “eye for eye and tooth for tooth” mentality. With Jesus the Jewish people is invited to become part of the new Kingdom of God that is not confined by city-state walls that are meant to fend from the Egyptians, the Romans, or the Persians. It is a kingdom that is not made up of worldly power, physical walls, and material wealth. It is rather a spiritual kingdom, where each citizen is invited to become a “good Samaritan” to his neighbor. It is a kingdom where one is expected to “turn the other cheek” to the aggressor. It is a kingdom where the “king” is Jesus the Messiah, who gave the example of love, self dedication, and self sacrifice. In the allegory of “The Wolf and the

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Lamb,” a concept developed in the next chapter, Jesus is the lamb that accepts becoming a victim to save others—a story that summarizes the mystery of incarnation and salvation. With all these predispositions and actions, Jesus overcame fear. Likewise, when human beings acquire these prerequisites, as humanly as possible, they too can overcome fear. Further Food for Thought on chapter II: Fear

1. Research the concept of fear from a psychological point of view (i.e., fear as a natural defense response to real physical or emotional threats), and if possible from a medical point of view (as a biomedical phenomenon remedied with medical prescriptions). Find out if one can control fear and how. 2. Research the concept of destiny, and find out if one can control it. If one can, how? If one cannot, can one avoid the pessimism that results from this lack of control? 3. What is it that makes a philosopher “great”? Are there objective guiding rules to make a philosopher “great,” or is it simply a matter of subjective judgment? Give one or more examples of philosophers or thinkers whom you consider “great,” and indicate what it is that makes them great. 4. How do you perceive “existential fear,” and how would you face it? Give one or more examples to illustrate your perception of fear and how to deal with it. For the sake of the argument, it is not the kind of answer (pessimistic or optimistic) that counts, but how you argue your position. 5. Compare the position of Heraclitus (No man ever steps in the same river twice) with that of Parmenides (true reality is changeless). In your view, which is better in facing life’s absurdities? Give your reasons. 6. Choose any one of the following biblical figures, and analyze the fear he endured and overcame: the biblical patriarch Abraham, Job, Qoholeth (known as Solomon), Thomas the apostle, Peter the head of the apostles, and Jesus. Then asses the value of fear in each case.

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COMMENTARY ON CHAPTER III: THE WOLF AND THE L AMB

The fear described in the previous chapter II evoked the fear of the lamb from the wolf, now being addressed with more details in the current chapter III. It also provided an excellent analogy between the fearful lamb that becomes a victim to save other lambs, and Jesus Christ becoming a victimized “lamb” to save others. This “lamb” is the one referred to in the Apocalypse, a “lamb” that has authority to dictate the destiny of all living. The reference was to the incarnate divinity in the person of Jesus. When in the beginning of chapter III, Pasqualino describes people who go to church and don’t know with which of the many names to address the mysterious divine presence, Pasqualino describes the communication of human beings with the divine. He gives the example of Buddhism and Christianity communicating with the divine in the temples of worship. The Buddhists evoke the divine presence with the piously resonating sacred syllable “OM,” and Saint Francis of Assisi evokes the divine presence with the exclamation “Oh my God.” No matter how one names or addresses this “mysterious presence,” it is a divinity in love, willing to be allegorically sacrificed like the innocent lamb facing the wolf. Just as the victimized lamb transforms the ferocious wolf to a satisfied, peaceful animal, thereby saving other lambs, so Jesus Christ, the innocent and self-offering victim “lamb,” saves humanity from the atrocious outcome of sin. Once the hungry wolf is satisfied, other “lambs” are spared. In this allegorical framework, Pasqualino conveys the Christian mystery of Salvation in an allegory that gives meaning and purpose to human existence. When referring in the beginning of Chapter III to the “mysterious presence” that is invoked with “OM” or “Oh my God,” Pasqualino means to say that humanity of various creeds or various geographical areas has a general sense of the supernatural and the divine. This sense has, historically speaking, been expressed by primitive and later humanity when it invoked some supernatural power, or powers, to help them with their existential needs and fears. Hindus, Buddhists, and Jainists invoke the divine with the Sanskrit syllable “OM,”310 which is an utterance to evoke an emotion of awe and adoration rather than a word that evokes a

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specific concept. They repeat this sacred syllable many times in their prayers or meditations and ceremonies as if to announce a divine presence to which reverence is due. Others, as in the Christian tradition, also invoke the divine in a similar emotional manner. For example, “the poor man [Saint Francis] of Assisi” invoked with prostration the divine presence the whole day and the whole night, with “Oh my God, Oh my God” and nothing else.311 However, not everyone has this gift of emotional intuition and a genuine belief in the supernatural. Among those who lack such emotional intuition or intellectual sophistication to reach the supernatural, there are not only the atheists but, as Pasqualino candidly confesses, also certain priests, regardless of their religion. These priests, despite the fact that they have radical doubts inconsistent with their religion, they either continue serving the altar for personal pragmatic and social standing purposes or they simply defrock. These are, according to Pasqualino, “practitioners, not believers,” who lack a deep faith in their enlightened teacher and role-model. Just as non-believers, these “practitioners” become skeptics about their own now-altered belief. They can no more make sense of the belief they once had, and can no more reach, rationally or mystically, the metaphysical realm of the divine, the source of eternal truth, serenity, and peace. The metaphysical realm is what Plato (+/- 429–347 BCE) called “the World of Ideas,”312 being the divine Mind—as interpreted by Plotinus, Augustine and others—that holds the ideal models of all perfections, and oversees the well-functioning of the world, the universe, and all that they contain. It is the world of eternal forms313 that inspire the individual specific material forms. It is also the world of wisdom, serenity, and peace, where harmonious cohesion is the common denominator for all beings, despite the appearance of inconsistencies or absurd contradictions. It is a kind of apocalyptic world, an ideal perfect world, where “The wolf lives with the lamb, the panther lies down with the kid; the calf and the lion cub feed together with a little boy to lead them...” as announced by Isaiah,314 a prophet of the Old Testament. However since not everyone is capable of gaining access to this metaphysical realm, the world of ideas, wisdom, and peace, an enlightened master is needed as a guide. This

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enlightened master is, in Christian theology, Jesus Christ. The advent of Jesus the incarnate God was an absurd event. However, absurdities in the eyes of human beings may not be so in the eyes of God, the Omnipotent. We need to recognize that the human mind, despite its wonderful scientific discoveries, is limited in its intellectual capacity, and cannot fully grasp the unlimited wisdom of the Omnipotent God. Notwithstanding His omnipotence, God presented himself as a humble person, wearing the earrings of slavery. His love for His creation led him to give himself, like a lamb, as a sacrifice to the wolf to save man from the consequence of sin. Pasqualino continues using further analogies. He transitions from the analogy that depicts Jesus as a lamb that saves other lambs, to the depiction of Jesus as a figure like Moses who saved the Jews from persecution by Egypt’s Pharaoh. Moses, the savior of the Jewish people from Egyptian slavery, becomes the allegorical image of Jesus, the savior of humanity. But this analogy embodies not just the similarity between two individuals who are both saviors of their people. It also includes another common denominator, that of the free choice that both groups of people have in accepting or rejecting salvation. In the same way that the Jews of Israel had a free choice to accept or reject salvation by complying, or not complying, with the orders of God Yahweh as conveyed through Moses, humanity too has a choice to accept or reject salvation offered as a free gift of love by Jesus Christ. Moses saved the Jews from the tutelage of the Pharaoh, and led them to the promised “land where milk and honey flow,”315 and Jesus saved humanity from the tutelage of original sin, and led it to spiritual enlightenment and peace. Similarly, like the Jews who were able to refuse salvation, humanity is able to refuse salvation as well. Thus, salvation comes in two stages. The first is that Jesus does his part of “opening the gate,” so to speak; and the second is that human beings comply with the guidance and orders set in the Ten Commandments, and actually enter voluntarily and freely that “gate.” Compliance would provide not only the benefits of an undeserved salvation, but also the reward for complying, or retribution for not complying, with the commandments. In this way, God encourages and does not

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override man’s will to conform to divine guidance and commandments. The Jews of the Old Testament (the Hebrews) were promised the reward of enjoying life in the “land of milk and honey.” Buddha’s followers were assured a power and serenity superior to those of the gods.316 John the Baptist announced that the kingdom of heaven was close, and asked his audience to repent;317 otherwise, they would be cursed, like the Pharisees were, as “a brood of vipers” that needed to be exterminated.318 The ten bridesmaids of the parable waiting for the arrival of the bride were promised the enjoyment of attending the wedding party.319 Jesus taught how to pray and repent. The Lord’s Prayer consists in asking God to help human beings comply with the divine will so that the divine kingdom reign on earth as it does in heaven, and to forgive others. The seekers of wisdom were promised, both in the Old and the New Testaments, access to the intellectual truth or logos. All these historical glimpses provided by Pasqualino indicate that man has free will and can make choices that merit the promised rewards. If one did not conform to the conditions set, the outcome would be damnation like the withering that struck the biblical fig tree condemned by Jesus.320 Pasqualino briefly mentions these references while illustrating the various segments of the Mass that in Christian theology is the miraculous reenactment of the redeeming self-sacrifice of Jesus, the allegorical lamb. His illustration of the Mass and the related concepts are so poetic that it appears like an apocalyptic vision. From establishing analogies between Jesus and the lamb as a sacrifice, and between Jesus and Moses as a savior of the Jewish people, Pasqualino moves on to introducing John the Baptist, the link between the old and the new phases of the history of salvation. John was the immediate precursor of Jesus. He was called “The Baptist” because he baptized people with water, asking them to repent because the savior was about to arrive. John’s baptism by water and his inviting people to repent meant that just as water cleanses and becomes a symbol of cleansing, each one should repent and thereby cleanse one’s soul in preparation to accepting salvation by the upcoming Jesus Christ, the Messiah, as

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announced in the Old Testament. The New Testament tells us that while John was baptizing people, Jesus appeared and asked John to baptize him. At this point, and before proceeding with comments on Pasqualino’s further references to events narrated in the New Testament and beyond, one may ask a couple of questions: If Jesus was sinless, and thus not needing to repent and be cleansed, why did he present himself to be baptized? And if by his suffering and dying on the cross, Jesus merited forgiveness of humanity’s sins, why then should people repent if they have been baptized and purified? By becoming man, Jesus wore the clothes of sinful humanity, and as such, he wanted to show that humanity should and can repent, be baptized, and cleansed before it gains salvation. His asking John to baptize him does not mean that He needed to be baptized. Instead, it was a sign to confirm John’s message about the need to cleanse one’s sins. It invited human beings to be cleansed of their sins. By suffering and dying on the cross, Jesus merited for humanity access to the heavenly abode that only the repented and cleansed may enter. Before the redeeming act of Jesus took place, the access through the heavenly “door” was, due to sin, impossible. This figurative speech means that human beings need to contribute something to their own salvation, even though many factors may hinder doing so. This is to say that human beings do have freedom of choice in order to merit what is being offered to them as salvation and eternal reward. Otherwise, they would be like animals that follow their instinctive impulses or like trees that follow their natural biological conditions of growth, where judgments concerning merit cannot be applied. The cursed fruitless fig tree, mentioned by Pasqualino, seems to illustrate the commandment that individual human beings should, like fig trees or any other fruit tree, give fruits. Otherwise, they would be cursed and condemned. The analogy of the fig tree is ambiguous and confusing: In one respect, it may suggest that God is vengeful (as the Old Testament may at times suggest), not as He is presented in the New Testament: a loving and merciful God. To this, one may say that analogies appeal, generally speaking, to the common, unsophisticated people, and can be used to

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convey ideas to a large audience, but they sometimes do so imperfectly. What is important about analogies is that they need to be understood for the specific ideas they are intended to convey, and one need not look for all possible, but inadequate, implications and literal interpretations. In this respect, it may be the case that the biblical account of the fig tree was meant to show that despite the farmer’s care, the tree still did not give fruits. This picture of the fig tree may also mean that despite the fertilizers that the farmer had treated the tree with, it did not give fruits. Similarly, despite the grace of God, represented in Christ’s redeeming act, some human beings may voluntarily refuse the offered grace and do not give the expected fruits. Therefore, both the tree and those human beings deserve appropriate retribution despite the fact that the main message in the parable of the lamb and the wolf is on love and forgiveness that open the door to one’s capability to making choices and actively deserving the gift of redemption. Then, Pasqualino engages the wolf in an interesting philosophical discourse with God. The wolf amicably blames God for creating him as a wolf with a ferocious appetite that killed the innocent lamb. The wolf would have preferred, instead, to be an herbivore that would not do harm to any creature. Such a discourse has a serious theological implication, not to mention the legal ramification for human courts of justice, where human free choice is basically assumed with occasional exceptions justified by the pretext of “insanity.” As for the theological implication, it consists in claiming that if human beings are created the way they are, determined to act the way their respective natures dictate, then why punish them for what they could not choose to avoid? The retribution in the hereafter would then be inappropriate and no one should be punished. This is contrary to what the Bible (Old and New Testaments) teaches. As mentioned earlier, the main point of this allegory of the Wolf and the Lamb is that just as one lamb, by becoming a victim, saves other lambs, so Jesus, by becoming an innocent voluntary victim of human sin, redeemed human sin and saved human beings from eternal damnation. In this allegory, as in all allegories, one should not become obsessed by the literary “means” or “medium,” which is only “a material

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element” used to establish, though imperfectly, only a comparison. One should, instead, look for “the end” or purpose of the analogy which is “the formal element” or “the intended message” of salvation by one who saves many. At this point, one may wonder whether there is here an implication that it is right to sacrifice one person by causing that person to suffer or die for the benefit of others. Kant (1724-1804) would say that punishing one innocent person to benefit the many would be unfair towards the innocent victim, and would, therefore, be unethical. If so, then, in what sense can the death of Jesus, the innocent victim who died to save mankind, be ethical or not suicidal? This question may be answered by saying that Jesus chose to suffer as a self-motivated act of love, not to avoid life’s miseries, by taking his role of the emissary lamb, while Kant meant to say that inflicting punishment on one who does not consent to his suffering is unethical and unjust. Kant would still reject the infliction of punishment by others on the innocent who does consent to his suffering as equally unethical and unjust. However, in the case of Socrates and Jesus, both accepted to die as innocent victims for a greater good that could not be achieved otherwise. Also, both Jesus and Socrates taught that death is not an unrecoverable loss. For both, death is only a passage to an everlasting life. Socrates anticipated victory over death by asserting his belief in the eternity of the mind (the intellectual part of the human soul), and Jesus taught a life after death, and he himself defeated death by resurrecting from the dead by assuming a glorified body that his disciples could temporarily perceive before its ascension to heaven. To justify the apropriateness of his use of the allegory of The Wolf and The Lamb, and its implied theme of salvation, Pasqualino concludes this chapter with reference to the lamb of the Apocalypse (Book of Revelation): “A dream? A hope? In the vision of the Apocalypse, the lamb has been given the privilege of opening the book of the destiny of all.” But what is this “book of destiny” that the lamb is given the privilege to open? The Apocalypse (Revelation) has several references to “the lamb” and its function. It points to a “Lamb that seemed to have been sacrificed” (Rev, 5:6), a “Lamb [that] will open the scroll

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and the seven seals of it.” (Rev. 5:5), and “The Lamb came forward to take the scroll from the right hand of the One sitting on the throne…” (Rev, 5:7), while the “twenty four elders” were singing: “You are worthy to take the scroll and break the seals of it, because you were sacrificed, and with your blood you bought men for God…” (Rev. 5:9). “[T]he One sitting on the throne” is The Omnipotent God; “The Lamb” is the messenger of the Omnipotent who was sent to be an emissary victim to save humanity from eternal damnation due to sin; and “the scroll” is, so to speak, an allegorical “Book of Records” or “a Script” for each and every human being’s role on earth. The “Opening [of] this Scroll” means “the ability to give each one his or her role to play on earth” or, in other words, “the ability to manage the destiny of each [human or otherwise] being” without necessarily suppressing human beings’ ability, no matter how minimal it is, to make choices. The destiny of humanity is based not on anbsolutely rigid determinism but on the exercise of a “minimal” capability that man is going to be judged on. In this context, one can understand that “the scroll” is what Pasqualino refers to as the “book of destiny of all.” The “Lamb” is Jesus who, as the Son of God the Almighty, has the power to manage human destiny, giving each one his or her role to play. Implied in this apocalyptic scene is the mystery of the Trinity (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit), where the Father is “the One” sitting on the throne; the Son is the “Lamb;” and the Holy Spirit is the loving relationship between the Father and the Son or, in other though simplistic words, Love that ties the Father and the Son as a unity. Pasqualino, not being a professionally trained theologian, avoided arguing systematically this mystery of the Christian faith. Instead of entering a theological discussion, Pasqualino undertakes in the next chapter IV, in a summary format, an analysis of the wisdom of Lao Tse’s The Way of Heaven, that is, the FarEastern way to human happiness and serenity based on love. Further Food for Thought on Chapter III: The Wolf and the Lamb

1- (a) Describe and discuss the concept of the Hindu-Buddhist syllable and sacred sound “OM!” (“Om is the bow,

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the arrow is the Soul, Brahman the Mark.” Mundaka Upanishad, 2.2.2 -2.2.4.) or (b) Describe and discuss Saint Francis’ phrase “Oh my God!” Choose one a, or b, unless you prefer to (c) make a succinct analytic comparasion of both a, and b. Is it always the case that if one lamb is sacrificed, other lambs are saved? Use examples from real life to illustrate what you think. For example, you may consider the possible case of a mother or a father, as a sacrificed or victimized parent, spending time and money over years of painful efforts at the cost of great sacrifices, to raise a child who eventually becomes a prodigal child. You may want to consider whether the good deeds and sacrifices of that parent (or parents) can set a good example that will eventually bring fruits whether by the same child or by other people to support the claim that one victimized lamb saves or redeems other lambs. Pasqualino qualifies some unfit religious or political leaders as “practitioners not believers” in their expected-to-be genuine and praiseworthy mission. Comment as objectively as possible, and give your personal outlook on a sample case that the media may have, or could have, taken advantage of to advertise so-called “breaking news!” In your discussion, address whether one should blame the weakness of human nature, or whether one should expect heroism on the part of these “practitioners.” Read Plato’s “Myth of the Cave” (Plato, The Republic. 514a-520a), then give your personal reflections on what regards Plato’s symbolism of the sun, the world of ideas, and the shadow reality. Discuss how this myth relates to the changing and temporal physical objects of perception and to the unchanging and a-temporal or eternal abstract concepts. Do you agree with Plato’s doctrine of the invisible “true reality” implied in his symbolism, and why or why not? Can the wolf, in real life, truly live with the lamb in peace as eschatologically or utopically claimed by Isaiah (Isaiah 65:17 and 65:25)? It is known that cats and dogs are

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THE EARRINGS OF GOD: THE ABSURD AMONG US natural enemies, but when these are raised together since early age, they may care for each other when they grow older, without the traditional enmity between them. Similarly, bears, tigers, and lions can, supposedly, be domesticated and live peacefully among themselves or with humans. In this perspective, can one make a similar statement applicable to the relationship among conflicting humans on earth? 6- Taking a real case of a serial killer, imagine you are the defense attorney and have to defend your client. What considerations would you entertain (insanity, societal negative influences, bio-physiological make-up, heredity, or other factors), and how would you formulate your defense and recommend to the judge and the jury a favorable verdict for the killer? Then, imagine the judge is God. How would you foresee God judging the same criminal? 7- Is it morally acceptable to sacrifice a human life to save other human lives? Address either Immanuel Kant’s deontological ethical theory or Jeremy Bentham’s utilitarian/consequentialist ethical theory. Kant advocates the duty to act according to a rational moral law expressed in a “categorical imperative” such as: “Treat others as an end, not merely as a means.” Bentham, on the other hand, advocates a utilitarian/consequentialist ethical theory (duty to act in such a way that produces the greatest good or happiness for the individual or the community). Defend or refute the one theory you wish to discuss. 8- Keeping in mind Kant’s principle that it is unethical to punish, or allow the punishment of, the innocent, how would you analyze the act of accepting death by Socrates or Jesus (choose one)? Is accepting to become an innocent victim for the benefit of others a fair or useful heroic act?

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The previous chapter III focused on the concept of the one saving many. The innocent frail lamb, by becoming the victim of the wolf, became victorious in the sense that it saved other, consequently safe and happy, lambs. Similarly, Jesus Christ, who became, like the lamb, an innocent victim, not only became victorious by saving humanity from spiritual death but also led it onto the path of a long lasting happy life. The analogy between the lamb and Christ illustrates the absurd idea that God became, because of love, flesh, a slave-like, and a victim of his own creatures. This act of love was motivated by the concern for the beloved to reach a happiness that lasts not only within, but also beyond, time and space. This analogy points to the ongoing theme of absurdities inherent in human existence, and emphasizes the wisdom that love can bring about, within distressing absurdities, miraculous results. Chapter IV describes existential absurdities in imaginary tales or real stories filled with absurd situations that in the end turn into rewarding reversals thanks to some form of love that is offered as a guide for humans’ incessant pursuit of happiness. Pasqualino makes use of several world literatures and world events to illustrate such miraculous reversals: Far Eastern wisdom conveyed in paradoxes, Middle Eastern and Western extravagant tales, and real political histories of various nations displayed as conveying miraculous reversals. Before undertaking the commentary on the chapter, a preliminary remark on the issue related to the title of the chapter is appropriate. The title, ‘Heaven,’ is inspired by Lao Tse’s paradoxfilled book Tao Te Ching (The Classic Book on the Path of Virtue).321 The Chinese word ‘Tao’ is conveyed in English as ‘Path’ or ‘Way,’ ‘Te’ as ‘Virtue,’ and ‘Ching’ as ‘Great’ or ‘Classic.’ The adjective Ching in the title is meant to be honorific, and thus it was not in the original Chinese title. It was added by later devote Taoists some time after the book was first made public. Pasqualino rendered in Italian the concept of “Tao” (Path) as “Il Cielo” (“Heaven”) to refer to a “Heavenly Path” that involves theoretical wisdom and the related practical virtues that would help reach earthly happiness. When the virtues are exercised in human interaction, love would, according to the Tao, be a major

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requirement for trailing on the Path of happiness. This path offers, through love, solutions to various issues varying from how to reach happiness on earth to having glimpses at a likely happier life in the hereafter. Chapter IV starts with a quote from Lao Tse on love: “Heaven arms with love … without arms of war...” This quote points to the underlying wisdom of “Tao” as a wisdom of love. It is a wisdom that anticipates, almost prophetically but without explicit reference, the most sublime form of love that the Tao—ultimately the “Nameless” Ultimate Being or Divine Creator—has for human beings. Pasqualino’s reference to Lao Tse’s book is due to its theme of love as a guide to happiness, and to the paradoxes that essentially combine love and absurdity as a complementary couple. Pasqualino illustrates this combination with select world philosophies, world political histories, and world popular tales. The concept of love led Lao Tse to talking about the ultimate souce of love that is also the source of being which, in Pasqualino’s thought, involves a disguised notion of a divinity. One may get the impression of this divinity when reading in the Tao Te Ching: “It was from the Nameless that Heaven and Earth sprang” (Tao Te Ching, Strophe 1, Tr. Waley) or “The Valley Spirit never dies” (Strophe 2, Tr. Waley). One may also get the ambiguous impression of an eternal life beyond death when reading “To die but not to perish is to be eternally present.” (Strophe 33, Tr. Waley). What concerns us here is Lao Tse’s wisdom of love and happiness that the history of human thought elaborates on in different ways. Like Lao Tse, philosophers and popular tale writers sought, despite their differences in the details, one common means to reach happiness: love. To some philosophers, like Immanuel Kant, truth, safety, and happiness are naturally discovered by means of, and dictated by, an innate, love-inspired rational moral imperative: “So act that you use humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, always at the same time as an end, never merely as a means” (Groundwork 4:429). More simply stated this imperative says: “Do not do to others what you would not want others do to you,” which is a natural commonsense rationality that echoes Lao Tse’s natural philosophy of loving oneself and others. Compliance

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with the Kantian categorical imperative leads, supposedly, like the teaching of Lao Tse, to a happy life. To other philosophers, such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau, truth, safety, and happiness are naturally discovered through love-inspired emotions. To Rousseau, emotions are feelings that the individual shares with other individuals in a loving attitude, which in turn lead to a happy life. Emotions stem out of a natural need or, in other words, a natural law that is innate in us, and expressed in mutual respect of, and care for, others. For Schopenhauer, truth, safety, and happiness are naturally discovered through man’s most precious natural gift, the love-inspired will.322 It is a will to actualize the idealistic love as conveyed in the Greek term ἀγάπη agape/ Latin caritas that is a disinterested compassionate love. From these various forms of wisdom one can have a holistic perception of our human reality and the positive effect of love for a happy life. However, the wisdom of love does not come without perplexing paradoxes even when the spiritual dimension adds more reliability and durability of one’s positive thoughts and feelings about life . The wisdom on the subject offered by the Tao, the Western philosophers, and the religious thinkers consists in showing that love of oneself, when consonant with the love of others, is caused by the natural human yearning for happiness of the one who loves and the one who is loved. Likewise, the wisdom offered by world political histories and world tales also consists in showing that love of oneself and love of others can lead to happiness more successfully than the exclusive love of oneself. Like the Tao and the sample representatives of Western thought just mentioned who uphold the thesis that love is capable of miraculous reversals, so the world political histories and the world popular tales do, which will next be addressed. On the political level, expectation of a happy life is, generally speaking, realized after bloody struggles. The love and zeal of individual political leaders had, thanks to their love and zeal for their respective countries, the expected reward, but at a cost. Interestingly and sadly, there was in the selection of political leaders one whom Pasqualino mentions, without much details, to briefly accentuate a contrast. This leader had, due to his psychotic and destructive personality, a phony love and a misplaced zeal

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for his country, Germany’s Hitler. Other leaders in the neighboring and friendly counties, who learned about or witnessed the German drama, had to intervene. The love of these other friendly leaders of France, England, and USA did intervene and replaced Hitler’s erratic love with their humane concern for a distressed Germany. It was like a kind of “tough love” that caused unavoidable bloodshed to save the unfortunate German citizens from greater oppression and depression, and to improve their quality of life. The fate of Italy as an ally was linked to that of Germany. The loss of the war by Germany and its ally Italy brought about the beginning of a better future for German and Italian citizens. Then Pasqualino brings about an exemplar Indian political leader, Gandhi, then Egypt’s Sadat whose genuine love for their respective countries led them to bringing novel and revolutionary ideas that saved their countries from worse conditions. Gandhi formed non-violent demonstrations that, in the end, beat the powerful armed forces of the British government, and gained independence of his country. Sadat, by making peace with Israel, regained the land that was occupied by Israel. Gandhi’s and Sadat’s love and zeal for their countries cost both their lives. The mention of Gandhi’s revolt against the then-reigning British government in India was for Pasqualino an occasion to addressing a side-issue. A comparison of Gandhi’s peaceful revolt against the unfairness of the State and Socrates’ rigid political philosophy of obedience to the injustice of the political State authority led Pasqualino to talking about his own objection to the unfairness of the State and siding with fairness towards his individual right. Pasqualino, like Gandhi, rejected Socrates’ implicit underestimating the obvious right of the individual over the not-so-obvious greater good of the State. After Italy had lost the war to America and allies, Pasqualino, an Italian citizen, married Barbara, a citizen of the enemy country. By marrying Barbara, he upheld his right as an individual to his personal happiness over the remote and insignificant benefit to Italy. In other words, a supposedly just end (safety and happiness of the community) does not, according to Pasqualino in unison with Gandhi and Aristotle, justify an unjust means (sacrificing the individual, or the individual’s immediate and valued interest, for a remote and insignificant

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benefit, if any, to the community).323 Rightful personal interest is, or should be, more valuable for innocent Socrates than the uninformed and thus unjust verdict of his State-appointed jury. Similarly, Pasqualino’s innocent self-interest in a rightful happy life with a loving American woman is, or should be, more valuable than the remote and improbable interest of Italy. By bringing about the tragedy of Socrates and Pasqualino’s personal love story, Pasqualino points to two matters, similar in their paradox format, dissimilar in their philosophical message: Socrates, who could have escaped the unjust verdict did, paradoxically, choose to become the innocent victim. Pasqualino, who could have avoided marrying a citizen of the enemy country did paradoxically and contrary to Socrates’s choice, refuse to become a victim of implicit State guidance by marrying a wife from the enemy country. It is a paradoxical duality of hatred (for the enemy country) and love (for a citizen of that same enemy country) that go hand in hand. These paradoxes differed in their philosophical priorities. Socrates opted for the claimed benefit of the society, while Pasqualino opted for the benefit of the individual. There are many paradoxes that people can find, and for which they travel as far as the Far East or other foreign countries, to discover exotic paradoxes given as solutions to the absurdities of human life. However, such absurdities and paradoxes can be found, notes Pasqualino, in one’s own immediate environment. Nonetheless, Pasqualino went, in the course of his intellectual peregrination, as far as the Far East to enrich and support his main thesis that absurdities can fade out with the help of love. Besides the Far Eastern, Middle Eastern, Western wisdoms, and world political histories, so far explored, world popular tales of various countries also display, through extraordinary events and extraordinary protagonists, similar wisdom of a healing love. Pasqualino explored world literatures to further illustrate the language of love in human yearning for happiness. Such love and yearning are expressed in unrealistic, dream-like, and life-threatening situations that end up with the protagonists’ coming out victorious, healthy but not without bruises, and happy. These tales also reveal a subconscious desire of individuals and peoples of all walks of life and geographical locations to be safe and happy

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for as long as possible. These aspirations, as absurd as they may be, are manifested in these tales through dream-like desires to satisfy that natural and common human aspiration for the happiness that the Tao, world political history world literatures, and world religions attempt to satisfy by proposing respective solutions impregnated by some form of love. Pasqualino presents such aspirations in a progressive manner, ranging from the natural (utterance of magical formulas) to the supernatural (invocation of a supernatural power—gods, or God) that would assist humans in avoiding evil, reaching safety, and being happy. The tales of the Middle Eastern as well as the other Western or world popular tales display human imagination seeking to realize, by using magical formulas, the human desire for safety and happiness. The protagonists of these tales illustrate in action one common human desire for happiness, at the cost of referring to an imaginary magical world that would fulfill an ideal of health, wealth, good character, and eventually happiness. This imaginary world, though filled with absurd and unpleasant events, leads human beings to having hopes fulfilled at least in a wishful world. The readers of these tales can easily identify themselves, despite the extravagances depicted, with the protagonists who, after going through many dangerous adventures or difficult situations, are actively successful or passively lucky in staying alive in good health, wealth, and happiness. Thus, the readers of such tales feel as if they were in the shoes of those protagonists of the tales, healthy, wealthy, and happy, despite the fact that they may, in reality, be unhealthy, poor and unhappy. This imaginary world of tales and magic formulas gives a miniature picture of human aspiration for an ideal state of happiness. In turn, human aspiration to reach happiness entails active search for the manner as to how one can reach this state. Then, one will learn that human history gradually found out the uselessness of the magic formulas, and discovered the human need for a more rationally acceptable supernatural power to invoke so that it would intervene in accomplishing human aspiration for happiness. With the divine intervention, man will furthermore learn not only that the innate love of oneself and love of others make a functional but temporary

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happiness on earth but also a long-lasting happiness that carries on in a hereafter. One of those popular world literatures Pasqualino visited is the One Thousand and One Nights,324 a collection of Middle Eastern fairy tales. In this collection, there are three main protagonists: Aladdin (‫)ﻋﻼء اﻟﺪﯾﻦ‬, Ali-Baba (‫)ﻋﻠﻲ ﺑﺎﺑﺎ‬, and Sindabad (‫)ﺳﻨﺪﺑﺎد‬. These protagonists had magical life transformation that only human imagination can conceive of to compensate for man’s present unhappy life by satisfying, in fairy tale accounts, human love and happiness of oneself and others. Aladdin was transformed from a poor boy to a rich man thanks to a magic lantern that, once rubbed, brings a genie to satisfy the wishes of the one who rubs it. The poor boy, after living in a hut, eventually became a rich man, married a princess, and lived happily thereafter in a palace.325 Ali Baba, the protagonist of another tale, was also a poor man who envied his lucky brother who was married to a rich woman. Thanks to luck, Ali Baba learned a secret magical phrase “Open Sesame!” (‫ اﻓﺘﺢ ﯾﺎ ﺳﻤﺴﻢ‬Iftah ya Simsim!), with which he could open the door of a mysterious treasure cave, from which he fetched gold, silver, and other precious stones and became even richer and happier than his brother.326 Sindbad, another mythical protagonist, is known as Sindbad the sailorman (‫ﺳﻨﺪﺑﺎد اﻟﺒﺤﺮي‬ Sinbād al-Baḥrī) who traveled through rough seas. Each time he traveled in hazardous locations, he ended up being miraculously rescued and returning home in Baghdad, safely and happily with a lot of precious goods.327 In Western literature, Greece’s Ulysses, the major protagonist of Homer’s Iliad, wages a war against Troy and goes through many dangerous situations, at the end of which he comes out victorious and happy. Also, after arriving home, he administers justice to those who fooled and took advantage of his wife. Thus, the dream of safety, health, and vindicated justice has been finally realized. Italy’s Pinocchio, the major protagonist of another Western popular literary work, is a wooden puppet that speaks a human language, and behaves like a human being. It is a puppet that undergoes human experiences with human expectations, hopes, and ideals of a growing young child who wants to become a good and happy man. The misfortune of this protagonist, a young boy-

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in-the-making, is that if he lied, he would get penalized by having his nose grow in length and ugliness. However, with the help of a fairy (which is equivalent to the magical formulas in the One Thousand and One Nights or the invocaton of the divine in the Greek Odyssy, that are uttered to invoke a higher power to save the protagonist from dangerous or unfortunate situations), the talking wooden puppet asks for help to realize its hope and ideal to become a real boy and an adult man with good ethical standards, enjoying a happy life. Such ethical standards, inspired by a fairy, are offered to be emulated by the younger generation of Italian readers, and by extension to the younger generation of world youth.328 Besides the popular tales that force people to invoke some supernatural power to help them deal with their earthly issues, Pasqualino mentions also the powerful and irate natural desasters. One such natural desaster is the Draunara of Sicily, a strong wind storm, or an evil and irate spirit, that comes from the sea with a powerful and destructive impact. When facing the danger of this storm, people seek help in praying God or a saint to intervene and appease Draunara’s damaging anger. All these accounts are offered to say that life’s dangerous situations and absurdities can end up, with the help of an ouside agency, in happy turnarounds. Although these situations and absurdities are sewn into the fabric of human existence, human beings wish, consciously and subconsciously, to see them reversed into happy outcomes. However, when human beings cannot handle them by themselves, they are led to seek assistance of a supernatural agency. The initial invocation of God at the beginning of each tale of Alf Layla wa Layla starts with invoking God as The forgivng and merciful Omnipotent (‫ ﺑﺎﺳﻢ ﷲ اﻟﺮﺣﻤﻦ اﻟﺮﺣﯿﻢ‬bismillah al-raḥmān alraḥīm) constitutes a progress over the invocation, within each tales, of magical formulas that bring about genies that help change the dangerous to peaceful, the impossible to possible. The people of Sicily invoke the divine when the windy and rainy storm Draunara strikes. At this stage of Pasqualino’s intellectual peregrination to various world literatures, prayers to God or saints are described as replacing the magic formulas, the magic lanterns, the

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dream-like flying carpets, and the supra-human genies, all of which are expected to avail supra-human intervention for miraculous transformation during the less-than-ideal human condition. When Pasqualino started his intellectual peregrination to various religions or incipient religious manifestations, we saw him explore existential Western philosophers addressing the manner as to how to reach happiness with or without reference to divine intervention. The select philosohpers’ answers showed, at times, to be in unison when pointing to a possible human loving attitude towards oneself and others as the path to happiness. Then, we saw Far Eastern Lao Tse offering paradoxical teaching on how to reach happiness, which also taught a loving attitude towards oneself and others. Similarly, world political leaders, then world tales were presented as showing how love can, like magic genies, help, though at a cost, establish peace and happiness. Little or no reference was, first, made to the supernatural, and more specifically to a love that is inspired and mandated by a supernatural and divine authority. Now on, religion is gradually introduced to offer a supernatural, God-inspired love that will eventually lead to the Christian perception of God offering himself as an exemplar victim of love to help humanity reach a more stable and long lasting happiness. Paqualino introduced religion in a gradual manner as the source of the hoped for and expected miraculous transformation. In this perspective, one can see history of human thought, from the ancient wise people such as Socrates, Plato and later religious thinkers of all religious persuasions introduce the divine as the ultimate source of miraculous transformation in human conditon. Although the superstitious religious teachings and practices of primitive people are mostly far from being acceptable by most modern day people, they too have some wisdom worthy of consideration. A perceptive mind should be able to unearth and sift the essential from the non-essential of the various forms of ancient or even contemporary misguided religious practices. By quoting popular tales and historic events, where the name of God is only mentioned in the context of providing help to human heroes in distress, Pasqualino points to humanity’s need for a religious solution to the rationally unsolvable and confusing

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riddles of human existence. While examining tales and historic events, Pasqualino recalled the time when he, as a youth, was chosen to play the theatrical role of young Jesus as a saviour. And while thinking about the reason for the miraculous birth of Jesus, Pasqualino discovered “the great need of men for miracles.” Miracles, as extra-ordinary events that transcend the physical and rational realms of human agency, show the human limit and need for an outside help. Religion, in its various expressions, provides such help, though at different levels. As such, religion relies on the metaphysical realm that offers an alternative to the physical realm of limited human rationality that fails to resolve satisfactorily issues of human existence. Religious feeling, as Pasqualino insinuates, is latent in man’s mind and heart, and is an innate product of human nature like sense perception and rational comprehension are. This is why religious feeling has, like human senses and reason, a proper function in the lives of mankind in the search for meaning and purpose. All one needs to do is to be open-minded, and listen to one’s own and other people’s natural metaphysical commonsense and openness to the divine. Socrates alluded in the last hours of his earthly life to a metaphysical life after death. Plato, in turn, described in his “Myth of the Cave” a reality beyond the physical that is nothing but “reflections” or “shadows” of the true and eternal reality.329 Later teachers pointed to intuition and emotions as providing useful insight to reach and communicate with the source of this eternal reality or God. Intuition and emotions are also guides in the discovery of a meta-earthly world that is reachable through meditation and mystical trances. Despite its occasional aberrations, mysticism can also provide a form of commonsense insight and wisdom. Judaic, Christian, and Islamic mysticism provide, when dealing with life’s absurdities, considerable wisdom that ties human happiness to the realm of divine guidance. Jewish Hasidism is one mystical expression of human aspiration to receive (Hebrew ‫ ַקָבּל‬qabbāl or qabāl) the divine. It aims at achieving one’s happiness through the recognition of omnipresent God in a mystical union (‫ ַקָבָּלה‬Qabbala or Qabalah). Hasidism became a formal Jewish sect in the eighteenth century, thanks to Rabbi Israel Ben Eliezer (1700-1760). His kind of mysticism

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offers to inspire man to see God’s presence in everything and everywhere. Through such a form of mysticism, in which there is a substantial distinction between God and nature is explicit, one will reseign to God’s will, with the expectation to attain enlightenment and consequent happiness. Such a moderate form of mysticism evokes seventeenth-century Spinoza’s (1632-1677) extreme form of mysticism that has been labeled as pantheitic. Pantheism is a philosophical and theological extreme claim that all beings are God-filled in a sense that God’s presence overshadows the physical reality, leading to the belief that the material beings are a manifestation of God, and are one substance with God. Spinoza’s assertion “Deus sive natura” (“God or nature” in the sense that God and nature are one) is an excessive form of mysticism that was rejected by Spinoza’s own Jewish community and the Christian authorities as a heretical teaching. Although it makes sense to claim that the divine permeates human nature, but to eliminate the substanctial distinction between the two leads to undifferentiated created nature and God as creator. The roots of this excessive form of mysticism can be traced back to the NeoPlatonic conception of emanation, according to which the divine flows, or exudes, naturally through several stages, from the most perfect (God) to the less and lesser perfect beings (man and other earthly animate and inanimate beings), that is, from the purely spiritual to the various levels of material beings. This mystical conception of an undifferenciated distinction between Creator and creation, a camouflaged pantheism, was formalized as a systematic theosophical thought, called “the theory of emanation,” by Plotinus (204-270 CE) and sustained by Porphyry (c. 233-309 CE) and Proclus of Athens (412-485 CE). In this conception of God and the world, life’s absurdities would be nothing but normal divinely planned events. Similarly, Islamic Sufism, that Pasqualino mentions, is another mystical experience and expression in medieval Islam that had its share of excessive claims. For example, Husayn bin Mansur Al-Hallaj (c. 858 – 922 CE), a Persian mystic (‫ ﺻﻮﻓﻲ‬Sūfī), declared the omnipresence of God manifested in man and nature indiscriminately, and declared himself to be the Truth: "I am the Truth" (‫ اﻧﺎ اﻟﺤﻖ‬Ana 'l-Ḥaqq), that is, he is The [Ultimate] Truth or

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God himself. Although one may argue, with some difficulty, that what Al-Hallaj meant is not what his claim actually means. This is why his misleading pantheistic statement eventually cost him his life under the Abbasid rule of Al-Muqtadir (‫ اﻟﻤﻘﺘﺪر‬born in 895, became caliph from 908 to 932). Neo-Platonism of Plotinus (c. 204/5 – 271 CE) influenced Muslim philosophers, particularly after the translation, by Syro-Aramaic scholar scribes, of Greek thought into Arabic under the Abbasid caliphate (750-1258 CE) of Baghdad. More specifically, the Neo-platonic theory of emanation (Arabic ‫ ﻓﯿﺾ‬Fayḍ), advanced by Plotinus, is evident in the philosophy of Al-Farabi (‫ اﻟﻔﺎراﺑﻲ‬c. 872-951) and Avicenna (‫اﺑﻦ ﺳﯿﻨﺎ‬ Ibn Sīnā, c. 980 – June 1037). Asharite Sunni Islam, represented by Al-Ghazali (‫ اﻟﻐﺰاﻟﻲ‬c. 1058-1111 CE), condemned such extremist mystical philosophy as heretical. In his Incoherence of the Philosophers (‫ ﺗﮭﺎﻗﺖ اﻟﻔﻼﺳﻔﺔ‬Tahāfut al-Falāsifa), Al-Ghazali refuted one implication of Fayḍ as heretical by arguing that if the world is God’s emanation, then the world would be eternal with God, and the two would be the same one God, which is contradictory and is not true theism that, like Judaism and Christianity, Islam advocates. Then, Pasqualino introduces Christian mysticism as offering another but moderate version of mystical union between the human and the divine, where the substantial distinction between God and man is clearly preserved. The heretical mystical union was not the only hurdle for Christian mysticism to avoid, which it did. It had, and still has, an even greater hurdle not only for mysticism but also for Christianity as such, one that involves an absurd-sounding claim, expressed in paradoxical terms. By claiming that God became the innocent Sacrificial Lamb and edible food, Christian teaching becomes the most paradoxical or, as Pasqualino calls it, a “paradox of paradoxes.”330 The Christian Church does candidly and humbly qualify this teaching as “a mystery of faith.” The blending of mystery and faith as one epistemological pillar, above and beyond limited human rationality, is shared basically by all religions, and each claims to have The Way to heavenly wisdom and happiness. Likewise, philosophical scientists (those who, beyond the science-related “how” questions, also ask the philosophical “why” questions) admit the existence

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of mystery in science, which motivates scientific inquiry and the hoped-for knowledge and certainty. Obviously and justifiably, science is disinclined to take typical religious faith claims into consideration as reliable means to reach its scientific conclusions eventhough scientists do rely, not always openly, on faith. Nonetheless, one should recognize that faith, be it religious or daily commonsense faith, is an integral part of human nature. It is then up to the inquisitive mind to compare and evaluate the teachings of various religions, using available scientific or commonsense tools, including one’s gut feeling when all else fail. Then, one should be able to scrutinize the teachings on faith by examining their internal consistency, and their evaluation of spiritual and ethical values for a personal fulfillment and societal wellbeing and happiness. To help compare and evaluate the various religious, philosophical, and popular proposals to resolve the absurdities of life, and make sense out of the various existential paradoxes offered by world wisdoms, Pasqualino offered an intellectual discourse, here called “intellectual peregrination,” that started with a comparative examination of the physical, intellectual, and spiritual realms of inquiry. In the present fourth chapter, he examined the Tao path and its applications in paradoxes, to which Pasqualino affirms, as an additional perspective, the value of emotions (not as excessive emotional aberrations) expressed in mysticism, thus leading to the next chapter, where Pasqualino will visit the metaphysical and spiritual nuances of Hinduism and Buddhism in their respective ascents, towards The Absolute. Further Food for Thought on Chapter IV: Heaven

1- Can love for an individual person, a community, or a country provide enough courage to help overcome hard obstacles, and motivate extraordinary or heroic acts that produce miraculous or unbelievable reversals in the lover or the beloved? If so, why, give an illustrative example. 2- Compare and discuss Aristotle’s and Jesus’ concepts of love as a moral virtue. Hints: According to Aristotle, virtue is “excellence” and can be divided in two kinds, the intellectual and the moral. The

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THE EARRINGS OF GOD: THE ABSURD AMONG US intellectual virtue “owes its birth and growth mainly to instruction, and so requires time and experience…” (Nichomachean Ethics, Bk II, Ch. 1.) The moral virtue is love of others when “derived from our relations towards ourselves.” (Nichomachean Ethics, Book IX, Ch. 4.1.) Jesus summarizes his teaching on moral virtue as “love the Lord your God… and your neighbor as yourself.” (Lk 10:27)

3- Compare and discuss the concept of love according to Lao Tse in the Tao Te Ching with that of Jesus in the gospels. 4- Martin Luther King Jr., in a letter sent from Birmingham jail on April 16, 1963 to his “Dear Fellow Clergymen” wrote: “One has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that ‘an unjust law is no law at all.’” Explain and discuss. 5- Are miracles possible, provable, and believable? Discuss and give one or more examples to support your claim. 6- Give a mystical experience of an individual belonging to any religion or creed, and discuss it in terms of its effectiveness in establishing a fruitful relation with a Supreme Being and fellow men. 7- Discuss the value of faith versus the value of reason regarding the issue of life after death. Use in your discussion what Plato, Aristotle, or any other philosophical or religious thinker stated.

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COMMENTARY ON CHAPTER V: A SCENT TO THE A BSOLUTE

In the previous chapter IV, Pasqualino examined select samples of Far Eastern, Middle Eastern, and Western wisdom that reflect the love wisdom of the Tao as a path to The Absolute. This wisdom, shared variably by world literatures, opens up gradually to a supernatural power, and consists in the discovery of love as the path to happiness which is ultimately instilled in human nature by The Absolute. It is a path of paradoxes that manifests the innate human aspiration to reach personal and societal wellbeing and happiness. It is the wisdom of “Do not do to others what you would not want others do to you.” It is basically the wisdom of commonsense that we need to apply in our daily earthly transactions when seeking to live in peace and happily. Lao Tse’s path of love and happiness leads to the door of a metaphysical discovery of a supernatural power that later religions introduced more explicitly. In the present phase of Pasqualino’s intellectual peregrination-in-progress, one will see Pasqualino provide in chapter V a closer look at other religious wisdoms that offer new perspectives. Buddhism and Hinduism wisdoms offer new perspectives that exhibit advances in human wisdom in the search for happiness. These three Far Eastern wisdoms, Taoism, Buddhism, and Hinduism, flourished around great holy rivers, and provided additional steps to the ladder of the ascent to The Absolute. After examining the Buddhist and Hindu wisdoms, Pasqualino will eventually bring the reader in chapter VI to the last phase of the ascent that starts by the shore of another holy but modest Middle Eastern river, the Jordan River, to hear the declaration of the inception of the last stage of the Path to The Absolute. There, Pasqualino will announce, along with John the Baptist, the upcoming and culminating discovery of a personal, immanent-transcendent, loving, though at times absurdly dictatorial, Absolute. Buddhism

In his description of the progressive ascent to The Absolute, Pasqualino takes us from Taoism to Buddhism. Like Taoism, Buddhism found in Tibet a safe haven for its new ethical, semi-religious culture. The Taoist earthly wisdom met there the incoming

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Buddhist vision that opened up more obviously to a bourgeoning, somehow abstract, religious overtone. In addition to the Taoist wisdom, Buddhism aimed at ascending to the realm of a metaearthly enlightenment, and reaching a remote and unknowable impersonal, thus abstaract, Absolute. According to the original teaching of the Buddha, the enlightenment-geared meditation must be coupled with an ethical life of love and asceticism, curbing one’s lower instincts for a long-lasting earthly happiness that will end up, after cycles of re-incarnations and purification, in the immersion and dissolution of the personal human identity into the impersonal immense identity of The Absolute. This end-stage in Buddhist teaching, consisting in reaching Nirvana and the eventual dissolution of the personal identity of human beings, is similar to the end-stage in the teaching of Hinduism, though the means to reach this end-stage is not identical. Hinduism

While holy Yangtze River meanders eastward, irrigating China, the Indus, the Brahmaputra, and the Ganges holy rivers, after leaving the heights of the mountainous Tibet, irrigate India and Pakistan west-and-southward. These rivers are revered by Taoists, Hindus, and Buddhists. In Taoism and Buddhism there are no personal gods to worship. In Hinduism one finds a plethora of personal divinities, semi-divinities, and legendary heroes who, in response to human prayers, help humans facing obstacles and absurdities in their earthly lives. Thus, one will realize how in Hinduism the natural is enriched by the supernatural, while in Buddhism one is somehow left to use commonsense wisdom to reach one’s own happiness, enlightenment, and ultimate immersion in, and union with, the gradually revealed divine. For example, in the Vedic literature of Hinduism, there is the famed Indian epic, the “Bhagavat Gita,” known in Indian religious literature as the “Chant of the Blessed,” 331 where a personal divininty not only mingles with human beings, but also steers their affairs. It is a story of human and divine love in action and interaction in view of reaching the Hindu Moksha/Buddhist Nirvana stage of enlightenment and, eventually, The Absolute. It is the story of occasional “tough love” that aims at helping—not without intermediary

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confusion, indecision, frustration, and pain—the individual and humanity attain wellbeing and happiness on earth, accomplish enlightenment, and finally get immersed in, and disappear united with Brahman, the same Ultimate Reality and Impersonal Absolute Being of both Hinduism and Buddhism. One can see here that in Buddhism, The Absolute Being is impersonal and thus has no direct personal interaction with human beings. In Hinduism, The Absolute Being, or Brahman, is also the impersonal Absolute of Buddhism, but has an indirect personal relation with human beings through intermediaries such as the Trimurti gods (“three forms” or three avatars or incarnations of Brahman: 1. god Brahma the Creator, 2. god Vishnu the Preserver, and 3. god Shiva the Destroyer). There are in Hinduism other gods that are also manifestations or incarnations of these higher gods. However, these incarnations of Brahman, the Absolute Being, are incarnations in human flesh to facilitate personal interaction between humans and the divine. One of those gods that has a direct interaction with humans is god Krishna who is an incarnation of god Vishnu. In the Bhagavat Gita, there are two main protagonists who are military charioteers: god Krishna and human hero Arjuna. God Krishna is a personification of god Vishnu and ultimately a personification of Brahman, the Buddhist Absolute Being. Arjuna is a human hero who is ordered by Lord Krishna to fight and kill his own beloved family members, relatives, and friends. Such absurdity echoes the absurdity of God Yahweh ordering Abraham to kill his only son. God Krishna is described as a human person to illustrate anthropomorphically the forcefulness and overwhelming intervention of Brahman. Similarly, Yahweh, the Judeo-Christian Absolute Being, intervenes in human affairs and destinies. At times, this intervention takes the form of a dialogue. At other times, it takes the form of dictatorial commands. Arjuna tries to steer his chariot away from the battle that he does not want to enter, but Krishna, the disguised Ultimate Divinity and co-charioteer, orders Arjuna to perform the apparently absurd act of fighting and killing his own family, relatives, and friends. The allegory of Arjuna fighting his beloved ones alludes to fighting one’s own base instincts and unethical inclinations, which human

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beings naturally cling to. Besides this allegorical drama, there are in Hinduism many other intermediary divine beings, incarnations or manifestations (avatars) of The Absolute or Ultimate Being, who guide humans in their earthly lives. What is common to both Hinduism and Buddhism is that everything in the universe is sacred, and both traditions help humans, in different ways, in their ascent towards The Absolute. After pointing to human limitations in reaching The Absolute, Pasqualino introduces the Christian version of the ascent towards the Absolute. Progressive yet Incomplete Ascent due to Human Limitations

Pasqualino recognizes the contributions of Taoism, Buddhism, and Hinduism, and even other religions or religious philosophies in assisting humanity in its ascent towards The Absolute. Each contribution has its assets and shortcomings. Taoism is mostly concerned with a well-appreciated earthly wisdom that helps individuals live in love and peace by following the natural path of rationality and commonsense. It aims at an earthly happiness. Rationality and commonsense can point to the divine source of universal harmony, but Taoism does not explore the divine source. Buddhism builds on the Taoist earthbound happiness, and adds a metaphysical dimension. It opens up to an ultimate but unfathomable divine source that is an impersonal and incommunicable Being called The Absolute. Hinduism teaches that the impersonal Absolute Being is manifested in personal Avatars (incarnations of The Absolute Being) that facilitate human interaction with the divine. While Taoism relies merely on human rationality and commonsense, standard Buddhism transcends the physical, and enters into the metaphysical realm by pointing to an impersonal but incommunicable Absolute that does not interfere directly with human affairs although it is the Ultimate Cause of all beings. However, despite this metaphysical progress over Taoism, one can find in Gautama’s tradition some inadequacies. Two sample inadequacies would, for the purpose of this chapter, suffice to reveal some shortcoming. The original Buddha was, as Pasqualino notes, “a doctrinaire more than a human thinker” as he claimed to be “the

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doctrine” itself. In fact, wise people of all times would not present themselves with such pompous self-proclamation. Instead, they unpretentiously recognize their limitations. Another shortcoming of Buddhism is its excessive zeal about the chastity of its monks to the point of having them castrated at a young age when they are intellectually and emotionally still immature. Hinduism, like Buddhism, teaches the presence of a metaphysical Absolute and believes in the ultimate dissolution of the individual human self in this Absolute after a purification cycle of reincarnations. However, unlike Buddhism, Hinduism teaches the belief in a multiplicity of personal gods who have different functions and are personal intermediaries between humans and The Absolute. Hinduism, sensing the limits of human rationality and commonsense and feeling the necessity for human beings to get inspired by a higher but unknown power, found a multiplicity of incarnate Avatar gods each of whom handles some of the various human situations and needs. However, as samples of shortcomings of Hinduism, a couple of examples would suffice to show how these shortcomings can hinder the ascent towards the Absoute. The multiplicity of gods generates either competition and thus discord or complementarity and thus limitations in the individual gods. The Absolute Being or God, as commonly understood to be, is pure simplicity and perfection and, as such, is not supposed to need any complement. Pasqualino offers the JudeoChristian proposition as the highest step in the ascent towards the Absolute. This will be detailed in the next final chapter. He presents it not only as a more adequate alternative but also, due to its reliance on the needed and reliable divine revelation, as the best and most sublime alternative. Since there are many divine revelations claimed by primitive and not so primitive religions, it would be necessary to approach these claims with a somewhat critical attitude. However, Pasqualino’s book is not an apologetic or systematic polemical treatise in favor of one philosophical position or religious faith over another. The book is rather a comparative essay on the progress of human thought in its search for meaning and guidance in the midst of existential absurdities with a view to leading people to a happy life. It values the contribution of each step of the

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progressive ascent of human thought towards the Absolute Being that reveals the secret of a happy life in the midst of absurdities. In short, the book focuses on the common denominator “that joins us” (not what separates us) in the various responses given by world religious philosophies. This common denominator consists in the teaching of an effective means that would lead successfully to living peacefully and happily for as long as conceivably possible. This ‘means’ is the love of oneself and others. Pasqualino presents love as described by various philosophies and religions in a progressive manner, ranging from the most earthly happiness to the most sublime and meta-earthly happiness both for the individual and society. Thus, the present book does not take a litigious approach despite the needed occasional critical remarks made here and there to preserve objectivity and credibility. At this point one may interject that like Taoism, Buddhism, Hinduism, or other religions, Christianity too has conflicting teachings and practices and thus falls short of leading adequately to The Absolute. For example, the dogma of the Triune God (three-in-one or Trinity) is, logically speaking, an inconsistent teaching. Similarly, the celibacy and chastity of its clergy, the castration of children, and the bloody religious wars are just some practices or events that make Christianity appear to have shortcomings similar to those of other religious creeds. Thus, one may conclude that Christianity is equally imperfect and falls short of providing the sought upper steps of the ascent to The Absolute. Here, one needs to realize that religion, and more particularly the theistic religions, besides their effort to be logically consistent, are not totally logical or exclusively academic undertakings, and thus require assistance from above, coupled with an enlightened faith. As for the conflicting Christian teaching about the belief in a Triune God that resembles in some respect the Hindu Trimurti, Pasqualino would say that since there are so many unexplained natural phenomena that science cannot explain but that are taken for granted, it makes sense to take the Triune doctrine for granted since God is both unknowable to limited human minds and omnipotent in producing miraculous events. This doctrine is a

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revelation that theologians have debated from early to modern times, and may be of interest for curious readers to read about. As for the conflicting ethical practices, Pasqualino would say that we need to distinguish between a Buddhist’s interpretation of the sacred books of Buddhism and standard Buddhism, a Hindu’s interpretation of the sacred books of Hinduism and standard Hinduism, or a Christian’s interpretation of the sacred books of Christianity and standard orthodox Christianity. This distinction suggests that individual interpretations of the teaching of a specific religion may not necessarily coincide with the orthodox teaching of that religion. Obviously, people may not be immune to errors in the interpretation of their holy scriptures. What compensates for that limitation is divine revelation, when available. Obviously, there is also a distinction to be made between the claimed divine revelation in a polytheistic system and the supposedly more coherent and less complicated divine revelation in a monotheistic system. This does not mean that monotheistic systems are immune to doctrinal aberrations. In any case, divine revelation is, as such, a needed guide for humanity in its ascent to the divine, unknowable and Most Perfect Absolute Being. As a side discussion, yet still relevant and informative, regarding the topic of the fallibility of human rationality, Pasqualino would agree that the celibacy and chastity of the Christian clergy is not a divine commandment but a church administrative mandate or scriptural interpretation by a clerical authority. The resulting interpretation is not a dogmatic article of faith. Peter, the head of the twelve disciples of Jesus, was married,332 while John, the youngest of the disciples, could, as a nonmarried man, afford to follow and serve Jesus almost everywhere.333 As a matter of fact, throughout the Christian church history there were, particularly in the Middle East, celibate and married priests. Castrating children who, obviously, have not reached intellectual maturity, be they Buddhist, Christian, or belonging to other religions, is contrary to commonsense. The decision of the adult Christian named Origen, a Church Father and Saint (c. 184 CE – c. 253 CE) who, in order to liberate himself from sexual temptation, chose to be castrated is arguable. In one sense, one

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may say that, by submitting himself, though willingly and freely, to castration, he would be interfering with the divine plan in human nature’s inclination to procreate. However, one may also say that it would be acceptable for a mature individual to decide, knowingly and freely, to be castrated in order to better serve the Lord and the community, leaving God to be the judge. Furthermore, like Buddhism and other religions, Christianity had bloody wars and inhumane practices that went against the basic Christian principles of love and forgiveness. The wars between the Buddhist factions were doctrinal and within the same religion, while the crusades were wars of one religion on another to protect individual liberties and equality. The crusades were not wars to conquer new territories or to suppress other religious ways of worship, but a self-defense mechanism against aggression. When the Christians of the Middle East and North Africa were persecuted in the tenth century and later on by the conquering Islamic armies, the Christian leaders in those countries called upon the western Christian kings and princes to come to the rescue, thinking that, otherwise, Christianity would be wiped out in bloodshed by the invaders or the aggressors. As for the terroristic and inhumane punishment by the Christian Inquisition in the fifteenth and later centuries, whether in Catholic Spain or Calvinistic Switzerland, are not events that the Christian Church can be proud of, but they show the lack of human foresight by religious leaders who are supposed to be holy, loving, forgiving, and blameless examples to others. In those dark Middle Ages, when the civilian authority of, for example, Spain, wanted its power to be protected or increased, it referred to Papal authority to legitimize the civilian authority’s ambitions and the non-Christian practice of torture. These shocking facts and acts were camouflaged by fake religious zeal, arrogant religious mandates, and excessive political desire for power. It is also possible that the Christian civilian authorities of Spain or other inquisition countries wanted to prevent, replicate, counteract, or even defy the equally barbaric medieval Islamic expansion in the Middle East, Spain, and various geographic pockets in Europe. History tells us that Medieval Islam was effective in conquering new lands; and converting people partly by threats and arbitrary

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executions. The method was based on an aggressive motto Aslim, taslam ( ‫[“ اﺳﻠﻢ ﺗﺴﻠﻢ‬If you] convert to Islam, you will be spared”), a discriminatory taxation system applied to Muslims and non-Muslims, inhumane tortures, and arbitrary executions. These practices made the Christian West react in defense of the oppressed Christians. Obviously, one cannot say that because of the Islamic invasion and tortures, the inquisition took place as a counter-action measure to indirectly prevent or scare potential invaders and prevent further unjust oppression. Also, one cannot say that because of the Islamic inhumane persecutions of Christians, all Muslims are or were persecutors of Christians. Similarly, one cannot say that because the Christian inquisition lords committed inhumane persecutions of other Christians and non-Christians, all Christian lords committed such injustices. Despite the supposedly good motives that may have inspired the crusaders and the Spanish inquisition, the crusaders’ killing in wars and the inquisition’s tortures had nothing to do with the true teaching of Christianity. In Hinduism too, issues of conflicting teachings and practices can be found. For example, there seems to be an inconsistency in the teaching on the untouchables. According to Advaita Vedanta non-dual school, “the Brahman [The Absolute Being] is identical to the Atman [life principle], is everywhere and inside each living being, and there is connected spiritual oneness in all existence.” (Wikipedia, “Brahman”) If The Absolute Being, Brahman, is “inside each living being,” and participates in the holiness of Brahman, then the untouchables too participate in that holiness and dignity, and therefore they too deserve due respect like any other human being. If so, then considering the untouchables as outcast contradicts the teaching that the Absolute Being provides everything and everybody, including the untouchables, with being and sacredness. This is why Gandhi, having in mind this inconsistency, defended the untouchables against social injustice. Also, in Hindu religious ceremonies, such as prayers to minor gods or saints, sound like prayers to the Ultimate Being Brahman or God, thus eliminating the distinction between creator and created. Other religions exhibit an erroneous lack of proper distinction between the saintly and the divine in worship practices as well.

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One may object that Christian ceremonies honoring saints are not so different from praying to Hindu gods. The Christian ceremonies and prayers to honor saints appear like ceremonies and prayers to God, thus eliminating, like in Hinduism, the distinction between Creator and created saints. Genuine and informed Christians, by honoring saints with prayers, pictures, statues, and religious processions, do not, despite the appearance, revere the saints like they would revere God. Saints are, in Christian teaching, revered and invoked in order to intercede with God on behalf of human beings. Furthermore, in some Latin American, African, and Caribbean countries, one may find some individuals or churches who claim to be Christians, performing ceremonies that evoke ancient indigenous polytheistic or animistic rituals. Despite the good intentions of those so-called Christians, mainstream Christianity condemns such distorted forms of worship as aberrations of human emotions and imagination. In his assessment of Hinduism, Pasqualino took Gandhi as a reliable guide in the ascent towards a personal Absolute (that Pasqualino describes as a “personal god,” dio personale). Gandhi is depicted with the symbolic monkey hanging on his back. It is the insistent order-giver monkey that whispers in his ears, and sounds like the voice of consciousness, and, possibly, the voice of The Absolute. It is the same monkey that was hanging symbolically on the back of Pasqualino, as described early in the book, giving him categorical orders as to what to do and how to behave. Obviously, there is also what is called a distorted conscience, such as that of the unorthodox Buddhist Druga Kunleg in his promotion of base-instincts, the extremist Muslims in their bloodthirsty interpretation of Jihād ‫( ﺟﮭﺎد‬forceful struggle and bloody war), and the Christian inquisition lords with their use of the wrong means to pursue their misguided religious zeal. These distorted consciences have their own monkeys that order evil. Commonsense obviously rejects such misinformed orders, which are far from being inspired by The Absolute, and far from leading to personal and communal genuine happiness. The commonsense of most human beings can help to identify the good and the evil monkeys. Certainly common people can, at times, find it difficult to distinguish between what is good and what is evil, as Arjuna did when

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he was ordered to fight his own family, relatives, and friends. It was later, when Krishna revealed himself to him as the Avatar of The Absolute Being Brahman that Arjuna understood the hard mission he was ordered to undertake. In Gandhi’s case, his monkey, his divinely-guided conscience, put him on a safe path of discovery of The Absolute Being’s commands and universal love. When Gandhi was a child, he heard his mother tell him to avoid talking to, or playing with, another child who was an “untouchable.” The untouchables are the lowest-status Indian caste members that do the jobs that are regarded as the dirtiest and least pleasant in Indian society. Gandhi’s “conscientious objector” did not find his mother’s order to be fair towards the untouchables who, in Gandhi’s perceptive ears and caring soul, were human beings equal in dignity to all other human beings, no matter what their caste, financial situation, educational level, and social ranking were. The untouchables happened to be socially and financially disadvantaged without their own fault. This is why Gandhi called them affectionately Harijan-s “Children of God,” or “Dear Children of God.” The innocent but unjustified attitude of Gandhi’s mother reflected the painful common Indian mentality and the custom of unfounded caste differentiation and unfair social oppression. This was one of the motives that urged Gandhi not only to oppose the caste system in India but also to fight British colonialism at that time, and its economic opportunism by means of non-violent civil disobedience. Success in fighting these forms of social oppression, Gandhi suggested, would first require “winning over the evil that is in us”—the evil that affects us both as individuals and a society. This winning over evil may be accomplished by “reduc[ing] ourselves to nothingness” in humility, and showing good example. That is, one can “reduce” oneself by fighting one’s base instincts that benefit oneself at the cost of depriving others of their due right to wellbeing. By winning over evil, one will accomplish the greater good of the individual and society: “I believe that the power of love is the very power of the soul and of truth...”. By his example of humility, self-restraint, and altruistic love, Gandhi gained the approval of the people who joined him in the peaceful revolt against, and victory over, British colonialism. Gandhi’s philosophy and deeds were consonant with

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universal harmony—harmony within each individual, human society, the world, and in the universe, as The Absolute Being would have it. To help one listen to one’s good monkey, or good conscience, and establish communication with the divine, Gandhi chose to pray to “a personal God… a God in flesh and bones.” This God was Ganesh (or Ganesha),334 the chief guardian of his divine parents Shiva and Parvati. Ganesh was the symbolic god for all oppressed human beings seeking salvation from evil oppressors. Ganesh was also the symbol of wisdom and kindness. In this god, Gandhi sought wisdom, salvation, forgiveness, and kindness. Pasqualino focuses on this god to introduce Jesus of Nazareth, the incarnate Almighty, God of Love, self sacrifice, forgiveness, and salvation. All these anthropomorphic attributes of a Hindu deity, whom human beings can address as one of their own, serve to introduce Jesus as the paradigm of the incarnate deity, the innocent and self-offering sacrificial lamb and savior. Is it mere coincidence or divinely planned providence that the teaching on love, happiness, and salvation by Ganesh or other deities or godlike beings found in Taoism, Hinduism, and Buddhism, is similar to the teaching and deeds of Jesus? Whether this similarity is coincidence or divinely planned, Pasqualino finds in it a progression to the highest phase of enlightenment and a significant stride towards The Absolute. In fact, this progression, found in the teachings of various religions, ranging from a worldly naturalistic wisdom to a non-worldly spiritual wisdom, culminates in the all-encompassing message of Jesus Christ. Through revelation, this message, according to Pasqualino, brings humanity closer than any other religion or semi-religion to the ineffable Divine Absolute, remote-yet-close, paradoxical-yet-meaningful. It is The Absolute whose “love forbids [H]im to abandon us.” Divine Revelation Called For

In his intellectual peregrination through the Eastern and Western philosophical religious and semi-religious thoughts and wisdoms, Pasqualino wants to examine and compare how they guide human beings to achieve human enlightenment and happiness; and discover The Absolute, the source of ultimate and utmost harmony

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and happiness. In doing so, he notes that the people of the whole world have become like neighbors in a “small village,” where everybody knows about everybody, and can share their knowledge, beliefs, feelings, and wisdom. They are similar in their common aspiration and attempt to reach happiness and The Absolute, but may differ in their respective ways to accomplish this. While in Tibet, he saw a similarity in the holiness of great rivers that attracted holy or wise people with the holiness of a small river, which attracted a holy man, called John the Baptist. The Baptist preached like other holy or wise men of other religions about the arrival of the one who would teach the path to The Absolute. This path is offered as the most adequate and most heavenly. It is a path of wisdom that is distinctly a gratuitous revelation of truth that the human mind cannot, independently, fully reach or grasp by its own purely human means. The revelation of divine wisdom complements human wisdom in adding to it a touch that only the divine can provide. However, due to the gap between human and divine wisdom, divine revelation seems absurd to human minds. This is why human beings did not readily accept the divine message. John the Baptist announced the arrival of the divine messenger, Immanuel (Aramaic '&‫ܐ‬$#"! / camānūēl, meaning “God is with us”), who carries with him the message from The Absolute. The Jews were at that time expecting an Immanuel who would be a human figure with political authority rather than a purely divine messenger. John the Baptist introduced this Immanuel as the one who would bring humanity closest to The Absolute. Pasqualino will, in the next and last chapter, introduce this Immanuel as Jesus Christ, who despite some absurd aspects of his message will help human beings reach the last steps of human enlightenment in the ascent towards The Absolute. Further Food for Thought on Chapter V: Ascent to The Absolute

1- What does it mean to claim that a land is holy, be it for Taoists, Hindus, Buddhists, Jews, Christians, Muslims or any other religious community? Describe some of the conflicts of one religious community with another, or with the governing political leadership. These conflicts

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2-

3-

456-

7-

8-

9-

blemish the “holiness” of the “land” on which they live and the reputation of the members of the conflicting religions or states. Analyze a conflict, then propose what you believe to be a fair and feasible solution in order to give back to the “land” due “holiness.” What is your perception of “The Absolute?” Compare your perception with another perception of the Absolute that differs from yours. Give reasons to support your point of view over the other. If The Absolute, as a supernatural and super-human power, is “unknowable,” can one ever have any knowledge of this unknowable? Support your answer and illustrate it with concrete examples. If one believes in a supernatural and super-human power, would it matter whether the believed-in power is personal or impersonal power? If one believes in a supernatural and super-human power, would it matter whether the believed-in power is a personal one God or a plethora of personal gods? Compare a civil/non-religious ethical culture with a religious ethical culture. After your comparison, point to the value of each and the issues each may involve. Then, justify why you would choose one over the other. Research the issue of celibacy of religious leaders in Buddhism, Christianity, or in any other religious community. Show the advantages and disadvantages of celibacy and marriage, quoting from the relevant sacred writings or referring to the respective unwritten traditions. History tells us about many religious persecutions. Take one case of persecution, place it in its historical context, and discuss some of the various factors involved, drawing a lesson for the present and future generations. Choose a perception of a religious activity within any religion, such as a prayer to, or a ceremony in honor of, a god or a saint that is expected to result in a favorable or miraculous outcome. Describe that religious activity, then make a case in favor of its validity or against it as superstitious.

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10- It is said that the voice of one’s conscience is the voice of God. In what sense can this be the case and in what sense? You may take the example of Gandhi or someone else as a starting point of the discussion. 11- Compare the value of rational reasoning with the value of revelation in what regards the knowledge of God. 12- In what sense can reason and revelation each affect our conception of human behavior, whether in a social or personal ethical context?

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COMMENTARY ON CHAPTER VI: THE PARABLE OF PARABLES

In Chapter V Pasqualino described different paths that aim at helping human beings reach, in a gradual upward ascent, the sought Absolute that would help understand and manage absurdities of human existence. He examined major Far Eastern philosophies and systems of religious thought in their respective paths towards the Absolute. In these paths, love was the common denominator for a successful ascent and a happy life. In the current Chapter VI, love is presented not only as a major but also the most direct path to The Absolute by following the example of the selfoffering “lamb,” Jesus Christ. According to the Christian tradition, Jesus, being the incarnate Son of God, The Absolute, gave himself, out of love, as a ransom, thus giving the most eloquent example of love. In so doing, He helped humanity in its ascent to The Absolute, and gave ethical and religious commandments for a happy life, but not without challenges. Jesus’ story is the last chapter of this continuous love story. Far Eastern religions or semi-religious traditions speak of what may, in a sense, be called amusing “fables for children” because they are unbelievable to our philosophically and scientifically oriented minds. Christianity, too, brings with Jesus an unbelievable fable for children, and an unbelievable parable for the wise.335 However this fable or parable talks about Jesus as the incarnate God, The Absolute, who offers himself, though paradoxically and absurdly, as a redeeming victim, wearing voluntarily and out of love the symbolic earrings of slavery. This loving “slave” is, despite the appearance, all-powerful. He wants to make the beloved worthy of nearing the ineffable Absolute that has been described, through glimpses of thought, in the Far Eastern or Western religions and thoughts. In his intellectual peregrination to these Eastern fable-like parables containing “so many sublime absurdities,” Pasqualino aimed at finding the one that was the most sublime, one that happened to be the most absurd but also the generally most adequate and personally most satisfying in the ascent to The Absolute. From the deep gorges of the Himalayan Mountains, where holy and massive rivers flow and inspire great thinkers and religious leaders, Pasqualino brings the reader now westward, to the

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banks of another holy but modest river, the Jordan River. Here, one is brought to the presence of a simple man, preaching repentance in preparation for receiving the promised Messiah as the most adequate guide to The Absolute. This simple man, who baptizes with water from the Jordan as a symbol of spiritual cleansing, announces the coming of “The Lamb of God who[, for love,] takes away the sin of the world” (Jn 1:29) He presents himself as one who is “not fit to undo his sandal-strap.” This man is John the Baptist who “saw the Spirit coming down on him,” Jesus, who makes “the blind see again… the lame walk, lepers…. cleansed, the deaf hear, and the dead raised to life.” From John the Baptist, the immediate precursor of Jesus, Pasqualino moves on to focus on John the Evangelist and his description of the life and deeds of Jesus, the awaited Christ and Savior who was announced in the Old Testament of the Bible, and proclaimed by John the Baptist as the Messiah. The term ‘Messiah’ is ethymologically related to the Syro-Aramaic Mshīha/Mshīho (.,ܳ+)ܺ(), and the Hebrew Mashiyaḥ (‫)ָמִשׁיַח‬, meaning the “Anointed One.” Not much is said by Pasqualino about the holiness of the Jordan River or the Baptist because these are intended merely as rhetorical transitions to talking about the other John the evangelist and Jesus. Among the four canonically approved gospels that narrate the life and teaching of Jesus is the gospel according to John.336 This gospel is described as “the gospel of love,” and love is the major theme of Pasqualino’s book. In John’s gospel, more than in the other gospels, the message is that God is love, and love is the best Path to God, “The Absolute.” In this gospel, one finds that the evangelist does not pay much attention to the disagreement of Jesus with the Pharisees and the political power of that time because these matters were for John less important than conveying the message of the redeeming love. The various signs of love displayed by Jesus will now be reviewed using mostly the gospel of John the Evangelist, which Pasqualino purposely refers to. These signs end up with the ultimate act of redeeming love, a humiliating death on the cross. John starts his gospel with a theologically inspired philosophical statement: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” (Jn. 1:1). In using

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the term ‘Word,’ which is synonymous with ‘idea’ and ‘wisdom,’ the evangelist makes what seems to be an allusion to Plato’s (429?-327 BCE) eternal World of Ideas337 and Aristotle’s (384-322 BCE) Unmoved Mover,338 the ultimate source of wisdom or God who paradoxically, incarnated: “The Word was made flesh.” (Jn 1:14). Due to the paradoxical and absurd nature of the divine incarnation, many questions were raised by various skeptics. Many Jewish leaders had serious doubt as to whether Jesus of the modest town of Nazareth was the expected Messiah.339 and savior of the Jewish people. Even Jesus’ closest friends, his precursor John the Baptist and his own disciples, are reported to have had moments of doubt, which eventually turned into certainty that led them to courageously proclaim, at the cost of their lives, Jesus as the expected Messiah. John the Baptist—son of Zachariah and Elizabeth—who was the first to announce publically that Jesus was the awaited Messiah, had apparently a fleeting moment of doubt. John the evangelist described John the Baptist as “A voice that cries in the wilderness” (Jn 1:23) announcing the future coming of the Lord, who would come and offer Himself as the “Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world.” (Jn 1:29) Such courage to announce the arrival of the “Lamb of God” was due to the Baptist having seen “the Spirit coming down on him from heaven like a dove… [to indicate] that he [Jesus] is the Chosen One of God.” (Jn 1:3234) However the Baptist unexpectedly seemed to have had some doubt when he sent two of his disciples340 to check with Jesus whether he truly was the expected Messiah or whether they should wait for another one. Another interpretation of this passage is that the Baptist had no doubt that Jesus was the Messiah but he wanted his two disciples hear the truth from Jesus himself and have them avoid any possible doubt. The Jewish authorities had a more lasting doubt as to whether Jesus was the Expected Messiah. They thought that the Messiah would be a political man who would save the Jews from the tutelage to the Romans. They were angered by hearing Jesus claim to be “the Son of God.” This is why, shortly before the Feast of Dedication of the Temple, when they asked Jesus whether he

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was the Christ Messiah, he told them: “I have told you but you do not believe. The works I do in my Father’s name are my witness… The Father and I are one.” (Jn 10:26-30) Such bold statements led these skeptic Jewish leaders to put pressure on Pilate to condemn Jesus and have him crucified. The disciples of Jesus had occasional doubt. The claim by Jesus that he was the Son of God may not have been sufficient to make them desert him; neither was the claim that he was “the bread of life” (Jn 6:35) nor the claim that he was “the living bread which has come from heaven” (Jn 6:51) as all these may be symbolic talk. But when the disciples heard Jesus say that “anyone who eats this bread will live forever,” (Jn 6:58) they, along with many of the crowd who were listening to him, were totally confused to the point of getting ready to abandon him. At that point, instead of addressing the crowd to justify his claim, he turned to The Twelve apostles—those who were the closest to him and, supposedly, the most faithful to him.341 He asked them: “‘What about you, do you want to go away too?’ and Simon Peter answered: ‘Lord, who shall we go to? You have the message of eternal life, and we believe; we know that you are the Holy One of God.’” (Jn 6:67-69) Simon Peter, the apostle whom Jesus appointed to be the shepherd of the growing community of followers,342 had a deplorable doubt when he denied having ever known Jesus.343 This denial took place shortly after Jesus was captured and humiliated. Thomas was another apostle who also had a moment of doubt when he said that if he didn’t put his finger in the wound of Jesus, he would not believe Jesus had resurrected.344 Eventually, both Peter and Thomas repented and testified that Jesus was the awaited Messiah. Peter was eventually martyred in Rome for his faith in Jesus. As for Thomas, it is not clear how he died while preaching the gospel in India; Paul, who had vigorously persecuted the Christians before his miraculous conversion, became a witnessing teacher of the gospel345 and was martyred in Rome, like Peter. One can take a more critical and even cynical attitude, saying that Jesus, too, appeared to have had some doubt about his mission. When Jesus was on the cross, in pain and physically

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exhausted, he “cried out in a loud voice, ‘Eli, Eli, lama sabachtani?’ That is, ‘My God, my God, why have you deserted me?’”346 (Mt 27:48) This was simply a cry of human response to physical pain that Jesus, as a human being, was enduring. It was also a reference to David’s lament, expressed in psalm 21:1 that ended in the victory of the sufferer who trusts God: “they [Israel] trusted and you rescued them; they called to you for help and they were saved.” (Ps 22:4-5). Thus, the lament of Jesus to God the Father for having deserted him was not a lament of radical skepticism and despair, but a natural human response to physical pain and an indirect reference to David’s pain and final confidence in his ensuing victory. It is interesting to note here that this quotation was taken from Matthew, not John. Like Matthew, Mark quotes this verse as “‘Eloi. Eloi, lama sabachtani?’ which means, ‘My God, my God, why have you deserted me?’” (Mk 15:34) Neither John nor Luke quoted the verse, possibly to avoid unnecessary misunderstanding and confusion. John’s main concern in his gospel was rather to show God’s love for, and salvation of, humanity, not to argue about superficial discrepancies between his gospel and the gospels of the other evangelists. In short, all these expressions of doubt were nothing but a natural reaction to the absurdity of the claim that the Omnipotent became a weak slave in the hands of ignorant and tyrannical human beings. Like all these people, who doubted, in one form or another, that Jesus was the Christ, the Omnipotent, and the Word, the atheists, the skeptics, and the agnostics of all times can be justified in their lack of faith in what is nothing short of the illogical and the absurd. This is why the title of the book, The Earrings of God, refers to the illogical slavery of God as the Omnipotent who wore the symbolic earrings of slavery. The clarifying subtitle of the book, The Absurd Among Us, points to the absurdity of such a claim. It is an absurdity that can be found only in fables or parables. The present chapter describes this absurdity not only as a fable for children or a parable for the wise but also as one that is more unbelievable than any other fable or parable, although equally described as a blissful and redeeming truth that all humanity benefits from. John the evangelist conveys this message as a message of exemplary love. This message can be summarized

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by showing how Jesus displayed his love through suffering and humiliation as a human being. But first, one should ask how skepticism, however arguable it may be, can be justified as an attitude towards such an absurd claim. When faced with an absurd claim, one has to decide whether to reject it or accept it; accepting it based only on blind faith or “following the crowd,” or accepting it based on the possibility that some more enlightened people would, one day, provide reasons to justify the claim. It is normal, then, that in reaction to absurd claims, one would be skeptical. However, after ponderous consideration, one may consider accepting a supposedly weak rational argument, or simply making an act of faith like the faith of the lamb and the chicken, when “following the flock” in view of a supposedly safe or beneficial path. This is what French thinker Blaise Pascale (1623-1662) recommended in his wager as a sensible argument in favor of having faith.347 By pondering pragmatically over the possibly positive results of Christian beliefs, or even any non-Christian beliefs, for the individual and society, one should be able to appreciate the benefits of having faith. These benefits were described by Jesus as “fruits” of the moral quality of people’s actions.348 As mentioned earlier, there are a lot of events around us that our glorious but limited reason cannot understand, and nonetheless, we believe that if phenomenon “X” takes place, then, based on previous experience, phenomenon “Y” will follow. However, due to our familiarity with these phenomena, we take them for granted without any questions asked. In fact, there are unexplained and unexplainable phenomena or events experienced in our daily lives that we take for granted. World religions, ancient or more modern, explain these events by means of parables and religious interpretations. This is to say that faith is part of our daily experience and that it can provide a useful basis for healthy human behavior even in absurd situations. Furthermore, the macrocosm and the microcosm are full of examples that appear absurd or unexplainable. We just take them to be ordinary facts of existence. The absurdity of The Omnipotent offering to become, voluntarily and out of love, a frail victim is one such absurd event that normally makes people skeptical. The deeds and teaching of Jesus as described in the gospels illustrate

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an absurd but redeeming act that is motivated by love. The gospel according to John—the messenger of love, and the Benjamin349 of the apostles—is the most appropriate gospel for finding that exemplary love in action. After claiming in the beginning of his gospel that “The Word was made flesh,” John the Evangelist started telling about the good deeds of the incarnate Word. This was to show how Jesus loved humanity by caring for its needs but without necessarily eliminating all the evil in the world. He showed his love by (1) performing miracles that alleviated human suffering and promoted human well-being—a fact that drew the attention to Jesus as the possibly expected Messiah. Then, (2) when the minds of his audience and eye witnesses were somehow receptive to understanding the mission of Jesus, the Messiah, Jesus gradually revealed his true identity both in direct speeches and in parables. (3) Eventually, when all he had to say and do was accomplished, he announced his surprising eventual death and his victorious resurrection as a further and last sign of the divine love’s redeeming effect. (1) Miracles as signs of Jesus’ supernatural powers and benevolence:

The first miracle that Jesus performed at the beginning of his public life was the miracle at the Cana wedding, where he miraculously changed water into wine: “Three days later there was a wedding at Cana in Galilee. The mother of Jesus was there, and Jesus and his disciples had also been invited.” When they ran out of wine, Mary told Jesus that there was no more wine, and Jesus asked, in turn, the servants to draw water from the stone jars and serve it, and when the steward tasted the water, he realized that the water had turned into wine. “This was the first of the signs given by Jesus: it was given at Cana in Galilee. He let his glory be seen, and his disciples believed in him…” (Jn 2:1-12) When selecting his first followers and keeping them as his close disciples, he gave them glimpses of his supernatural powers, and gradually led them to understanding his divine nature. When, one day, the disciples were on a boat fishing in the lake, Jesus showed up on the shore and started walking on the water towards

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them: “That evening the disciples went down to the shore of the lake and got into a boat to make for Capernaum on the other side of the lake. They had rowed three or four miles when they saw Jesus walking on the lake and coming towards the boat. This frightened them, but he said, ‘It is I. Do not be afraid...’ ” (Jn 6:1620) And when there was a strong wind that threatened to capsize the boat, Jesus stood up and ordered the wind to appease, then the disciples’ fear of drowning calmed down: “Then he [Jesus] got into the boat followed by his disciples. Without warning a storm broke over the lake, so violent that the waves were breaking right over the boat. But he was asleep. So they went to him and woke him saying, ‘Save us, Lord, we are going down.’ And with that he stood up, rebuked the winds and the sea, and all was calm again. The men were astonished and said, ‘Whatever kind of man is this? Even the winds and the sea obey him.’” (Mt 8:23-27) Then when the crowds started to gather around to listen to him, he showed his supernatural powers by multiplying the five loaves of bread and the few fish to feed them: “When evening came, the disciples went to him and said, ‘This is a lonely place, and the time has slipped by; so send the people away and they can go to the villages to buy themselves some food’. Jesus replied, ‘There is no need for them to go; give them something to eat yourselves’. But they answered, ‘All we have with us is five loaves and two fish’. ‘Bring them here to me’ he said. He gave orders that the people were to sit down on the grass; then he took the five loaves and the two fish, raised his eyes to heaven and said the blessing. And breaking the loaves he handed them to his disciples who gave them to the crowds. They all ate as much as they wanted, and they collected the scraps remaining, twelve baskets full. Those who ate numbered about five thousand men, to say nothing of women and children.” (Mt 14:13-21; see also the same account given in Jn 6:1-15) Thus, both his disciples and the crowds of followers were amazed, wanting to hear more, see more, and expect more of such benevolence. The list of miracles can go on and on, but these are only sample miracles. In fact, besides the miracles consistently mentioned in all the four canonical gospels, John refers to other

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miracles not mentioned in the gospels: “There were many signs that Jesus worked and the disciples saw, but they are not recorded in this book. These are recorded so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing this you may have life through his name.” (Jn 20:30-31) John vouched, at the end of his gospel, to have been a witness to the truth of what he had written in his gospel: “This disciple [John] is the one who vouches for these things and has written them down, and we know his testimony is true.” (Jn 21:24) The Jerusalem Bible explains in note number “g” that the pronoun “we” possibly refers to “a group of John’s disciples” who may have added this final statement. (2) Jesus’ Identity declared by eye witnesses and by Jesus’ teaching:

The miracles were an indirect announcement of the supernatural powers of Jesus. People on whom the miracles were performed as well as present eye witnesses, were eloquently talking about Jesus as one who had supernatural powers, without fearing the Jewish or Roman leaders who felt their authority was being threatened. However, even before Jesus started his public life performing miracles and teaching, the first eye witness of his divine origin was John the Baptist, who declared: “Look, there is the lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world.” (Jn 1:29) Among the many people who were blessed by miracles performed by Jesus, there was the Gerasene demoniac. After his healing from the demonic possession, the chased demon (or demons, as they were a “legion”) shouted with the voice of the possessed: “What do you want with me, Jesus, son of the Most High God? Swear by God you will not torture me!” (Mk 5:7) Then, it was the turn of the twelve apostles. The most obvious were Peter, Thomas, and John who made eloquent assertions about the identity of Jesus in key moments. Thomas called him “Lord and God.” (Jn 20:24); Peter described him as “the Christ” (Mt 16:17) and “Lord” (Jn 18:18); John the evangelist, “the Word” and “God” (Jn 1: 1); and John the Baptist, the “Lamb of God” (Jn 1:29). This Lamb is the one who would, absurd as it seems, be sacrificed like a scapegoat “that takes away the sin of the world” (Jn 1:29)

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By his teaching and his miracles, Jesus outshined “the old law of brutality” of “tooth for tooth and eye for eye”350 with the new law of love, whereby one can, along with Pasqualino, “see the world as a home for everybody and others as brothers to love and serve.” Jesus’ method of teaching was conveyed indirectly through parables and more directly in discourses or sermons. The parables were mostly addressed to ordinary people, and the discourses were generally for the people who were more intellectually and emotionally able and ready to understand the message. In response to the doctor of the Jewish law who wanted to know the direct way to eternal bliss, Jesus said: “love the Lord your God with all your heart,… [and] your neighbor as yourself.” (Mt 22:37-40) But who is this neighbor? Jesus’ answer was given in the parable of the Good Samaritan. The Samaritan was one who rescued a stranger who was attacked by thieves, injured, robbed, and left on the side of the road helpless and suffering. Despite the clear teaching of Jesus, people—including the immediate disciples of Jesus—did not always understand what Jesus was saying or doing. For example, when Jesus wanted to wash the feet of his apostles, the select twelve disciples, shortly before his passion, Peter refused to see Jesus do the humble act of washing his feet. In that regard, Jesus confirmed his disciples’ lack of understanding, saying to Peter: “At the moment you do not know what I am doing, but later you will understand.” (Jn 13:7) It took the disciples and followers the whole three years of Jesus’ public teaching and even after his crucifixion and resurrection to understand and have faith in the message and mission of Jesus. The evangelist pointed to this, when stating: “At the time his disciples did not understand this, but later, after Jesus had been glorified, they remembered that this had been written about him…” (Jn 12:16) They remembered and understood his teaching and the purpose of the many miracles that Jesus performed to illustrate his redeeming love. Jesus alluded to his divine nature when he equated the temple with himself: “Jesus then went into the Temple and drove out all those who were selling and buying there… he said ‘my house will be called a house of prayer; but you turned it into a robbers’ den.’” (Mt 21:12-16) John clarified the concept of “Temple” by

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identifying it with “Jesus himself,” making explicit the parallel between “the destruction of the Temple and its rebuilding in three days” and “his death and resurrection in three days”: “The Jews intervened and said, ‘What sign can you show us to justify what you have done?’ Jesus answered, ‘Destroy this sanctuary, and in three days I will raise it up’. The Jews replied, ‘It has taken fortysix years to build this sanctuary, are you going to raise it up in three days?’ But he was speaking of the sanctuary that was his body, and when Jesus rose from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this, and they believed the scripture and the words he had said.” (Jn 2:18-22) When Jesus talks about the relationship between the Father and the Son, he alludes to a kind of a harmonious unity of action as if the two were one, which aggravated the Jewish authorities: “But that only made the Jews even more intent on killing him, because not content with breaking the Sabbath, he spoke of God as his own Father, and so made himself God’s equal… To this accusation Jesus replied: I tell you most solemnly, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees the Father doing; and whatever the Father does, the Son does too… Thus, as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so the Son gives life to anyone he chooses.” (Jn 5:18-21) Jesus claimed to predate Abraham to insinuate that he himself is the one who is: “Before Abraham was I am,” (Jn 8:58) which suggests that Jesus is eternal Yahweh himself. Jesus was even more explicit about his divine identity as the Messiah on several occasions. When John the Baptist sent his disciples to Jesus, asking him if he was “the one who is to come,” that is, the Messiah, Jesus told the Baptist’s disciples: “Go back and tell John what you hear and see; the blind see again, and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised to life and the Good News is proclaimed to the poor; and happy is the man who does not lose faith in me.” (Mt 11:26). Also, when Jesus was talking to the Samaritan woman, he confirmed that he was the expected Messiah: “The woman said to him, ‘I know that the Messiah—that is, Christ—is coming and when he comes he will tell us everything’. ‘I who am speaking to you,’ said Jesus ‘I am he.’” (Jn 4:25) When Jesus was in the temple, at the Feast of Dedication, the Jews gathered around him and

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asked: “How much longer are you going to keep us in suspense? If you are the Christ, tell us plainly.” Jesus replied: “I have told you, but you do not believe. The works I do in my Father’s name are my witness.” (Jn 10:24-25) When hearing Jesus state that he was “the light of the world” (Jn 8:12) or “the truth and the life” (Jn 14:6), one will have to also listen to John in his Apocalypse/Book of Revelation for further confirmation. John confirms all such claims of Jesus by saying “He loves us and has washed away our sins with his blood… It is he who is coming on the clouds… [and it is he] who is, who was, and who is to come, the Almighty.” (Rev. 1:4-8) (3) Death and Resurrection of Jesus pointing to his Identity and Redeeming Love:

Jesus compared himself to the shepherd who sacrifices his life to save his flock: “I am the good shepherd: the good shepherd is one who lays down his life for his Lamb.” (Jn 10:11) After forgiving those who denied, betrayed, or even condemned him, Jesus accepted being treated as a criminal and humiliated by mockery, physical pain, crucifixion, and death: “After Jesus had taken the vinegar he said, ‘It is accomplished’, and bowing his head he gave up his spirit.” (Jn 19:30) Jesus gave his life but, as he had predicted, he was victorious over death with his resurrection: “I lay down my life in order to take it up again.” (Jn 10:17) The first one who witnessed the empty tomb was Mary the Magdalene, who informed Peter and John the evangelist of the empty tomb, which had been heavily secured after the burial of Jesus in it: “She saw that the stone had been moved away from the tomb and came running to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved [John the evangelist himself]” (Jn 20:1-2) Then, Peter and John went to see and witness: “So Peter set out with the other disciple to go to the tomb… Simon Peter who was following now came up, went right into the tomb, saw the linen cloths on the ground… Then the other disciple who had reached the tomb first also went in; he saw and he believed. Till this moment they had failed to understand the teaching of Scripture that he must rise from the dead.” (Jn 20:3-10) Meanwhile, Mary the Magdalene was outside near the tomb, and Jesus appeared to her. She went

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to tell the other disciples (Jn 20:11-18). In the evening of that day, Jesus also appeared to the disciples who were hiding in a closed room, and said to them: “‘Peace be with you,’ and showed them his hands and his side. The disciples were filled with joy when they saw the Lord…” (Jn 20:19-23) Thomas, who was not at that time with the rest of the disciples, had to see Jesus in a later appearance of Jesus: “Eight days later the disciples were in the house again, and Thomas was with them. The doors were closed, but Jesus came in and stood among them. ‘Peace be with you’ he said. Then he spoke to Thomas, ‘Put your finger here… Doubt no longer but believe.’ Thomas replied, ‘My Lord and my God!’” (Jn 20:26-29) To confirm his resurrection and counter any claim that the disciples had hallucinated, Jesus eventually showed himself to the disciples three times after he rose from the dead. During this period, before he “was taken up into heaven,” (Mk 16:19); Jesus charged them to “make disciples of all nations [and] baptize them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” (Mt 28:19) This was the time when Jesus’ teaching about humans loving each other in accord with Jesus’ own example (Jn 12:34) was reverberating in the ears and hearts of Jesus’ disciples and of their disciples for generations thereafter. The issue of the Trinity—three persons in one God—is one further absurdity, but Pasqualino does not discuss it. Jesus’ reference to the Trinity, reported by his disciples, may be objected to by any critical reader who wishes to rebut the implied Christian message of trinity. This is why it is proper to mention it succinctly here, and refer the reader to separate resources for further reading. There were many historic attempts at justifying the Trinity in Christian faith from a theological point of view. The doctrine was explained in the Christian ecumenical councils351and elaborated on by Christian theologians such as Saint Augustine,352 Saint Thomas Aquinas, and other, more recent, theologians. It was also discussed from a philosophical point of view in Neoplatonist or more modern philosophical circles. To claim that the Omnipotent and eternal God became a powerless and mortal slave of his creatures, wearing the symbolic earrings of slavery, is as absurd as the claim that the sacrificial lamb rose from the dead. Both claims are, nonetheless, presented

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here as the result of the ultimate and unique love that only the Omnipotent can display. Such absurdities sound like the unbelievable mythical stories of ancient or primitive religions. By the way, even the so-called “unbelievable mythical stories” of primitive religions can reveal some truth hiding behind mythical presentations of human imagination and aspirations, a truth that some wise can uncover. From this standpoint, one will also realize the need to assess and uncover the value and consistency of the apparently unbelievable teaching and deeds of Jesus as well as the life and deeds of many of his followers, who were convinced by his message and acted accordingly at the cost of their lives. This teaching and these deeds too can reveal the truth hiding behind human imagination and aspirations, which the wise can also uncover. In order to assess and reveal the value and consistency of the teaching and deeds of Jesus, one needs to read the gospels and read about the deeds of his apostles and disciples, all of which, in short, indicate a unanimous display of love. At the cost of the life of Jesus, the victim of love, God the Father wanted to save humanity from the tutelage of sin. And so did Jesus’ apostles and later disciples through the generations. The atheist, the skeptic, or the agnostic may ask: “If God loved humanity so much, why is there evil in the world, evil that cost the lives of so many innocent martyrs for the faith?” This is another justified objection that points to one of the absurdities in the world. It can be addressed separately and is beyond the scope of Pasqualino’s main thesis. A lot of literature on the subject is written by philosophers and theologians alike—either in favor or against the existence of a loving God who would allow the existence of evil in the world. Pasqualino’s love thesis, epitomized as the absurd thesis of love achieved by the incarnate Christ-God, can find support in the history of Christianity throughout the centuries and across the continents. Besides the martyrdom of some of Jesus’ apostles, consider for example, the lives of the apostles’ early followers who lived in the catacombs of Rome and elsewhere in the Roman Empire to avoid religious persecution. Consider also the lives of the more recent Christians who lived, during World Wars I and II, inside holes and tunnels dug in the mountains of Turkey (see, for

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example, www.journal-topics.com/articles/cappadocia/, and https://scholarcommons.usf.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1233 &context=gsp) and elsewhere in the Ottoman Empire in order to avoid religious persecution. The mass massacre of Turkish and Armenian Christians in that era as well as the martyrdom of Christians over the four continents provide eloquent witness for their Christian faith. The Catholic Christian martyrs of Ireland of the years ranging between 1537 and 1714;353 the Christian martyrs of Uganda who were executed between 31 January 1885 and 27 January 1887 for their Christian faith;354 the Christian martyrs of Korea during the 19th century;355 and the Christian martyrs of El Salvador in the 20th century356 are vivid examples of their faith in the Christian message that despite the persecutions has been propagated throughout the world over the centuries. These martyrs displayed their faith and love for God by offering their lives in martyrdom, emulating the example of the incarnate God. Similarly, the Christian martyrs all over the world sacrificed their lives, expecting to resurrect as promised by the victoriously resurrected Christ Savior. Thus, chapter VI gives a succinct summary of the story of love-motivated salvation that constitutes the upper level of the ascent to The Absolute which, in turn, offers a new light on life’s absurdities. It is a story of an ideal love, obedience and trust, incorporated in the teaching and deeds of Jesus Christ. It is an absurd love story that has been documented by historical events, verified by eye witnesses, discussed in historical, philosophical, theological and apologetic literature, and described as the absurd “Parable of Parables.” It is the story of a “deluded” and absurd love that, nonetheless, reveals, more than any other perspective, a divinely inspired wisdom on the absurdities of life through the “eyes” of The Absolute. It is a love that, despite its appearance of failure and humiliation, “shines gloriously more than all the victories of the world.”

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Further Food for Thought on Chapter VI: The Parable of Parables

1- Compare the two concepts of love as (1) charity (Latin caritas/Greek ἀγάπη Agape) and as sexual passion (Latin passio sexualis/Greek ἔρως Eros) showing the positive and the negative aspects of each in favor of, or detrimental to, a happy life. 2- Compare the two phrases (1) “fable for children” and (2) “fable for the wise.” Give for each an applicaton in factual life, drawing lessons appropriate for the child or the wise. 3- Why does Pasqualino refer to holy rivers? Is there any relation between the concept of river and that of holiness that conveys a message for one’s ascent to the Absolute? Choose one holy river and address its symbolism in view of the ascent to the Absolute. 4- Compare Plato’s World of Ideas and Aristotle’s World of Universals. Point to the common ground where the two meet, and where the two diverge. Give your personal opinion on the subject. 5- Does John the Evangelist’s notion of “The Word” (“In the beginning was the Word… and the Word was God.” Jn 1:1) fit in Plato’s concept of the “World of Ideas” or Aristotle’s concept of an “Unmoved Mover”? 6- Discuss the value of doubt (You may use in your discussion Descartes’ methodical doubt in his Meditations on First Philosophy, or Thomas the apostle’s doubt as described in Jn 20:24-29), or any doubt expressed by a religious, philosophical, scientific, or political figure. 7- Are miracles possible? Explain some of the meanings of the term ‘miracle’ and discuss the function miracles in the eyes of the believer and non-believer. 8- Is there a value in analyzing mythical stories of ancient or present-day religious beliefs or practices? Justify your response by addressing a specific ancient or present-day religious belief or practice of any religious expression that runs alongside pagan practices.

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Besides Sakyamuni, the Buddha (meaning “the one who attained bodhi or enlightenment”) who introduced Buddhism in 444 BCE, there will be, according to Buddhism, a future Buddha, called Maitreya. This future Buddha will appear on earth before the end of time, achieve full enlightenment, and teach pure dharma (compliance with divine law). This is a literal translation of the Italian that reads: “Tu mi hai forato le orecchie, per la mia perfetta e costante fedeltà fino alla morte in croce.” The Jerusalem Bible’s English translation of David’s Psalm reads “You, who wanted no sacrifice or oblation, opened my ear,” (Ps 40:6) There is, however, another Biblical reference, Exodus, to ‘piercing’ or ‘opening’ the ears that justifies the use in the Italian version of the verb ‘forare,’ ‘to pierce’: “But if the [Hebrew] slave declares ‘I love my master and my wife and children, I renounce my freedom’, then his master shall take him to God, leading him to the door or the door post. His master shall pierce his ear with an awl, and he shall be in his service for all time.” (Ex 21:5). The ‘piercing’ of the ears refers here to the slave-like ‘obedience’ of the one whose ears are pierced. More particularly, the ultimate form of obedience is the obedience until death, as was the case with Jesus, who also can be considered, in a figurative sense, as having pierced ears to hold the ring of slavery. Therefore, one might say “The Earrings of Jesus,” “The earrings of God-Jesus” or simply, as the title of the book goes, “The Earrings of God.” Due to the contemporary style of the original Italian, all the biblical quotations in this book are taken from The Jerusalem Bible, Doubleday, New York 1966.

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If a Jew bought a slave, it would be for a number of years, at the end of which (being the sabbatical time) the slave is given freedom. Plato, Republic, Book VII. The metaphor of the monkey refers to being conditioned by one’s destiny, which is pre-set by the Omnipotent. Just as a monkey who clings onto the back or shoulder of someone restricts movement, so one’s destiny restricts choices. Destiny can be a rather heavy burden, limiting but not completely binding one’s movements and freedom. “Credo quia absurdum est,” Latin, meaning ‘I believe because it is absurd.’ This quote is mentioned in G. Fumagalli, Chi l’ha detto? (Who Said It?), ed. Hoepli, Milano, 1983, p. 1485, a book of quotations and their sources. The quote is attributed to either Saint Augustine or Tertullian. See also Alfredo Panzini, Dizionario Moderno, Hoepli, Milano, 1931, s.v. “Credo,” p. 165. Revelation (Apocalypse), 17:4. See Sigmund Freud (1856–1939), Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905), where he distinguishes three phases in the development of the “polymorphous perversity” or the child’s sexuality: the oral (age up to 1.5 years, when the child experiences pleasure in using his mouth to eat), the anal (up to 3.5 years, when the pleasure is experienced in defecation), and the phallic (up to 5 or 6 years, when the pleasure is experienced in the urination, which leads, later on, to the beginning of sexual excitement and adult sexual behavior). The focus of Pasqualino seems to be on the concept of “perversion,” which is acting out of the normal, and this is why he compares himself to the child who acts out of what is considered by others to be “normal.” A quote from Dante, “E vero come... all’intenzione dell’arte...,” Paradiso, canto I, verse 128. The allusion is to the statement that a prophet is not one who conforms to normality. The source of the expression “clothes of shame” is not biblical but Gnostic. It may have been taken from Canto della perla (The Hymn of the Pearl), which is a poetic and mystical product of zealous Christians interpreting the Bible, but not always theologically approved by the Catholic or Orthodox Christian authorities. Symbolism and allegories are common features of Gnosticism. Roland (in Italian Orlando) is the famous protagonist of the French epic La Chanson de Roland. He was the commander of the army of Charlemagne in the valley of Roncisvalle (Ronceveaux) in the Pyrenees, the chain of mountains that makes the

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border between France and Spain. He was defeated in that valley in August 778 by the Muslim Arabs. ‘Gerasenes,’ is the plural of ‘Gerasene,’ meaning ‘people of the town of Gerasa’ (Mk 5,1; Lk 8:26), and is a variant of ‘Gadarenes,’ which is the plural of ‘Gadarene,’ meaning ‘people of the town of Gadara’ (Mt 8:28). The Jerusalem Bible remarks that “the variant ‘Gerasenes’ is the result of a conjecture of Origen.” (See JB Footnote I to Mt 8:28.) Jm 20:7-9. This quote is taken from the JB, and is not a literal equivalent of the Italian, though the meaning is the same. For example, the Italian version says, “Ed ecco, ho sentito un fuoco ardente, chiuso nelle mie ossa” (And then, I felt an intense fire enclosed in my bones), when the JB version says: “Then there seemed to be a fire burning in my heart, imprisoned in my bones.” Being faithful to the canonical JB Bible version would be more appropriate than being faithful to the interpreted or translated Italian. According to the Book of Wisdom, “The fear of Yahweh is the beginning of knowledge.” (Ws 1:7), “The fear of Yahweh is the beginning of wisdom.” (Ws 9:10) and “The fear of Yahweh is the school of wisdom.” (Ws 15:33). Similarly, the Book of Psalms states: “This fear of Yahweh is the beginning of wisdom,” (Ps 111:10) and Job: “Wisdom? It is fear of the Lord.” (Jb 28:28) Footnote a to Ws 1:7 reads: “The ‘fear of Yahweh’ in the Bible is approximately what we call the virtue of religion, or devotion to God. Wisdom, being its product, is essentially religious.” In Chapter IV of the Tractatus theologico-politicus, Spinoza refers to Saint Paul’s Letter to the Hebrews, where he talks about God “piercing the ears” of man. Then, in chapter V, he mentions David’s Psalm 40, verses 7-9, where God is reported to have said not what to do with the sacrifices and the so-called sacred ceremonies. In Isaiah 1:11 ff. these are reported as disgusting God. Such ceremonies lacked, according to Spinoza, a sense of humanity, civility, and love in action. Also, the pierced ears don’t mean slavery to rites and ceremonies imposed upon us for political reasons; they mean, rather, a choice to be free servants of the Divine Law that is in ourselves. “When they came to Jesus, they found he was already dead, and so instead of breaking his legs, one of the soldiers pierced his side with a lance; and immediately there came out blood and water.” (Jn. 19:33-34) This is a translation of the quote in Italian. However, the passage that F. Pasqualino refers to here and that is given at the

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end of the discourse on “The Apostolic Mission,” reads in The Jerusalem Bible as follows: “If anyone gives so much as a cup of cold water to one of these little ones because he is a disciple, then I tell you solemnly, he will most certainly not lose his reward.” (Mt 19:42) In a note p to this verse, one reads that the reference to the “little ones” is to “[t]he apostles whom Jesus is sending on their mission.” The note also makes reference to Mark, whose wording, referring to the same event, is more explicit: “If anyone gives you a cup of water to drink just because you belong to Christ, then I tell you solemnly, he will most certainly not lose his reward.” (Mk 9:41) From this, it should be obvious that Pasqualino’s intention is to illustrate the fact that Jesus did not act literally like a slave to a script, and the scene where Jesus interrupts his discourse on the Apostolic Mission to make a parenthetic remark about the thirsty child is to be understood as a vivid visual illustration of the liberal execution by Jesus of his “script.” The reference here is to World War II. The emanation theory of Plotinus provides a deterministic framework of how the universe functions and how man’s behavior is governed by deterministic principles. For example, man is determined to seek and reach what is good (or what is perceived to be good), but man can choose how to reach it. This is what Pasqualino is referring to. For further reading on Plotinus’ conception of freewill, see Plotinus, The Enneads, VI.8, "On Free Will and the Will of the One" and VI.9, "On the Good, or the One." It might also be of interest to read the earlier sections of The Third Ennead, III.1, "On Fate" and III.23, "On Providence.” In the Bible, God introduced Himself to Moses as “Yahweh” (Hebrew and Aramaic term meaning The [Only] One Who Is). This is why Spinoza considers the Cartesian “Cogito ergo sum” (Latin, meaning “I think therefore I am”) a blasphemy as God Yahweh alone can say ‘I am.’ However, according to Spinoza, God’s being is manifested in nature’s individual beings, which justified Spinoza in saying the controversial “Deus sive natura” (Latin, ‘God or Nature’) that caused him to be condemned by both Jewish and Christian authorities. See Spinoza, Ethica/Tractatus de intellectus emendatione (Ethics/Treatise on the emendation of the Intellect), ch. 5. Ps 40, 6-8. Spinoza, Theologico-politicus tractatus, Chapter III-Of the Vocation of the Hebrews, and whether the Gift of Prophecy was peculiar to them: “Ezek. xx:32, where the prophet seems to intend that though the Jews wanted after the help afforded them to

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turn their backs on the worship of the Lord … God chose not the Hebrews for ever, but only on the condition under which He had formerly chosen the Canaanites, for these last, as we have shown, had priests who religiously worshipped God, and whom God at length rejected because of their luxury, pride, and corrupt worship.” Translation by R. H. M. Elwes, p. 33, 4th paragraph (quote found at: http://www.spinozacsack.net78.net/Theologico-Political%20 Treatise,%20Benedict%20de%20Spinoza.pdf.) The Latin verb ‘excommunicare’ (to excommunicate), a term specifically used in medieval-to-modern Western literature that means ‘to cast someone out of one’s community due to his/her aberrant teaching.’ Because Spinoza was a Jew, the religious authorities of his Jewish community “excommunicated” him. As for the Christian Church of the time, it could not, technically speaking, “excommunicate” him, as he was not a Christian, but did condemn his teaching. Mt 8:20. Mk 14:36. Mk 14:36; Mt 26:39. The concept of the “unhappy consciousness” is found in Hegel’s major book Phenomenology of the Spirit (1807). The biblical quote reads: “At that time Jesus took a walk one Sabbath day through the cornfields. His disciples were hungry and began to pick ears of corn and eat them.” (Mt 12:1) The point the author wants to stress here is not whether the disciples of Jesus were “hungry,” or were simply “enjoying themselves plucking ears of corn in a grain field and getting refreshed,” as Pasqualino describes it. Rather, it is a contrast that Pasqualino wanted to establish between the pharisaic fear of a law that leads to obedience to the letter of the law and the Christian confidence in understanding not just the letter of the law but the spirit of the law. If someone is hungry and helps himself with corn from a cornfield is not as bad as when someone is not hungry and helps himself with the corn from the same cornfield. While in the former case, there is a natural need that has to be satisfied no matter how, and the breaking of the law would have to be considered with its extenuating circumstance, hunger. In the latter case, one is breaking the law. In this case, it would be an intentional defiance to the law. This is the kind of contrast Pasqualino wants to establish when he changes the objectively descriptive biblical narration to a subjectively figurative literary narration. Mt 16:23. Mt 16:17.

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Mt 16:23. Mt 16:13. Mt 16:15. The reference here is not to Thomas poking his finger into the side wound of Jesus but to Peter seeing Jesus after the resurrection, when Jesus appeared to the apostles, gathered in Jerusalem alarmed and frightened, and said to them: “... Look at my hands and feet; yes, it is I indeed. Touch me and see for yourselves; a ghost has no flesh and bones as you can see I have. And as he said this he showed them his hands and feet...” (Lk 24:39-40) No explicit mention is made here as to whether Peter actually touched Jesus. The description of Peter touching resurrected Jesus is, in this context, a permissible literary dramatization. An allusion, though, can be seen to Thomas’s actually poking his finger into the side-wound of Jesus, who had said: “Give me your hand; put it into my side. Doubt no longer but believe.” (Jn 20:27) “By these words he indicated the kind of death he would die.” (Jn 12:33) This verse evokes Isaiah’s prophecy: “Yahweh has been pleased to crush him with suffering. If he offers his life in atonement, he shall see his heirs, he shall have a long life and through him what Yahweh wishes will be done.” (Is 53:10) The first announcement of the suffering and death of Jesus had already been made when Jesus was about to ask his disciples to go to Jerusalem, where he would suffer and die. In that moment, Peter suggested to Jesus not to go, and that is why he was yelled at by Jesus because for Jesus not to go to Jerusalem, suffer, and die there would mean no salvation for humanity, the mission for which Jesus precisely came. Actually, it was shortly before they went to Capernaum: “One day when they were together in Galilee, Jesus said to them, ‘The Son of Man is going to be handed over into the power of men; they will put him to death, and on the third day he will be raised to life again.’ And a great sadness came over them.” (Mt 17:23) It was after having made this statement that Jesus and the disciples went to Capernaum, as the following verse 24 states: “When they reached Capernaum, the collectors of the half-shekel came to Peter and said, ‘Does your master not pay the half-shekel?’ ‘Oh yes’ he replied, and went into the house.” (Mt 17:24 ff.) “Jesus had now finished all he wanted to say, and he told his disciples ‘It will be Passover, as you know, in two days’ time, and the Son of Man will be handed over to be crucified.” (Mt

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26:1-2) Also: “By these words he indicated the kind of death he would die.” (Jn 12:33) Jn 15:12. Jn 14:1. Jn 14:2. Jn 14,1-4. Jn 14,5. Jn 14:6. Jn 14:7. Jn 14:8. Jn 14:9. “Each one of us reaches himself coming from infinity and goes along” means that the ‘coming from infinity’ is a coming out of the infinite mind of God, who conceived us since infinity, a parte ante, that is, before the beginning of time, and after we are born, we realize our potentialities as figured out by the Creator. Jn 13:8. Jn 16:27. Jn 16:32. It is a language of love, not of coercion, that God seemed to have used when creating all beings. This is why F. Pasqualino made God ask figuratively every creature-to-be the rather paradoxical question “Do you want to be?” implying the unstated question: Do you want to exercise your free-choice while in existence? Accepting to have and to exercise the capability to make free choices implies in turn that one also accepts the responsibility for what one does. Obviously, God’s asking His future creatures whether they want to exist is a literary form of dramatization by exaggeration to stress the thesis of the author that we have freedom of choice. However, one may recall here with Pasqualino the Platonic world of ideas where the ideas coexisted with, or existed within—so to speak—the Divine Mind. When the mind of the individual was to inhabit a human body and live in this world of the Platonic shadows, the conditions were such that the mind forgot at birth all that it knew before birth. Consequently, the subsequent acquisition, or rather reacquisition, of knowledge becomes nothing but a remembrance (ἀνάμνησις anamnesis) of the forgotten knowledge. In a poetic move intended to illustrate freedom of choice, Pasqualino makes the Divine Mind, the Christianized God, ask the individual mind if it would want to be. The statement that “Man is somehow everything” reflects the Renaissance philosophy, in which the universe is the macrocosm and humanity is the microcosm. In Leibniz’s monadic

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philosophy, the universe is the larger or universal monad and man the smaller or individual personal monad. In his doctoral dissertation on the atomism of Democritus and Epicurus, Marx claims that there is even in the atom some form of the arbitrary. The dissertation is titled: Über die Differenz der demokritischen und epikurischen Naturphilosophie (On the Difference between Democritus’ and Epicurus’ Philosophy of Nature) presented at the University of Iena in 1841. There is an interesting view of human freedom by an early Church Father Ōrigénēs Adamántios (184/185–253/254), known also as Origen of Alexandria, because he was born, and lived the earlier part of his career in Alexandria. His teachings, because some of them were not consonant with those of the apostles, were condemned by the Church. One of his teachings that were not approved was that human souls pre-existed before their birth on earth. God, Origen claimed, created intelligent souls, but some of them, whose love of God diminished greatly due to the bad exercise of their free will, became demons. Those whose love of God diminished somewhat became human beings: “But the third order of rational creatures is that of those who are judged fit by God to replenish the human race, i.e., the souls of men, assumed in consequence of their moral progress into the order of angels;” Origen, De Principiis, Book I, Chapter VIII-On The Angels, Section 4. The same idea is expressed in a fragment by Origen that was translated by Eusebius Sophronius Hieronymus, known in English as Saint Jerome, (c.  347 – 30 September 420 CE) in his (Jerome’s) “Epistle to Avitus”: “… because different conduct and varying wills will admit of a different condition in either direction, i.e., angels may become men or demons, and again from the latter they may rise to be men or angels.” Both quotes were found in http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/text/origen122.html. In his philosophical poem Peri Fusios (On Nature), Parmenides thought, while on the chariot Sun, of reaching the gate of the great dilemma of Being and Non-Being. Unfortunately, only blocks of verses and fragments of this poem are extant. Nonetheless, and despite the difficulty in understanding Plato’s dialogue, titled “Parmenides,” these fragments provide some understanding of Parmenides’ thought. Shakespeare, The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, Act III, Scene 1 (Hamlet’s soliloquy): “To be, or not to be: that is the question: Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,

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Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep; No more; and by a sleep to say we end The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks…” A useful clarification of the distinction between being and non-being can be found in Aristotle’s principle of “action” and “passion,” according to which there is an “agent” that is the author of the action (actively “being”) and a “patient” that suffers the action (passively “non-being”). Aristotle illustrates this principle in the Physics with the example of a mover, the “active” element or the “agent,” and a moved, the “passive” element or the “patient”: “Everything that is in motion must be moved by something. For if it has not the source of its motion in itself it is evident that it is moved by something other than itself, for there must be something else that moved it.” (Physics, Bk. VII, Ch.1, 241b, 24) When referring to non-physical entities, Aristotle illustrates, in his book On the Soul, the principle with the example of an intellect that is the subject or source of action, the “active intellect” (active mind) and an intellect that is the object of action, the “passive intellect” (passive mind): “And in fact mind as we have described it is what it is by virtue of becoming all things, while there is another which is what it is by virtue of making all things.” (On the Soul, Bk III, Ch.5, 430a 14-15). The action-passion principle can also be applied to the ethical sort of agency, whereby the rational capability or reason moves the will to order or move a person’s motor system to act in one way or another in view of producing an ethical event that is qualified as either “voluntary” or “involuntary”: “Now the man acts voluntarily; for the principle that moves the instrumental part of the body in such actions is in him, and the things of which the moving principle is in a man himself are in his power to do or not to do. Such actions, therefore, are voluntary.” (Nichomachean Ethics, Bk. III, Ch. 1, 1110a 15-18). In the case of the involuntary, the true agent is outside the power of the apparently acting person. This digression into the Aristotelian action/passion principle will help analyse whether Jesus and human beings can be the true agents of their actions or they are slaves of agencies beyong their control. Pasqualino’s answer is in the affirmative despite the appearance of some kind of slavery. Aristotle applies the action-passion principle, not just to the physical objects moving or being moved, but also to the mind (intellect): “Since in every class of things, as in nature as a whole, we find two factors involved, (1) a matter which is potentially all the particulars included in the class, (2) a cause

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which is productive in the sense that it makes them all (the latter standing to the former as e.g. an art to its material), these distinct elements must likewise be found within the soul.” (Aristotle, On The Soul, Bk 3, ch.4, 430a 10) After explaining how the mind (intellect) functions as active and passive, Aristotle summarizes the dual function as follows: “That which cognizes must have an element of potentiality in its being, and one of the contraries must be in it. But if there is anything that has no contrary, then it knows itself and is actually and possesses independent existence.” (Aristotle, On The Soul, Bk 3, Ch.6, 430b 22) In the Poetics, Aristotle makes the distinction between the possible and the necessary that conplements the concept of necessity in the action/passion principle: “From what we have said it will be seen that the poet’s function is to describe, not the thing that has happened, but a kind of thing that might happen, i.e. what is possible as being probable or necessary.” (Aristotle, Poetics, chapter 9, 1451a, 36) In the Metaphysics, Aristotle elaborates on the concept of “potency” that adds further complementary concepts to the action/passion principle. Potency has, according to Aristotle, several meanings: “(1) a source of movement or change, which is in another thing than the thing moved or in the same thing qua other; e.g. the art of building, which is a potency which is not in the thing built, while the art of healing, which is a potency, may be in the man healed, but not in him qua healed. ‘Potency’ then means the source, in general, of change or movement in another thing or in the same thing qua other, and also (2) the source of a thing’s being moved... (3) The capacity of performing this well or according to intention... So too (4) in the case of passivity. (5) The states in virtue of which things are absolutely impassive or unchangeable, or not easily changed for the worse, are called potencies...” (Aristotle, Metaph., Bk V, Ch. 12, 1019a 15 ff.) Parmenides’ myth of the chariot pulled by four horses is referred to in fragment 229 (English translation of the quote in Italian): “The female horses that carry me, in accordance with the impetus of my will…” (Le cavalle che mi portano, conforme allo slancio della mia volontà...) Parmenide, Testimonianze e Frammenti, a cura di Mario Untersteiner, Biblioteca Di Studi Superiori, vol. XXXVIII, page 120 (Greek)/121 (Italian). The sophists were teachers of ancient Greece, who taught primarily the youth of only those who could afford to pay, that is the noblemen. They taught philosophy and rhetoric in view of reaching the narrowly focused conception of “virtue” or

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“excellence” (ἀρετή arete). This is why they were described as insincere and “deceptive” in their selective teaching method. For more, see Plato, The Dialogues, “Sophist.” The Dialogues are Conversations of students with their teacher on specific philosophical subjects. If we were to ask ‘where does Schopenhauer deny the possibility of human measure of things?’ Pasqualino would say: ‘I would rather like to know myself in which one of his works [Schopenhauer] does not end with denying it’ (“Vorrei sapere io in quale delle sue opere non finisca lui col negarla!”) Letter by Pasqualino to Gabriel Lahood dated August 19, 1998. The Jerusalem Bible explains in the Introduction to “Ecclesiastes” the origin of the word ‘Qoheleth’ (‫ )קוהלת‬and its meaning: “The title of this short book reads: ‘The Words of Qoholeth, son of David, king in Jerusalem.’ ‘Qoheleth,’ cf. 1:2 and 12; 7:27; 12:8-10, is not a proper name but a common noun, sometimes preceded by the definite article; though feminine in form it is treated as a masculine noun. The most likely explanation is that Qoheleth indicates the function of one who speaks in the assembly (Qahal; in Greek ekklesia, hence the book’s Latin and English transliteration from the Greek Bible); it could therefore be rendered as: the Preacher. This preacher is called ‘son of David and king in Jerusalem,’ 1:2, and there is no doubt that he is identified with Solomon to whom the text makes clear reference, 1:16... though the name is not mentioned.” (JB, Introduction to Ecclesiastes, p. 978, paragraph 1.). Warren Baker & Eugene Carpenter translate the term in their Word Study Dictionary, Nr. 6953, (2003) as “a collector of wisdom” and “a preacher.” The son of David was Solomon, who was famous not only for his richness but also and mostly for his wisdom. In fact, while “[i]t has often been maintained that the author [of the Ecclesiastes] is not one [e.g. Solomon] but many...” (JB, p.978) The Book of Wisdom is authored by Solomon. The Jerusalem Bible states in the Introduction to The Book of Wisdom that: “The book entitled ‘The Book of Wisdom’ by the Vulgate is known in the Greek manuscripts as ‘The Wisdom of Solomon’.” (JB, p.1004) Qo 12:8. Hebrew Qoheleth (‫)קוֶֹהֶלת‬, abbreviated as ‘Qo,’ which, in Greek/Latin terminology, is The book of Ecclesiastes. Linguistically, the Greek word ‘Eklesia’ (Εκκλησία)/Latin ecclesia, the Hebrew ‘Kenesset’ (‫)ְכֶּנֶסת‬ and the Syro-Aramaic Keneshta’/‘Keneshto’ (10)#/) basically refer to the same concept of Qoholeth or ‘Community,’ ‘Church,’ ‘the Faithful.’ The

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term Qoholeth refers also to Solomon, known as the author of the book, and “speaker” or “preacher of a community.” “The fool’s heart leads him astray.” (Qo 10:2) In the Introduction to the Wisdom Books, The Jerusalem Bible mentions the five books of the Old Testament that “are called ‘Wisdom’ books: Job, Proverbs. Ecclesiastes, Ecclesiasticus, and Wisdom. With these is grouped, somehow unaptly, the Song of Songs. The school of thought they represent is also that of a certain number of Psalms and, in part, of the books of Tobit and Baruch.” (JB, p. 723) The reference to “the sun of Heraclitus” that “is never rekindled” is found in Plato, Republic, Book VI, 498a. This sun that never needs to be rekindled is in perpetual motion, which means that it is perpetually burning and each moment of its burning is never the same as other moments. It is then a different sun every moment just as the river is never the same river in every moment of its life. Socrates explains this in Plato’s Dialogue Cratylus: “Heraclitus is supposed to say that all things are in motion and nothing at rest; he compares them to the stream of a river, and says that you cannot go into the same water twice.” (Cratylus, 402a) Later in the same dialogue Socrates attacks this view, as it leads to no knowledge: “But if the very nature of knowledge changes, at the time when the change occurs there will be no knowledge, and according to this view, there will be no one to know and nothing to be known.” (Cratylus, 440b) Continuing on the same line of attack, Socrates says in the Symposium: “Now, although we speak of an individual as being the same so long as he continues to exist in the same form, and therefore assume that a man is the same person in his dotage as in his infancy, yet, for all we call him the same person... And not only his body, for the same thing happens to his soul. And neither his manners, nor his disposition, nor his thoughts, nor his desires, nor his pleasures, nor his sufferings, nor his fears are the same throughout his life, for some of them grow, while others disappear.” (Cratylus, 207d-e) The question, as to whether Jesus was the Messiah or not, was even asked by the disciples of John the Baptist. John should have been among the first people to know that Jesus was the expected Messiah. It is obvious, though, that John knew about Jesus as he had baptized him and witnessed the Holy Spirit proclaiming Jesus as his “Son, the beloved.” (Mt 3:17) Rather, John wanted his disciples to be assured of the truth about Jesus, the Messiah: “Now John in his prison had heard what Christ was doing and he sent his disciples to ask him, ‘Are you

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the one who is to come, or have we got to wait for someone else?’ Jesus answered, ‘Go back and tell John what you hear and see; the blind see again, and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised to life and the Good News is proclaimed to the poor; and happy is the man who does not lose faith in me.’” (Mt 11:2-5) Pasqualino makes the “people of Jerusalem,” instead of the disciples of John, ask the question of whether Jesus was the Messiah. In doing so, he makes use of a literary generalization or dramatization to explain why the simple people of Jerusalem and the jealous Jewish leaders were still not sure whether Jesus was the expected Messiah, that is, the Savior who would come and save the Jewish people from their slavery to other nations. Such a belief of the Jews of that time shows the double misunderstanding by the Jews of the true mission of the Messiah. The fact that the Messiah came for the sake of both the Jewish people and all of humanity, meant that the Messiah came to save the Jews and humanity as a whole not necessarily from slavery to other nations but from slavery to sin. Jn 8:4-5. Jn 8:7. John, 8:10-11. The Italian text reads: “Beh che aspetti? Sei libera!” (“Well, what are you waiting for? You are free!”). Quoting The Bible was here better than translating an interpretation of the biblical wording. The reference here is to Jacob’s dream, described in the Old Testament of The Bible: “He had a dream: a ladder was there, standing on the ground with its top reaching to heaven; and there were angels of God going up it and coming down. And Yahweh was there, standing over him, saying, I am Yahweh, the God of Abraham your father, and the God of Isaac.” (Gn 28:12-13) Jr 17:5. This verse of Jeremiah implies that God wants man to believe in Him more than in anyone else. Psalm 146, verse 3, is more specific: “Do not put your trust in men in power, or in any mortal man—he cannot save.” The idea of God’s “regret” is implicit in the event that God expelled Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden: “So Yahweh God expelled him [Adam] from the garden of Eden” (Gn 3:23) It is also implicit in another, later, event: when the children of Adam and Eve “began to be plentiful..., Yahweh said: ‘My spirit must not for ever be disgraced in man, for he is but flesh; his life shall last no more than a hundred and twenty years.” (Gen. 6:1-4)

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“The Latin expression felix culpa derives from the writings of Saint Augustine regarding the Fall of Man, the source of original sin: ‘For God judged it better to bring good out of evil than not to permit any evil to exist.’ (in Latin: Melius enim judicavit de malis bene facere quam mala nulla esse permittere.)” Wikipedia, “Felix Culpa.” God, being out of space and time, is eternal. Being eternal precludes having potentialities of any sort. Thus, to talk of God, the Creator, as one who “realizes” Himself—that is, one who realizes His potentialities—indicates that the author is using poetic language. Lk 23:34. “Herod was delighted to see Jesus; he had heard about him and had been wanting for a long time to set eyes on him; moreover, he was hoping to see some miracle worked by him. So he questioned him at some length; but without getting any reply. Meanwhile the chief priests and the scribes were there, violently pressing their accusations. Then Herod, together with his guards, treated him with contempt and made fun of him; he put a rich cloak on him and sent him back to Pilate.” (Lk 22:8-11) An explanatory footnote in The Jerusalem Bible regarding the “cloak” says that it was “[t]he ceremonial dress of princes: Herod’s gibe at the royal claim of Jesus.” Jn 18:31. Jn 18:37. Jn 18:37. Jn 15:12. Jn 19:6. Jn 11:11. John, the evangelist, says exactly the same thing that Pasqualino is saying here regarding Jesus’ avoiding the use of the word death, but the mention of death was not always avoidable, and Pasqualino says “he rarely named it.” Thus, one has to read between the lines and appreciate the literary effect of the association of ideas on the mind of Jesus, who came to die. In the same passage, where John relates the story of Lazarus, John continues: “The phrase Jesus used referred to the death of Lazarus, but they thought that by ‘rest’ he meant ‘sleep,’so Jesus put it plainly, ‘Lazarus is dead; and for your sake I am glad I was not there because now you will believe.” (Jn 11:13-15) On other occasions, John used the noun ‘death,’ as in “whoever listens to my words... has passed from death to life,” (Jn 5:24) and the adjective ‘dead,’ as in “when the dead [people] shall hear the voice of the Son of God... will live.” (Jn 5:25) Other evangelists, too, quoted Jesus as mentioning both ‘death’ and ‘dead’ in his speeches. Obviously one may also

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think of the divergence among the translations of The Bible when a reference to ‘death,’ ‘dead’ or other related terms is due, but in essence one may say that Jesus must have used both terms. Mt 9:24. Lk 7:15. “Simon Peter, who carried a sword, drew it and wounded the high priest’s servant, cutting off his right ear.” (Jn 18:10) “It happened some time later that God put Abraham to the test. ‘Abraham, Abraham’ he called. ‘Here I am’ he replied. ‘Take your son,’ God said ‘your only child Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah. There you shall offer him as a burnt offering on a mountain I will point out to you.’” (Gn 22:1-2) Later, when “Abraham stretched out his hand and seized the knife to kill his son,” (Gn 22:10) the angel of Yahweh called Abraham from heaven and said: “Do not raise your hand against the boy” (Gn 22:12) Ps 22:6. And Isaiah described him as “a thing despised and rejected by men.” (Is 53:3) Mt 27:43. “After this, Jesus knew that everything had now been completed, and to fulfill the scripture perfectly, he said: ‘I am thirsty’.” (Jn 19:28) The reference may be to Psalm 22 which is a lament on the theme of the suffering and hope of the virtuous man. It starts with the words Jesus uttered on the cross before his death: “My God, my God, why have you deserted me?” (Ps 22:1; Mt 27:47; Mk 15:34) Ps 22:1; Mt 27:47; Mk 15:34. The term “Om” (or “Aum”) is found in the sacred Hindu text the Mandukya Upanishad which is a book entirely devoted to Om. Buddhism adopted the use of the term in mystical meditations as the term refers to the whole universe saturated with the presence of the Ultimate Hindu god Brahman or the Buddhist Absolute Being. When, in a mystical moment, the devotee utters the sound of Om, he or she would seek and feel a temporary union with Brahman or the Absolute Being. “‘Iddio mio, Iddio mio,’ e non altro” in I (Bugetti) di San Francesco, chapter 2, ed. Taschabili Economici Newton, Roma, 1993, p. 18. The Mass. Isaiah, 11, 6-9. Mt 3,7. Mt 3,2. Mt 3,11.

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This quote is a literary device used by Pasqualino to make the dialogue alive and vivid. On several occasions, The Bible describes the Jewish people complaining to Moses: “Why did we not die at Yahweh’s hand in the land of Egypt... You have brought us to this wilderness to starve this whole company to death.” (Ex 16:3). It also describes the Jewish people rebelling against Moses: “Then all the sons of Israel grumbled against Moses and Aaron, and the whole community said, ‘Would that we had died in the land of Egypt, or at least that we had died in this wilderness!... Should we not do better to go back to Egypt?’” (Nb 14:2-3). After telling the story of the Jewish people, who escaped from the Egyptian rule, crossed the Red Sea, lived in the Sinai desert searching for food and water and fought for their lives, Exodus refers to Median, a place where the father-in-law of Moses, called Jethro, had “his camp.” (Ex 18:5) After hearing from Moses the story of the Jewish people that was continuously rescued by God Yahweh, Jethro said: “Now I know that Yahweh is greater than all the gods... Then Jethro, father-in-law of Moses, offered a holocaust and sacrifices to God...” (Ex 18:11-12) This is why Moses took refuge in that place as a safe haven. The Bible’s account of the plunder reads as follows: “I will give this people such prestige in the eyes of the Egyptians that when you go, you will not go empty-handed. Every woman will ask her neighbor and the woman who is staying in her house for silver ornaments and gold. With these you will adorn your sons and daughters; you will plunder the Egyptians.” (Ex 43:21-22) About the will of the Jews to stay in Egypt, the Bible reads: “To Moses they said, ‘Were there no graves in Egypt that you must lead us out to die in the wilderness? What good have you done us, bringing us out of Egypt? We spoke of this in Egypt, did we not?” (Ex 14:11) and “Why does Yahweh bring us to this land, only to have us fall by the sword, and our wives and young children seized as booty? Should we not do better to go back to Egypt?” (Nb 14:3) Pasqualino gives no source reference for the statement “The historians have finally found out that there had been no slavery in Egypt.” One may presume that there were different kinds of “slavery.” The two main kinds of slavery would be: (1) a total servitude as existed in time of war, such as the plantation slavery in the Caribbean, when slaves were sold and bought as goods; and (2) a limited contractual servitude such as that of professional services performed for a master, such

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as the “slavery” to the Hebrew home or land owner, whereby this “slave” is to be released in the beginning of the pre-agreed Sabbatical year. Pasqualino’s statement could mean that there was no slavery in Egypt of the first kind just mentioned. If this is the case, then there could have been the second kind of “slavery,” the contractual service slavery, which is not slavery in the full sense of the word. “Listen to my voice, I told them, carry out all my orders, then you shall be my people and I will be your God, to confirm the oath I swore to your fathers, that I would give them a land where milk and honey flow—as it still does today.” (Jr 11:45) and: “You must keep all the commandments I enjoin on you today, so that you may have the strength to conquer the land into which you are to cross to make it your own, and to live long in the land which Yahweh swore to give to your fathers and their descendants, a land where milk and honey flow.” (Dt 11:8-9) See also: “...a land of olives, of oil, of honey, a land where you will eat bread without stint...” (Dt 8:8-9) The word ‘Apocalypse’ is a Greek word (ἀποκάλυψις apokálypsis) for ‘Revelation’ and the reference here is to “The Book of the Apocalypse” or “The Book of Revelation” which is a book written by John, the author of the fourth Gospel. Although a ‘revelation’ is similar in some ways to ‘prophecy,’ in the sense that both refer to predicting future events, there is a distinct difference between the two concepts. A ‘prophecy’ is the word of God that is heard by the prophet, transmitted by word of mouth, and eventually put in writing. A ‘revelation’ is also the word of God, but is revealed in a vision, and is transmitted in writing by a human author who had that vision. The Book of Revelation was written during the persecution of Christians in the period of time between Nero (70 CE) and Domitian (95 CE). Succinctly described, it is a book addressed to the persecuted churches of Asia, to tell them, in allegorical language, that despite the persecutions (by Rome and its pagan empire, represented as “the fallen Babylon,” “the beast” or “Satan”) being suffered by the Christians, the Church of God (the New Jerusalem) will eventually be victorious. In this sense, the Book of Revelation is an epic of Christian hope. Generally speaking, the term may also mean an inspiration from God. For the biblical account of the parable of the bridesmaids, which is alluded to here, see Mt 25:1-13. Mk 11:13. Jn 5:1. Lk 13:6-9.

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This English proverb “To knock the tar out of,” meaning “to beat, whip, or belabor without mercy” (Charles Earle Funk, Hog on Ice, 1985, 22) is the closest English idiomatic expression to approximate the Italian “bruciare la terra per cavare la predica,” which literally means: “To burn down the land in order to pull out a homily.” St. Thomas Aquinas’ Summa contra gentiles, one of the two Summae, is a concise summary of the Summa theologica (or Summa theologiae). “advocata nostra,” Latin, meaning ‘Our advocate,’ which is the title of the Virgin Mary in Catholic and Orthodox Christian theology. A virtue is: “In the broad sense any fully developed capacity of the human will or intellect (for example, in the sphere of knowledge, wisdom or science); in the strict sense, the power (competence) to accomplish moral good, especially to do so gladly and with constancy, even against opposition without or within and even at considerable sacrifice. Antonym: vice. According to their origin, nature and goal, virtues are either natural or supernatural. Natural virtues are rooted in the psychosomatic nature of man and are developed by constant exercise (acquired virtues; habitus). They perfect one’s natural character and are one’s necessary defense against concupiscence and domination by instincts. The most important (basic and comprehensive) natural virtues are called the cardinal virtues: prudence; justice; fortitude and temperance...” Karl Rahner, Herbert Vorgrimler, Theological Dictionary, Herder and Herder New York, 1965-1968, sub ‘Virtue,’ p. 483. For classic further definitions and explanations of ‘virtue,’ see Plato (Meno 77b; Protagoras 330, 349b; Laws 12.965d, Republic 433; etc.) and Aristotle (Nicomachean Ethics, on moral virtues: books II to V, and on intellectual virtues: books VI to IX). The criminal may think that if God is such an arrogant and unjust God, a God who knows no forgiveness and that the criminal is, anyway, destined to eternal damnation. Then the criminal would do whatever he pleases without any remorse. “In due course John the Baptist appeared; he preached in the wilderness of Judaea and this was his message: ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is close at hand. This was the man the prophet Isaiah spoke of when he said: A voice cries in the wilderness: Prepare a way for the Lord, make his paths straight.’” Mt.3:1-3 Here is The Lord’s Prayer as quoted in the Gospel according to Matthew: “Our Father in heaven, may your name be held holy, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as in heaven.

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Give us our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we have forgiven those who are in debt to us. And do not put us to the test, but save us from the evil one.” (Mt. 6:9-13) The Mass is, in the Catholic and Orthodox traditions, the holy liturgy that celebrates the faith-requiring transubstantiation, whereby the redeeming passion, death, and resurrection of Christ are reenacted. The term ‘transubstantiation’ means that one substance (bread, wine, etc…) becomes another substance (the body of Christ, the blood of Christ, etc…). However, in the Protestant/Evangelical Christian tradition, instead of the ‘Mass,’ they celebrate a ‘service’ of preaching, prayers, and a symbolic commemoration of the redeeming passion, death, and resurrection of Christ. The cause of this discrepancy in the interpretation is due to the Gospel’s wording: “[T]his is my body… this is my blood…” Mt 26:26, and “do this as a memorial of me.” Lk 22:19. The comparison of Jesus with the lamb was made several times in the Bible, the Old and New Testaments. The analogy of the lamb taken to the slaughter house with Jesus taken to crucifixion and death is found in Isaiah, where one reads: “he never opened his mouth, like a lamb that is led to the slaughter-house, like a Lamb that is dumb before its shearers never opening its mouth.” (Is 53:7) Seeing Jesus coming towards him, John the Baptist said alluding to the prophecy of Isaiah: “Look, there is the lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world.” (Jn 1:29) Lao Tse, Tao Te Ching (Book of the Way and Virtue). The Chinese word for ‘Heaven’ is ‘Tian,’ and the Chinese word for ‘Way’ is ‘Tao’ (pronounced as Dao in the Pinyin system, while Tao is the pronunciation in the Wade-Giles system).’ Alan Miller describes Tian and Dao as follows: “Tian (Heaven) is the impersonal sacred power... the source of the world and... a moral force that would automatically reward good and punish evil. As such, Tian was usually mentioned in conjunction with the Dao, as in the expression ‘the Way of Heaven.’ In fact, for many later Confucians, Tian and Dao were often used interchangeably.” Similarly, “Dao (the Way) is the ultimate ordering principle in the world... the paths of the stars through the sky and eventually the whole orderly process of change in the celestial patterns of the stars, planets, sun, and moon... notably the seasonal cycle of cold and hot, wet and dry, and growth, harvest, and dormancy.” (Alan L. Miller, “Early Chinese Society,” in Niel Nielson and others, Religions of the World, St. Martin’s, 1983, p. 264, sec. 1 and 2.) This seasonal cycle of

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opposites, the interaction of which creates harmony, is referred to by the yin-yang symbol. Although the teaching of Lao Tse on the defeat for love in the sense that it “can help us understand that greatest of all the defeated for love, namely Jesus,” it may be a poetic conjecture needing more elaboration on the part of Pasqualino to “trace signs of [Jesus’] prophethood back to the China of the Book of the Way and Virtue.” Lope de Vega, 1562-1635 CE, is a prolific Spanish poet, novelist, and dramatist, and a central figure of Spanish Baroque Renaissance literature. In Plato’s Crito, a dialogue takes place between Socrates and his friend and student Crito. Socrates accepts the condemnation by the jury and refuses to run away from prison and imminent death, while Crito urges Socrates to approve of Crito’s plan whereby Crito would bribe the prison guards and Socrates would run away. Trying to be consistent with his principle that the laws of the State ought to be obeyed, Socrates refuses to commit an inconsistency by deserting his own principles and disobeying the State law. Disagreeing with Socrates, Pasqualino finds justified “civil disobedience” as an acceptable alternative. While Kant believes that “the ultimate goodness found on earth, [is] reason,” Schopenhauer (1788-1860) disagrees in the sense that the will is. More specifically, Schopenhauer writes in his The World as Will and Idea: “My philosophy alone leads out of this dilemma, for it for the first time places the true being of man not in the consciousness but in the will, which is not essentially bound up with consciousness, but is related to consciousness, i.e., to knowledge, as substance to accident, as something illuminated to the light... Now we can comprehend the indestructibleness of this our real kernel and true being, in spite of the evident ceasing of consciousness in death, and the corresponding non-existence of it before birth. For the intellect is as perishable as the brain, whose product or rather whose action it is. But the brain, like the whole organism, is the product or phenomenon, in short, the subordinate of the will, which alone is imperishable.” (Quoted from Schopenhauer, World as Will and Idea, in S. E. Frost, Jr., ed., Masterworks of Philosophy, vol. 3, McGraw-Hill, New York, 1946-1972, pp. 57-58.) Alan A. Miller quotes this passage from Lao Tse, The Book of Tao as follows: “Heaven and earth are not humane (jen); To them all things are straw dogs.

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The Sage is not humane (jen); To him all people are straw dogs.” Tao Te Ching, a Source Book in Chinese Philosophy, chap. 5, p. 141 (Tao Te Ching is Dao De Jing in the Pinyin system.). Quoted by Miller in Nielsen and others, World Religions, p. 275, col 1. The One Thousand and One Nights is a celebrated collection of tales about events that took place, as the tales report, at the time of the Abbāsid Caliph Hārūn al-Rashīd (‫ )ھﺎرون اﻟﺮﺷﯿﺪ‬who ruled between 786 CE and 809 CE. Gela is a city in southern Sicily, and “Mare di Gela” (Sea of Gela) is the portion of the Mediterranean Sea that extends between Sicily and Malta. Ulysses, Latin name for the Greek “Odysseus” (Ὀδυσσεύς, Ὀδυσεύς), was the King of Ithaca, and a major protagonist of the Iliad, the famous Greek Odyssey ascribed to the Greek epic poet Homer (fl. 9th cent. BCE). In the Iliad, Homer describes the events of the last year of the ten-year war of King Ulysses against Troy (a city in the northern coast of present day Turkey). Ulysses was the husband of Penelope and the father of Telemacus both of whom were left behind in Greece during the Trojan expedition. When Helen, Queen of Sparta and wife of King Menelaus, was carried away by Prince Paris, also known as Alexander of Troy, Ulysses went with his fleet of twelve ships to rescue the kidnapped Greek queen. To access the walled city of Troy, Ulysses built a large wooden horse and filled it with Greek soldiers. The horse deceived the Trojans who brought it in the city; and this is how Ulysses and his army were able to enter Troy and win the city. During his tenyear-long return voyage, he lived through many dangerous adventures among one-eyed cyclops, sirens, and giant cannibals. Upon his return to Ithaca, he found his wife Penelope surrounded by suitors who wasted his goods and property in his own palace. With the help of his son Telemachus and goddess Athena, daughter of Zeus, Ulysses put the suitors to death. He died 16 years after returning to his home. The author, F. Pasqualino, is speaking to himself in the second person. “The adventures of The Thousand and One Nights have long been recognized as based on actual reports of voyages made by Moslem merchants.” (Philip K. Hitti, History of the Arabs, Clark Limited, Edinburgh, 1937-1943, p. 305). Describing the relation between the tales described by Muslim traders and the tales associated with the name of Sindbād [‫]ﺳﻨﺪﺑﺎد‬, Hitti wrote: “Moslim traders between the seventh and ninth centuries reached China on the east both by sea and by land, attained

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the island of Zanzibar and the farthest coasts of Africa on the south, penetrated Russia on the north and were checked in their advance westward only by the dreaded waters of the ‘Sea of Darkness’ (Atlantic). The reports of returning merchants naturally aroused popular interest in distant lands and alien peoples. Sulaymān al-Tājir (‫ ﺳﻠﯿﻤﺎن اﻟﺘﺎﺟﺮ‬Sulaymān The Merchant) of Sīrāf on the Persian Gulf, the account of whose journeys into the Far East was written by an anonymous author in 851, gives us the first Arabic description of China and the coast-lands of India. Sulaymān reports the use of finger-prints as signatures by the Chinese. From this and similar narratives there gradually evolved the stories that have clustered around the name of Sindabad the Sailor.” (Hitti, op. cit., pp. 383-384) Later on more tales were added to The Thousand and One Nights such as Aladdin and the Magic Lantern and Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves. Aladdin and the Magic Lantern (The original Arabic title: ‫ﻋﻼء‬ ‫ اﻟﺪﯾﻦ واﻟﻔﺎﻧﻮس اﻟﺴﺤﺮي‬cAlā’ Uddīn wa’l Fānūs al-Siḥrī). A tale included in the One thousand and one nights (‫ اﻟﻒ ﻟﯿﻠﮫ وﻟﯿﻠﮫ‬Alf Layla wa Layla). Among the several English editions, S. Bigland’s edition of Aladdin… is titled: The Illustrated Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp, 2019. Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves (The original Arabic title: ‫ﻋﻠﻲ ﺑﺎﺑﺎ‬ ‫ واﻻرﺑﻌﻮن ﺣﺮاﻣﻲ‬cAlī Bābā wa’l Arbacūn Ḥarāmī) is a tale included in the One thousand and One Nights (Alf Layla wa Layla). Among the several English editions is: Eric A. Kimmel’s edition, The Tale of cAlī Bābā and the Forty Thieves, 1996. The word ‘Pinocchio,’ from ‘pinolo’ or ‘pignolo’ (‘pine-seed’), refers to the protagonist of a tale for children. Pinocchio is a puppet that had a long nose similar in shape to a pine-seed. This puppet became, after many trials to improve its character, a real person. When Pinocchio did something unethical or improper, his nose became longer and uglier. The original Italian title of this educational book for children is Le avventure di Pinocchio (The adventures of Pinocchio), by Carlo Collodi, first published in 1881-1883 and translated by Geoffrey Brook (2008). “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” is a German fairy tale that was first published with other tales by Brothers Grimm in 1812. It was translated into French, Italian, and English. Wanda Hazel Gag translated this tale into English and illustrated it, and Coward McCann published it in 1938. The tale is about a seven-year old girl who made the queen jealous of her beauty. The queen ordered a huntsman to take her to the woods and kill her. Snow White convinced the huntsman not

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to kill her, and not to go back to the queen’s palace. Snow White found in the forest a wooden hut that belonged to seven dwarfs who agreed for her to stay if she became their house keeper. The queen learned, thanks to her magic mirror, that Snow White was still alive and still prettier than the queen. The queen rushed into the forest and poisoned Snow White with an apple. The dwarfs placed her in a glass casket that after years was found by a prince, who wanted her in his palace. During transportation, the casket was rocked, the apple was spitted out, and Snow White woke up to become the bride of the prince, who invited the seven dwarfs to his palace. The tale of Little Red Riding Hood is shared by several European countries and goes back to the tenth century. The most known of the several versions were: the Italian version by Italo Calvino, La finta nonna (The False Grandmother) in the collection of tales titled Italian Folk tales (1956); the German version, Rotkipchen, by the Grimm Brothers, in their collection of tales Kinder und Housmärchen (Children and Household Tales) 1812 & 1815; and the French version by Charles Perrault, Le Petit Chaperon Rouge (The Little Red Riding Hood) in the collection Histoire ou Contes du Temps Passé (History or Tales of Times Past) (1697). The tale is about a little girl who was going to feed her grandmother, who lived in the woods. She brought her cake and wine, as the old woman was sick and weak. On the way, she met a wolf who tricked her by introducing himself as a wellmeaning wolf who too wanted to bring flowers for the ill grandmother. This is how the wolf could learn from the naïve Little Red Riding Hood where her grandmother lived. While the little girl was collecting flowers from the forest for her grandmother, the wolf went to the grandmother and introduced himself as her grand-daughter. Since the old woman could not walk, she told the visitor to raise the latch of the door and enter. When inside the house, the wolf devoured the old woman, wore her clothes, and hid in her bed. Little Red Riding Hood arrived, noticed that her grandmother looked different than before, and asked her (the wolf) why she had big ears and long arms. The answer was “to hear you better, to hug you better.” And when she asked why she had a big mouth, the answer was “To eat you with,” which he did, and went back to sleep in the old woman’s bed. A huntsman passed by to check on the old woman, but he saw the wolf sleeping. Instead of shooting the wolf, he thought of opening his belly to save the old woman. After opening the belly of the wolf, he saw both the old woman and Little Red Riding Hood who came

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out alive. The little girl learned a lesson: to take seriously the advice of her mother, and not to be fooled by the wicked wolves appearing as kind and considerate people around her. The tale The Cat With Boots (or Puss-in-Boots) is of Italian and French origins. The Italian version (Il gatto con gli stravoli) was written by Giovanni Francesco Straparole. The French version (Le Maître Chat ou Le chat botté) was written by Charles Perrault. The French was first published in 1697. Despite the difference in the details, the moral lesson is the same: that one should use all possible means to reach one’s goal of success and happiness. A miller wanted to distribute his wealth to his three children before he died. The oldest son got the mill, the second son the mule, and the youngest the cat. When the youngest son was lamenting his luck sitting at the table, the cat jumped onto the table, and told him to do as the cat said, and he would eventually be happy. The condition was that the son would buy a pair of boots and a bag for the cat. The deal was made, and the cat went hunting rabbits, with lettuce as bait, and a bag as trap. After the first day, in which they ate the first rabbit, the cat trapped more rabbits. One day, the cat brought some rabbits to the king claiming that the rabbits were gifts from the cat’s master, the Marquis of Carabas. Later, the cat knew that the king would be passing by the river. The cat convinced its master to swim in the river, and while the king was passing by, the cat shouted asking for help. The king stopped, and the cat told him that the Marquis of Carabas was drowning, and his clothes had been robbed. The king ordered to have the Marquis rescued, dressed royally, and seated next to his daughter the princess, who fell in love with the Marquis. Meanwhile, the cat told the workers in the nearby fields that if the king asked whose fields they were, the farmers should say they belonged to the Marquis of Carabas, otherwise the Marquis would cut them into pieces. The king, hearing what the workers said as to who the owner of the fields belonged, was impressed and offered the Marquis the princess as bride. However, there was a tyrant monster who lived in a castle. When the cat appeared in front of the tyrant ogre, the ogre became a lion that scared the cat, but the cat asked the ogre to become a mouse. When he did, the cat jumped and killed the ogre in mouse body. Thereafter, the newlywed prince, the princess, and the cat lived thereafter happily together. The reference here is to Sicily, where F. Pasqualino, the author, was born.

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The author recalls his childhood when he acted in a play where he had to represent little child Jesus. The Saracens were Middle Eastern Arab and North African Berber Muslims who invaded the Iberian Peninsula (modern Spain) under the command of Musa ibn Nusayr (‫)ﻣﻮﺳﻰ اﺑﻦ ﻧﺼﯿﺮ‬, a Muslim convert, Maula, from Persia). The invasion was possible with the assistance of a local prince, Iliah (Julian). The invasion started when the Saracens entered the Iberian Peninsula coming from North Africa through the strait of Gibraltar (a Latinized Arabic phrase: ‫ ﺟﺒﻞ طﺎرق‬Jabal Ṭāreq, meaning “The Mountain of Tāreq”). Then, Musa appointed Tāreq (a freed slave of Musa, and one of his entrusted generals) to complete the invasion of Spain in 711 CE. Later, the Saracens entered France from the Pyrenees but were eventually pushed back. The Arabs occupied the Iberian Peninsula for about five centuries. The French epic La chanson de Roland narrated the historic events around the invasion of the south-west of France by the Saracens, and their expulsion by the troops of Charles Martel in 814 CE, the year that Charlemagne died. The reference here is to the short prayers that the author Pasqualino used to utter, as a child in Sicily, when he was scared by thunder or a rain storm accompanied by a fierce hurricane called Draunara. The Italian term ‘cielo’ ambiguously means the physical ‘sky’ (as in “It rains from the heavens”) and the spiritual ‘heaven’ (as in the prayer: “Our Father who art in heaven…”) Since the Italian term involves the ambiguity of a pun, it was necessary for me to choose the ambiguous term ‘heaven’ rather than the specifically physical ‘sky.’ By the way, the concept of “heavens” (or skies), in the plural form, recalls the neo-Platonic conception of the different physical heavens, or physical levels of the sky. These were conceived in the middle ages as ranging from the closest physical heaven/sky to earth to the farthest, more spiritual heaven/sky that is closest to the divine realm or God. This is why the choice of the ambiguous term ‘heaven’ in the singular form echoes the intended religious meaning. The phrase “keys of heaven” evokes the Biblical passage where Jesus asked his disciples who the people said the “Son of Man” was (Mt16:14) and who the apostles thought he was (Mt 16:15). Peter answered that Jesus was “the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Mt 16:16). Then Jesus said to him: “I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven.” (Mt 16:19). The implied sarcasm in the remark by Fortunato’s father seems obvious: if the keys of heaven are lost, then prayers would not be

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able to help people access heaven, and thus their prayers would not be heard by God. “Hide and seek” is a children’s game. In this game, one of the players hides himself somewhere (or hides an object), and the other game partner is expected to search and find the hiding child (or the hidden object). Here, Peter is one who, supposedly, hid the keys of heaven and could not remember where he hid them. Such humor is typical of Pasqualino’s writing style. That is, the father of the author. His father enjoyed uttering humorous and slightly sarcastic remarks about the religious attitude of his wife, Fortunato’s mother. The Tientsin (Pinyin: Tianjin) issue refers to the political and military situation that required the West to intervene and rescue the settlements of foreign citizens in Tientsin. The Western efforts ended with the Tientsin Treaty in 1858. Tientsin is a port city in north-east China and the reference here is to the battle of Tientsin which F. Pasqualino’s father is jokingly claimed to have participated in. The circumstances that led to the Battle of Tientsin were described in the Wikipedia as follows: “In the foreign settlements [within the city of Tientsin] resided 700 foreign civilians, mostly European merchants and missionaries, along with tens of thousands of Chinese servants, employees, and businessmen.” However, China’s Boxer uprising caused a threat to the foreign settlements in Tientsin as the uprising “was a militant, anti-foreign and anti-Christian peasant movement, [which motivated] six countries with interests in China [to send] 2,400 troops to Tientsin to guard the foreign settlements.” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Tientsin) A reminder of the teaching of Jesus about “The Golden Rule” taught in his Discourse on the Mount: “Always so treat others as you would like them to treat you.” (Mt 7:12) This teaching is reflected in one of Kant’s Categorical Imperatives. ‘Zhuang-zi’ (c. 369-c.286 BCE) is the name of a Chinese thinker and the title of the book bearing his name. He “carried the tradition of Lao-zi [Lao Tse], though he did not share his teacher’s concern for good government and a utopian society. Instead, he was a complete mystic who was intoxicated with the Dao... He [also] was a poet... [and] an accomplished analytic philosopher... [who] made fun of Confucius’s rational conceptual framework...” Alan L. Miller, “The Age of the Hundred Philosophers,...” in Niels C. Nilson and others, Religions of the World, St. Martin’s Press, New York, 1983, p. 278, col.2.

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Possibly Mencius in the Pinyin system also called Meng-zi (c. 372 BCE-289 BCE). In the Christian tradition, the advent is a “season of prayer and fasting from the fourth Sunday before Christmas (Advent Sunday) through Christmas Eve.” Webster’s Student Dictionary, American Book Company, New York, Cincinnati, Chicago, Boston, Atlanta, 1938. The Last Supper of Jesus with his twelve disciples in Jerusalem announced his imminent humiliating death and glorifying resurrection, through both of which he saved humanity from its tutelage to sin. During that supper, Jesus gave his disciples bread to eat and wine to drink, a symbolism of his flesh and blood given in sacrifice for the salvation of humanity: “Now as they were eating, Jesus took some bread, and when he had said the blessing he broke it and gave it to the disciples. ‘Take it and eat;’ he said ‘this is my body.’ Then he took a cup, and when he had returned thanks he gave it to them. ‘Drink all of you from this,’ he said ‘for this is my blood, the blood of the covenant, which is to be poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. From now on, I tell you, I shall not drink wine until the day I drink the new wine with you in the kingdom of my Father.” (Mt 26:26-29; cf. Mk 14:22-25; Lk 22:19-20; Co 11:21-25; Jn: 6:51-58). “The Alpha and Omega” means “the Beginning and the End of things,” and here they refer to the timeless period “before” the beginning of time and “after” the end of time, the so-called “eternity a parte ante” (eternity before the beginning of our physically-bound-time) and “eternity a parte post” (eternity after the end of our physically-bound-time). The paradox here regards Jesus who is time-bound while at the same time eternal, that is, beyond the limitation of time. The Alpha and Omega phrase is in italics in the present English translation, while it is not in the original Italian. This is due to the fact that in Italian one may find many Latin expressions that are part of the “ordinary” Italian language but in English are foreign words that should be italicized. Pasqualino uses the Italian term ‘Verbo,’ being the translation of the Latin ‘Verbum,’ which means ‘Word’ (Charlton T. Lewis, A Latin Dictionary for Schools). While the Italian version of the Gospel according to Saint John (Jn 1:1) states: “In principio era il Verbo, e il Verbo era presso Dio e il Verbo era Dio,” the English version of The Jerusalem Bible of the same gospel states: “In the beginning was the Word: the Word was with God and the Word was God,” So, in this context, the English term ‘word’ and the Italian term ‘Verbo’ are equivalent.’

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Jn 6:52. The paradox of paradoxes refers to the Omnipotent becoming, paradoxically, a sacrificial lamb. Such event is re-enacted in the Mass as celebrated by the Catholic and Orthodox Christian Churches. The Protestant/Evangelical tradition, rejecting the belief of a “real” re-enactment of the tragedy of the cross, conceives it only as a “symbolic” re-enactment. A quick investigative look at the relative verses in the Gospel may help curious readers get a better understanding of the issue involved. Luke’s narration describing the event of the Last Supper of Jesus with his disciples is ambiguous (“do this as a memorial of me” – Lk 22:19). The term ‘memorial’ may refer to either a real reproduction of an event or a mere symbol that evokes the memory of an irreproducible past event. One way of clarifying, though not thoroughly, this ambiguity is to read other verses: “I am the living bread which has come down from heaven. Anyone who eats this bread will live for ever; and the bread that I shall give is my flesh, for the life of the world.” (Jn 6:51). The Jews who heard Jesus complained saying: “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” (Jn 6:52). Obviously, the statement by Jesus sounds absurd to human ears. To make the issue less dramatic, the Catholic Church added a qualifying phrase, “Mystery of faith” (Mysterium Fidei) as there are certain concepts that man cannot grasp, and require man to have some form of faith. On the one hand, there is the “animal faith” which consists in the association in one’s mind of two past juxtaposed events, one following the other, or two past juxtaposed events suggest or trigger a specific third future event or outcome. This faith is common to animals and human beings alike. On the other hand, there is the typically “human faith” which is similar to animal faith, but it is a faith that involves some rational justification. Examples of statements requiring, despite their rationality, human faith would be: “If God is omnipotent, God can do what humans cannot grasp” and “If man’s intelligence is limited, there must be things that man cannot understand.” Thus, the transubstantiation of the bread and wine into body and blood of Christ (the Eucharist), though a mysterious claim to human intelligence, is possible for the Omnipotent. Also, since the book is about the “absurdities” of certain events in human existence, one can also add to the list of absurdities the “absurdity” of the transubstantiation as an article of human faith. This is what, I presume, Pasqualino would have said. These “others” are the non-Catholic/non-Orthodox Christian churches.

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Although in Confucian terms, this sort of altruism, Chinese ren, reminds us of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, where he teaches, among other things, the love of each other (“So always treat others as you would like them to treat you” Mt 7:12; Lk 6:31; Rm 13:9), it is not as egalitarian as it is in Christian teaching. Alan L. Miller explains this Taoist altruism as follows: “It should be noted, however, that such altruism was not to be expressed indiscriminately; the goal was not an egalitarian society. Instead, through the structure imposed by li, one was concerned with justice, that is, with seeing to it that all persons were treated as their station in life required... [that is,] ‘Let the ruler be a ruler, the minister be a minister, the father be a father, and the son be a son.’” (Religions of the World, p.271, sec.3). What would be closer to the teaching of Jesus in his Sermon on the Mount is the teaching of a contemporary of Confucius (551-479 BCE), namely, Mo-zi (c.471-391 BCE). In this respect, Miller says that “[t]he movement Mo-zi … seems so diametrically opposite to Confucianism [according to which]... people were to treat other people as they would treat themselves, and they were to cherish other families and other states as if they were their own.” (Op. Cit., p. 278, col. 1) Then, Miller concludes: “In its emphasis on compassion and altruistic love, Moism resembles the teaching of Jesus, especially the Sermon on the Mount.” (Op. Cit., p. 278, col. 2) When the Zhu dynasty (1122 BCE-771 BCE) conquered the Shang dynasty (1600 BCE-1122 BCE), they kept many of their predecessors’ customs and beliefs. One such custom was the offering of sacrifices to the ancestors, including the Zhu rulers. The ruler was revered as the Son of Heaven and identified with the North Star. Just as the North Star “only stands” stationary, with other stars moving around it in order and harmony, so the Zhu ruler is the emperor who, like the North Star, “only stands,” with the rest of the empire moving around it in order and harmony. And like the North Star that faces south, the emperor faces south while the rest of the empire faces north to look at him. The phrase ‘all is here’ refers to an analogy between both the emperor and Jesus and the North Star as the guiding point of reference. The title of Lao Tse as “the Old Young Boy” is as paradoxical as the Dao. Zhuang-zi, who lived between c. 361 BCE and 286 BCE, is known as a teacher of radical Taoism. Cf. Religions of The World, pp. 278 and 288. Franciscanism is a Catholic Christian religious order of monks instituted by Saint Francis of Assisi (1182-1226 CE). Its

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religious philosophy of life consists in living an ascetic life of prayer, self-sacrifice, and helping others. Islamic Sufism is an Islamic monastic-like mystical order. The Sufis, or Muslim mystics, have their own ascetic rules of daily life practice. Mystic individuals do not have to be members of any specific Sufi order. While Al- Ḥallāj ‫( اﻟﺤﻼج‬244 AH/858 CE-309 AH/922 CE) and Ibn cArabī ‫( اﺑﻦ ﻋﺮﺑﻲ‬568 AH/1172 CE638 AH/1240 CE) are two Sufi leaders, there were poets and philosophers who were sufis. cUmar Al-Khayyām ‫ﻋﻤﺮ اﻟﺨﯿﺎم‬ (1044-1123 CE) is a Sufi poet; and Avicenna ‫( اﺑﻦ ﺳﯿﻨﺎ‬c. 9801037 CE), the famed Muslim philosopher, turned into a mystic towards the end of his life. The language of paradoxes common to all Muslim mystics regards the meeting of opposites, such as body and mind, man and God: “Without laying stress on the individual variants of this mystic itinerary, the Sufis aimed especially at defining the ultimate goal when, triumphing over its attachment to the flesh, the soul finds the true God to whom it is aspiring, the Real. But how could there be defined in orthodox terms this supreme state in which the soul enters with God into this ecstatic dialogue of which the first revelations are made by Rābīca [‫]رﺑﯿﻌﺔ‬, Muḥāsibī [‫ ]ﻣﺤﺎﺳﺒﻲ‬and Yaḥyā al-Rāzī [‫]ﯾﺤﯿﻰ اﻟﺮازي‬, a state which raises the difficult question of theopathic [Godfilled emotional] utterances (shaṭḥ [‫( ”)]ﺷﻄﺢ‬Shorter Encyclopedia of Islam, Cornell University Press, 1953-1974, s.v. Taṣawwuf, page 581, col.1, item 4). Al-Ḥakk (or Al-Ḥaqq ‫ اﻟﺤﻖ‬meaning Truth), is a word used as early as the seventh century, and perhaps borrowed from the pseudo-theology of Aristotle. Hasidism is, according to the World Scope Encyclopedia, 1959, “a religious mystical movement in Judaism which originated in the Ukraine about the middle of the 18th century. It popularized the doctrines of the cabala and tried to abolish the distinction between the learned rabbis and the plain pious people.” (Vol. V) It is also a philosophico-theological system that appeared shortly after the time of Christ, but, as some people may claim, its roots go back to Abraham’s and other biblical prophets’ experience of God’s presence. The term is derived from the Hebrew cabal or qabal (‫ )ףבל‬which means “to receive,” supposedly, God’s unfathomable presence and wisdom through some form of a mystical and paradoxical union with God, instead of a systematically rational discourse of scholars. Alan L. Miller quotes this passage as follows: “He who fully embodies the Power of Tao (te). Is comparable to an infant.... His bones are weak, his muscles tender; yet his grasp is firm.” Tao Te Ching, A Source Book in Chinese

NOTES TO THE TRANSLATION AND COMMENTARY

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Philosophy, chap.55, p.165. Quoted in Nielsen, Jr. and others, Religions of the World, p.276. The Four Noble Truths are traditionally known to have been taught by Sidharta Gautama, the Buddha (c. 563-480 BCE). These Truths are: 1- There is suffering in the world (Dukkha). 2- The cause of suffering is craving that is not, or cannot be satisfied (Samuddaya). 3- It is possible to avoid such craving (Nirodha). 4- There exists a Path to ending one’s suffering (Magga), which consists of an eight-fold Path that once complied with, it will end one’s cycle of rebirth into the world of suffering. The “Old Child” refers to Lao Tse, the claimed author of the Book of Tao, the source-book of Taoism. Yangtze Kiang or Yangtze is the chief river (kiang) of China. It originates in the Tibet, flows through South central and East China, and ends in the China Sea. It is 3200 miles long. (Webster’s Student Dictionary, American Book Company, New York, Cincinnati, Chicago, Boston, Atlanta, 1938-1943, see ‘Yangtze’ in the section on “Proper Names”). The Indus is a river that is formed in the Tibet, Kashmir, and North-West India and ends in the Arabian Sea. It is 2000 miles long. (Webster’s Student Dictionary) The Brahmaputra is a river that originates in Tibet and flows in the North Eastern region of India and ends in the Bay of Bengal. It is 1800 miles long. (Webster’s Student Dictionary) The Ganges is a river that originates in Northern India, in the Himalayas and ends in the Bay of Bengal. It is 1557 miles long. The area of the Ganges-Brahmaputra delta is nearly 32,000 square miles. (Webster’s Student Dictionary) St. Paul stated in his epistle to the Galatians: “…and you are all of you, sons of God, through faith in Christ Jesus.” (Ga 3:26) And in his epistle to the Romans: “The Spirit himself and our spirit bear united witness that we are children of God.” (Rm 8:16) ‘Avatar,’ from Sanskrit avatara, meaning ‘descent,’ refers to “an embodiment, esp. in human form, a realization in the flesh, as of an ideal or a principle.” (Webster’s Student Dictionary, American Book Company, New York 1938). Niels C. Nielsen, Jr., states in his article on Hinduism describing the avataras as follows: “One of the most distinctive and important of the Vais[h]nava ideas is that the deity descends to earth and is born there in creaturely forms. The first appearance of this belief was in Bhagavadgita 4.6-8, in which Kris[h]na spoke of his alternation between two realms... Thus most Hindus have always believed that the god who is the heavenly source of

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avatars should be called Vis[h]nu, and that Kris[h]na Vasudeva may be counted among Vis[h]nu’s avataras, or descents... The number of the avataras has never been agreed on completely. Mahabharata 12.326.72-82 names seven and the Bhagavata Purana names twenty-two but adds that the number is really beyond counting. In the present millennium, most Hindus have agreed in recognizing ten avataras, named in this order: Matsya, Kurma, Varaha, Narasimha, Vamana, Parasurama, Kris[h]na, Rama, Buddha, and Kalki. Kalki, the tenth avatara, is yet to come...” (Niels C. Nielsen and others, Religions of the World, St. Martin’s Press, New York 1983, 167.) The untouchable in Indian society is “a person of the lowest class, whose touch is a defilement to members of the higher castes.” (Webster’s Student Dictionary, American Book Company, New York, Cincinnati, Chicago, Boston, Atlanta, 19391943). Niels C. Nielsen describes the four social classes, being the four varnas, in Hinduism and referring to The Laws of Manu: “The author of The Laws of Manu cites Rigveda 10.90, making its scheme of the four varnas the theoretical basis for the organization of Hindu society... The varnas are presented as hereditary, and their inequality in dignity is proclaimed with a new emphasis. There is a special stress on the superlative qualifications and rights of [1] the Brahmans... Because of their sacred work the Brahmans are supreme in purity and rank... [2] the ks[h]atriyas are warriors and the protectors of society... [3] the vaisya caste are to live by trading, herding, and farming... [and 4] the sudras may not participate in or attend vedic ceremonies, and they are strictly forbidden to mate with persons of a higher varna. According to Manu, their proper occupation is to serve meekly the three classes above them. The highest possible work of sudras is to engage in handicrafts and manual occupations. They are entitled to receive the broken furniture, old clothes, and leftover foods of brahman households, and they are to be protected from outright starvation. It is improper for sudras to accumulate wealth... (Manu 10.121 ff.)” Niels C. Nielsen, Religions of the World, 119. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan and Charles A. Moore describe “the Bhagavat-gita [as] a religious classic rather than a philosophical treatise. It is set forth not as a metaphysical system thought out by an individual thinker or school of thinkers but as a tradition which has emerged from the religious life of mankind.” (Radhakrishnan and Charles A. Moore, Indian Philosophy, Princeton U. Press, 1957-1973, 101) More relevant details for a general description of the Bhagavatgita are given by Niels Nielsen: “Some

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brahmans became adherents of the Satvata faith and, as teachers, assisted the sect in combining its own traditional monotheism with the Upanishads’ docrine about the unification of the world in the Brahman. The Bhagavadgita (Sanskrit “Song of the Lord” or “Song of the Blessed,” also known as Gita,), a work of the second or first century BCE, is the literary product of India’s first creative encounter between monotheistic and monistic religious traditions. It was received with such favor that it was incorporated immediately into the Mahabharata... The Bhagavadgita consists of eighteen cantos of Sanskrit verse which were integrated into the sixth book of the Mahabharata as a distinct unit. Often printed separately from the great epic, the Bhagavatgita has a popularity of its own....” (Niels C. Nielsen, “Hinduism” in Niels C. Nielsen and others, Religions of the World, 163, col. 1) An English translation with the Sanskrit text, an Introductory Essay, and notes is to be found in S. Radhakrishnan, The Bhagavadgita, Harper & Brothers, 1948. A representative selection of The Bhagavadgita’s eighteen cantos can be found in Radhakrishnan and Charles A. Moore, Indian Philosophy. Gandhi is the “special guide” in the sense that he, as a well educated Hindu, can understand the message in the BhagavadGita better than many others. Mohandas Karamchand Ghandi (2 October 1869 – 30 January 1948), given the honorific title of Mahatma (Venerable), was the leader of the Indian independence movement in British-ruled India. Professor Giuseppe Tucci (5 June 1894–5 April 1984) is an Italian Orientalist who specialized in the history of Buddhism and Tibetan culture. He taught at the University of Rome, and was fluent in several European languages, as well as Buddhism-related languages such as Sanskrit, Bengali, Chinese, and Tibetan. The devil called Mara is, in Buddhist tradition, the evil tempter. Nielsen describes Mara tempting Sidharta Gautama after Gautama’s enlightenment: “According to Buddhist tradition, the greatest event in human history took place when Sidharta Gautama achieved enlightenment and became the Buddha. He reviewed all his former lives and his experiences in them; he envisioned all the levels of cosmic and material existence; he grasped the cause of all rebirth and suffering; and thereby he reached Buddhahood. The Buddha had won his victory. Then, the later traditions recount, the evil Mara again came to him with yet another temptation, to enjoy his own nirvana without seeking to bring his message of hope to humanity... Buddha overcame Mara’s temptation and resolved to

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teach all who would listen to him.” (Niels C. Nielsen, “Hinduism” in Nielsen and others, Religions of the World, 194) The word ‘Manasarovar’ is a Sanskrit word-combination of “Manas” (mind) and “Sarovar” (lake), and refers to a fresh water lake in the Tibet about 15000 feet above sea level. It is revered by Hinduism, Buddhism, and other local religions. Druga Kunleg or Drugpa Kunley (c. 1455-1529) is a Buddhist who taught his version of Buddhism that promotes fertility rituals. He taught it first in a town called Bhutan in the Tibet, where he founded a monastery with pictures of phalluses everywhere. The fertility rituals remotely evoke the Hindu god/goddess Shiva/Parvati, who is represented as both male and female god. ‘Misogyny’ is ‘hatred of women,’ and the misogynist norms of orthodox Buddhism are those that order celibacy and prohibit sexual contacts with women. According to Rita Gross, a Buddhist and scholar of religions, "a misogynist strain is found in early Indian Buddhism. But the presence of some clearly misogynist doctrines does not mean that the whole of ancient Indian Buddhism was misogynist." Rita Gross, Buddhism after Patriarchy: A Feminist History, Analysis and Reconstruction of Buddhism, SUNY Press, 1992, p. 43. ‘Buddha’ means ‘the awakened one’ or ‘the enlightened one.’ It is a “title given by Buddhists to any religious teacher who was deified, esp. Gautama Sidharta (563-483 BCE), the founder of Buddhism.” (Webster’s Student Dictionary, 19381943). Pasqualino’s mention of “those Fathers of the Church” refers to the bishops of the third regional Synod that was held in Mâcon in 585 CE. Mâcon is a town located in the mideastern part of France. Some legendary account claimed that in the third synod that took place in that town, there was one bishop who discussed the meaning of the Latin term ‘homo’ as meaning exclusively ‘man’ or “male human being,” and concluded that women have no soul. He argued that women are the source of evil among celibate monks and priests. Such a claim remotely evokes the claim of a Buddhist monk who also alleged that women are the source of evil, and Buddhist monks should avoid them. The remaining Church Fathers at that synod did not agree with this narrow understanding of the term ‘homo.’ They held that the Latin Bible uses the term ‘homo’ as a generic common noun (as “human being”) referring to both men and women like Adam and Eve. For further reading, see: Medieval Sourcebook: Gregory of Tours (539-594): History of the Franks.

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“Here at home” refers to Italy or the Christian West as contrasted with the Hindu, Buddhist, Taoist, Confucian, or Islamic East or Asia. The Drugpa sect, or the “Red Hat Sect,” is one of the four Buddhist schools in Tibet. Its founder was Tsanga Gyare (11611211). In 2007, the present Drugpa spiritual leader, Gyalwang Drukpa, founded the “Live to love” humanitarian movement, inspired by Buddhist principles and aiming at realizing love in action by teaching education, environmental protection, medical and other humanitarian services. It is to be remembered here that when Jerusalem was invaded by the Babylonians, the Jews were exiled to Babylonia for forty-eight years (586-538 BCE). (See: World Scope Encyclopedia, New York 1959, s.v. ‘Exile’) Some of this community may have, in turn, migrated to India. The biblical (New Testament) account about Arimathaea reads as follows: “When it was evening, there came a rich man of Arimathaea, called Joseph, who had himself become a disciple of Jesus. This man went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus. Pilate thereupon ordered it to be handed over. So Joseph took the body, wrapped it in a clean shroud and put it in his own new tomb which he had hewn out of the rock. He then rolled a large stone across the entrance of the tomb and went away. Now Mary of Magdala and the other Mary were there, sitting opposite the sepulcher.” (Mt 27:57-61) The biblical account regarding this detail goes as follows: “Supposing him to be the gardener, she said, ‘Sir, if you have taken him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will go and remove him’. Jesus said, ‘Mary!’ She knew him then and said to him in Hebrew, ‘Rabbuni!’—which means ‘Master.’ Jesus said to her, ‘Do not cling to me, I have not yet ascended to the Father, but go and find the brothers, and tell them...’” (Jn 20: 15-17) “They were still talking about all this when he himself stood among them and said to them, ‘Peace be with you!... Touch me and see for yourselves... Have you anything here to eat?’ And they offered him a piece of grilled fish, which he took and ate before their eyes.” (Lk 24:36-43) Nielsen states that “The title Dalai Lama, meaning ‘ocean of wisdom,’ is a Mongol honorific title which the khan bestowed...” (Niels C. Nielsen, op. cit., p. 241, col. 2) The Random House Dictionary (Unabridged Edition, 1966-1983) agrees that the Mongolian term dalai means ‘ocean’ but the meaning of lama is ‘a celibate priest.’ It is possible that being a priest, in Buddhist culture as it was in the medieval Christian

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era, was synonymous with having wisdom, and therefore the explanation of the expression Dalai Lama as ‘ocean of wisdom’ still makes sense. “During the late 1950s and the 1960s, the Chinese conquest of Tibet brought Tibetan Buddhism under an even stronger attack than the one the Maoist regime had mounted against Buddhism in China itself... Following the Chinese invasion in 1959, the Dalai Lama was forced to flee the country, along with thousands of other people...” (Niels C. Nielsen, Op. cit., p. 248, col.1) “Since the late 1950s several communities of Tibetan refugees, including one headed by the Dalai Lama, have established another kind of Buddhist presence in India.” (Niels C. Nielsen, Op. cit., p. 249, col. 2) The Panchen Lama, called also Tashi Lama and Panchen Rimpoche, is a Tibetan spiritual leader who is second in importance to the Dalai Lama. The word ‘Tashi’ is the name of a monastery of which this Lama is abbot. When Pasqualino states that “[t]he Dalai Lama has always been in contrast with the Panchen Lama,” he may allude to the fact that when the Chinese communists invaded the Tibet and chased the Dalai Lama out, they replaced him with the Panchen Lama, the second religious leader in rank. “Origen, or Origine, a father of the Church and one of the most learned writers of his age, [was] born in Alexandria, Egypt, in 185; [and] died in Tyre, [present-day a city in southern Lebanon], in 254. He was descended from Christian parents and, in 202, his father suffered martyrdom under Emperor Severus. The support of the family devolved upon the son, but he secured an education in Hellenic science and art under celebrated masters at Alexandria, and shortly after his father’s death became a catechist in the Alexandrian Church. Subsequently he was ordained a priest, led a life of rigid devotion, and even mutilated himself physically from an erroneous conception of the teachings expressed in Matthew 19:12. He made a journey to Rome in 211, but the following year returned to Alexandria to engage as an advocate of the Christian faith, and in 228 was consecrated presbyter in Palestine. This distinction brought upon him the jealousy of the bishop of Alexandria and he was deprived of his priestly office and excommunicated in 232. However, the churches of the East remained his faithful supporters, and he was in great demand for service to the congregations in Palestine, Phoenicia, and Arabia. He is credited with having written 6,000 works. Only a few of his works are extant. His most important biblical criticisms are Hexapla and Tetrapla.” (World Scope Encyclopedia, unabridged, New York, 1959, vol. VIII)

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As for the quote from Matthew, it reads as follows: “There are eunuchs born that way from their mother’s womb, there are eunuchs made so by men and there are eunuchs who have made themselves that way for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Let anyone accept this who can.” (Mt 19:12) Regarding Origenism, Karl Rahner and Herbert Vorgrimler in their Theological Dictionary write: “A tendency, rather than a doctrinal system, in Eastern (especially monastic) theology which exaggerated certain aspects of the doctrine of Origen (d. 254)—along with St. Augustine, the greatest theologian of antiquity—in an heretical sense, thus causing a bitter conflict that lasted till the middle of the sixth century. The characteristic themes of origenism were: the necessity and eternity of the world and of souls (pre-existentialism); the angelic nature assumed by the Logos; matter as a consequence of sin; apocatastasis [restoration, that is, restoration of the blessings of paradise to be accomplished by the Messiah, a concept found in Acts 3:21]; perfection consisting in gnosis (see D[enzinger, Enchiridion Symbolorum... de rebus fidei et morum, Freiburg im Breisgau., 1960] 203-11, 223, 271).” (Rahner-Vorgrimler, Op. Cit., Herder and Herder New York, 1965-168, s.v. ‘origenism,’ p. 327. There was a time, in the Middle Ages, in which the pontifical choir, that is, the papal choir of the Basilica of Saint Peter in Rome, had children who were castrated in order to keep their childlike voice, called “white voice.” Later on, the Caholic Church condemned such brutality as a non-Scriptural and inhumane act of violence. In this regard, the CatholicBridge.com comments: “Perhaps the middle ages can claim ignorance for their inhumanity during a brutal period of history, like slave traders who misinterpreted Scripture in order to serve their selfish ends. Those who wanted beautiful music misinterpreted this Scripture.” (www.catholicbridge.com/catholic/castration-catholic-church.php) As in Hebrew tradition, the monkey in Indian tradition is the symbol of slave-like obedience or absolute obedience. In Indian mythology, Lord Hanuman, represented as a monkey, is an obedient member of the Lord Rama’s team that won the war against demon Rawan in Sri Lanka. According to the Indian traditional account, Lord Rama was going through the jungle one day with his wife Sità and his brother Laxman. Then demon Rawan came to the camp of Lord Rama and lured Sità out of the hut. He abducted her and kept her in Sri Lanka, where he was king.

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Nirvana is “[t]he final freeing of a soul from all that enslaves it; specif., Buddhism, the supreme happiness that comes when all passion, hatred, and delusion die out and the soul is released from the necessity of further purification and, therefore, of future transmigration.” (Webster’s Student Dictionary) The Ganges is a river that originates in Northern India, in the Himalayas, and ends in the Bay of Bengal. It is 1559 miles long. (Webster’s Student Dictionary) Ganesh is in Hindu tradition the god of wisdom. Shiva, “the Destroyer,” is “the third member of the Trimurti, along with Brahma the Creator and Vishnu the Preserver.” (The Random House Dictionary, The Unabridged Edition, 196683.) Arjuna, the great warrior, is “[t]he chief hero of the BhagavadGita, befriended by Krishna, who appears as his charioteer and advises him on duty and the immortality of the soul.” (The Random House Dictionary, The Unabridged Edition, 1966-83.) Krishna is a Hindu god and “[a]n avatar [incarnation] of Vishnu and one of the most popular of Indian deities, who appears in the Bhagavad-Gita as the teacher of Arjuna.” (The Random House Dictionary, The Unabridged Edition, 1966-83.) Pasqualino may have associated accidentally Arjuna with the Japanse terrorist Shoko Asahara who was the founder of the Japanese sect of the Supreme Truth. While Arjuna was arguing why he should obey Krishna’s order to kill his fellow men (his evil passions), Asahara was killing his innocent fellow men without any human feeling of compassion or morality. This sect is thus a terrorist Japanese group. It is claimed to be Aum Shinrikyo (Supreme truth, being: Doom’s Day or End of the World). The group started in the 1980s as a spiritual group mixing Buddhist teaching that suits their inhumane goals, and developed into a terrorist group. On March 20, 1995, they brought the attention of Japan and the whole world to them after they had spread nerve agent chemical in three subway trains, killing thirteen people and injuring over five thousand. Subsequently, the terrorist leader Asahara and several members of his group were executed after being years on deathrow. (www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-35975069) This may allude to the bombing of Hiroshima, a city in West Honshu, Japan. The event of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945 (and later another bomb was dropped on Nagasaki on August 9, 1945) may have been taken to refer to the destruction of not only a city but the eventual destruction of the whole of Japan.

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The Italian translation seems to be a selective summary of the original text. The English version of The Bhagavad-Gita’s relevant passages reads in the edition of Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan and Charles A. Moore as follows: Chapter I, verse 21- “And, O Lord of earth, he spoke this word to Hrs[h]ikes[h]a (Krs[h]na): Draw up my chariot, O Acyuta (Krs[h]na), between the two armies. 22- So that I may observe these men standing, eager for battle, with whom I have to contend in this strife of war. 23- I wish to look at those who are assembled here, ready to fight and eager to achieve in battle what is dear to the evilminded son of Dhartaras[h]tra.... 26- There saw Arjuna standing fathers and grandfathers, teachers, uncles, brothers, sons and grandsons, as also companions; 27- And also fathers-in-law and friends in both the armies. When the son of Kunti (Arjuna) saw all these kinsmen thus standing arrayed, 28- He was overcome with great compassion and uttered this in sadness: When I see my own people arrayed and eager for fight, O Kris[h]na, ... 35- These I would not kill, though killed myself, O Madhusudana (Krs[h]na), even for the kingdom of the three worlds; how much less for the sake of the earth?” Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan-Charles A. Moore, Indian Philosophy, Princeton U. Press, 1957-1973, pp. 104-105. The Bhagavad-Gita continues: “Having spoken thus on the field of battle, Arjuna sank down on the seat of his chariot, casting away his bow and arrow, his spirit overwhelmed by sorrow.” (B.G., Ch. I, v. 47 in Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan-Charles A. Moore, op. cit., p. 105). Obviously, the two translations (mine, from the Italian version, and this, from a translation edited by S. Radhakrishnan and C. A. Moore,) are at best somewhat close but far from being identical. One should, however, keep in mind that there are several versions of the B.G., and that the Italian is the translation of one of those versions. Krishna exhorted Arjuna to be brave: “Further, having regard for thine own duty, thou shouldst not falter; there exists no greater good for a Ks[h]atriya [warrior] than a war enjoined by duty.” (B.G., II, 31, in Radhakrishnan-Moore, op. cit., p. 108.) At the end of the discourses given by Krishna throughout The Bhagavat Gita, Arjuna resigns himself to his “duty” to fight and kill, saying: “Destroyed is my delusion, and my recognition has been

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gained by me through Thy grace, O Acyuta (Krishna). I stand firm with my doubts dispelled. I shall act according to Thy word.” (B.G., XVIII, 73, in Radhakrishnan-Moore, op. cit., p. 163.) Radhakrishnan-Moore, op. cit., pp.144-145. The Italian version refers to B.G. XII, 33. In the Radhakrishnan-Moore edition, it is, instead: B.G. XI, 32-33. The quotation used is taken from Radhakrishnan-Moore, op. cit., p. 141 as there are no serious discrepancies between the Italian and the English versions of the verses in question. Radhakrishnan-Moore, op. cit., p. 139. No serious discrepancies. The term ‘Maya’ has more than one connotation: First, it means ‘illusion,’ which is the meaning conveyed in this context. The following verses of The Upanishad use it in this sense: “Now, one should know that Nature (Prakriti) is illusion (maya), and that the Mighty Lord (mahes[h]vara) is the illusion-maker (mayin).” (The Upanishad, V,10), in Radhakrishnan-Moore, op. cit., p. 91). And “While the use of the terms avidya [ignorance], maya [illusion or appearance], purus[h]a [person], jiva [self, soul] shows that the dialect of speculation is common to the different systems, it is to be noted that the systems are distinguished by the different significations assigned to those terms in the different schools.” (Radhakrishnan-Moore, op. cit., p. 353, paragraph 2, lines 5-9). The term ‘Maya’ means also ‘power’ as stated in The BhagavadGita: “Though I am unborn, and My self is imperishable, though I am the lord of all creatures, yet, establishing Myself in My own nature, I come into empiric[al] being through My power (maya).” (B.G., IV, 6, Radhakrishnan-Moore, op. cit., p.116) Furthermore: “This divine maya [power] of Mine, consisting of the modes, is hard to overcome. But those who take refuge in Me alone cross beyond it.” (B.G., VII, 13, Radhakrishnan-Moore, op. cit., p. 127) This is my translation from the Italian version. The English version, edited by Radhakrishnan and Moore reads as follows: “And why should they not do Thee homage, O Exalted One, who art greater than Brahma, the original creator? O Infinite Being, Lord of the gods, Refuge of the universe, Thou art the Imperishable, the being and the non-being and what is beyond that.” (B.G., XI, 37, Radhakrishnan-Moore, op. cit., p. 141.) The picture conveyed by F. Pasqualino of “the Supreme Lord that rises in the background transformed into an elephant with ‘frightening tusks’” is not the picture depicted in The Bhagavad-Gita, XI, 25, which reads: “When I see Thy mouths terrible

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with their tusks” and 27: “Thy fearful mouths set with terrible tusks.” This picture of an “elephant” is not found in the English version of The Bhagavad-Gita that I have consulted. Nonetheless, neither the Indonesian director of the show that Pasqualino was watching nor Pasqualino himself had to reproduce literally The Bhagavad-Gita’s description of such a fearfully apocalyptic image of Krishna in order to produce a literary or artistic piece. The existence of several versions of The Bhagavad-Gita entitles our authors to have their own artistic versions as long as the spirit of the text is not betrayed. In the Italian version of the book, this quote is stated to refer to B.G. XII, 27. In the Radhakrishnan-Moore edition, it is rather: B.G. XI, 27 that reads in Radhakrishnan-Moore’s edition (p.140) as follows: “Are rushing into Thy fearful mouths set with terrible tusks. Some caught between the teeth are seen with their heads crushed to powder.” (Op. Cit., p. 140) It should be noticed, though, that the Italian version (which reads in English translation: “appear and disappear while their heads [are] being crushed by the teeth”) seems to be better than the English version in which the heads are described as “crushed to powder.” It would make more sense to see a head described as crushed into pieces rather than “to powder.” Teeth cut fresh flesh into pieces while grinding wheels grind dry grains into powder. Verse 31 of B.G., XI that is mentioned in Pasqualino’s Italian text, and not in my English translation here, refers in the English version of Radhakrishna-Moore to “Salutation to... the Primal One,” which is not what the Italian version conveys. The food chain refers to the natural law referring to the fact that the smaller or weaker animal is killed and eaten by the larger or stronger animal, and this animal by some other animal, and so continues the cycle of eater and eaten. Being part of this food chain, the author says, amounts to being a slave to one of the natural laws that aim at assuring life and self perpetuation. Haré Krishna, Hindi, meaning ‘O Krishna!’. The expression refers to “a religious sect based on Vedic scriptures, whose followers engage in joyful congregational chanting of Krishna’s name: founded in the U.S. in 1966.” (The Random House Dictionary, The Unabridged Edition, 1966-83.) Dante Alighieri, 1265-1321, an Italian poet and author of La divina commedia (The Divine Comedy), a work that reminds us of St. John’s Book of Revelation/The Apocalypse, the Hindu epic Bhagavad-Gita, and other epics or mystical voyages in the hereafter.

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Jalalud-Din Rumi (‫)ﺟﻼل اﻟﺪﯾﻦ روﻣﻲ‬, d. 1273, is an Iranian Muslim mystic and poet. The reference here is to John the Evangelist, who is depicted in a fresco (painting on walls and ceilings) in the palace (villa or little palazzo) of the Medici family outside Rome. The main focus of the gospel according to St. John is “the theology of the Word.” Here the term ‘Word’ refers to Jesus as the expected Messiah and the incarnate God: “In the beginning was the Word...” (Jn. 1:1) As a consequence of the incarnation, suffering, and redemption by Jesus, the incarnate Word or God, St. John emphasized more than the other evangelists the theme of love and forgiveness offered by the Word or God. Sabda, or Shabda, is a Sanskrit word meaning “speech sound” or “word” through which knowledge or wisdom (Veda) is conveyed. This knowledge or wisdom, being the abstract universal knowledge, is eternal (Nitya) as it is associated with, or emanates from, its eternal source: the unknowable eternal Absolute Being or God. However, while for Hinduism and Buddhism, Sabda/Shabda (word) is an abstract concept of the remote and indescribable Absolute Being, for the evangelist John, the abstract universal ‘Word/Wisdom’ became concrete and describable—though not with complete comprehension by human beings—as the incarnate Jesus: “The Word was made flesh, he lived among us, and we saw his glory….” Jn 1:14. The Rigveda (Verses of Wisdom) is historically the first of the four collections of religious Indian writings of Arian origin: Rigveda, Samaveda, Yajurveda, and Atharveda. These were composed and collected over several centuries, between 1200 BCE and 800 BCE, and consist of liturgical prayers and chants. The first three are for public use in temples, while the last is for use by the Atharvans (“priestly practitioners”) in private homes. “The word Veda is a cognate of the English wit and wisdom and means the (sacred) wisdom (of the Aryans).” (Norvin Hein, “Hinduism,” in Niels Nielsen, Jr., and others, Religions of the World, St. Martin’s Press, New York, 1983, p. 102, col. 1, paragraph. 2) “The word Upanishad means a secret teaching. The Upanishads are “secrets” in that they tell of realities not superficially apparent and express truths intended to be studied by inquirers of special fitness only. More than a hundred Hindu mystical writings of many ages are called Upanishads, but only thirteen of these are accepted by all Hindus as sruti, or revealed scripture of the highest authority.” (Norvin Hein, “Hinduism,” in Niels Nielsen, Jr., and others, op. cit., p. 137, col. 2,

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paragraph. 3) The Chandogya Upanishad is one of these major Upanishads. The Andes are a mountain range in the west coast of South America. They are 45 miles long and their highest peak is Aconcagua, 22,835 feet. John’s gospel is described in a key statement as the gospel of love: “Yes, God loved the world so much that he gave his only Son.” (Jn. 3:16) Also John is described as “the one Jesus loved” (Jn 20:2) and in the description of the Last Supper, he was described as “The disciple [whom] Jesus loved was reclining next to Jesus.” (Jn 13:23). I Jn. 4:16. I Jn. 4:12-13. Jn. 1:17. The message of Jesus was not to abolish the “Mosaic Law” but to perfect it. Thus, one should see a continuity of, and improvement on the previous law. Jn. 1:23. Jn. 1:26-27. Jn. 1:32. Jn. 1:29. The Jerusalem Bible stipulates in note aa to verse 39 of chapter 1 that the way the gospel according to John describes the detail about the two disciples of John the Baptist, who followed Jesus and wanted to know where Jesus lived “suggests that the narrative is a personal reminiscence.” Jn. 2:3. Jn. 2:4. Similarly, the Aramaic and Arabic words corresponding to ‘Lady’ (Martha 1‫ܬ‬2( and Sayedah ‫ ﺳﯿﺪه‬respectively) are words of respect that can be used in addressing a mother or any respected woman. The term comes from the Latin and Greek dogma, and refers to “a proposition to be believed... [as an article of faith, and] the denial of which is, therefore, a heresy (D 1792; CIC can. 1323, 1325 ¶ 2).” Karl Rahner, Herbert Vorgrimler, Theological Dictionary, Edited by Cornelius Ernst, O. P.; translated by Richard Strachan, Herder and Herder New York, 1965-1968, s. v. Dogma. The same way that Benjamin (Hebrew: ‫בנימין‬, Benyāmîn), son of Jacob and Rachel, was pampered by Jacob, so John (the evangelist) was, so to speak, pampered by Jesus and Mary as he was the youngest, the most energetic and devoted disciple of Jesus. He accompanied Jesus, whether at the happy Cana wedding, or standing along with Mary by the cross, when all

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other disciples were hiding for fear of reprisal by the Jewish authorities. He also was the first to arrive at the tomb, and the first to witness with Peter the resurrection-indicator (the removed heavy and guarded tomb stone) of Jesus. I thank Ilaria Stefanini, an Italian lawyer practicing law in Rome, Italy, who helped me understand the legal concept involved in the Italian version, and render it into meaningful English. “[H]is face shone like the sun and his clothes became as white as the light.” Mt.17:2. In the related explanatory footnote b, The Jerusalem Bible refers to Mt. 28:2, the appearance of Jesus to Mary of Magdala after his resurrection, where the robe’s whiteness is likened to the whiteness of snow: “as snow.” The Italian version, however, compares the whiteness of the clothes using the phrase: “glorious light” (luce gloriosa), a matter of minor stylistic alteration. The context of this statement is the transfiguration scene which, in John’s gospel, is alluded to by the phrase “and we saw his glory” (Jn. 1:14), which indicates that John was an eye witness and thus the source for the other evangelists. “The Word was true light that enlightens all men.” (Jn. 1:9) Jn. 19:30. The meaning is that the mission of redemption, for which he came on this earth, is accomplished. Mt. 11:3. The Jerusalem Bible explains in footnote c to this verse that “John the Baptist is not expressing complete doubt about Jesus, but he is surprised to find that he is a very different sort of Messiah from what he had expected.” The understanding by John the Baptist of what the Messiah was supposed to be and do seems to have been no exception to the general understanding of the Jews of the time. What was generally expected of the Messiah was to be a ruler, spiritual as well as political, who would, among other things, expel the Romans from Palestine and restore political and religious rule to Israel. Jesus, however, did not conform to these preset expectations, thus provoking doubts in the minds of John the Baptist and the Jewish leaders. Mt. 11:5. This analogy echoes the Latin saying “Homo homini lupus” (Man is [like] a wolf when dealing with [another] man), which projects the ferocity of the wolf onto man. Apparently, this saying was modified in this Italian literature context to avoid the analogy with the wolf because, as the tradition goes, the founder of Rome, Romulus, was milked and raised along with his brother Remus by a she-wolf. The dog, being similar to the wolf in its looks and behavior, became in this saying a

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meaningful substitute. It is to be noted, though, that the meaningfulness of analogies differs in different cultures. For example, the ancient Roman concept or image of the dog can be demeaning to contemporary Italians or Middle Easterners, while it may be a symbol of faithfulness and affection to contemporary North Americans. Similarly, while the concept or image of a wolf, a tiger, or a lion may evoke fear in, for example, an ancient tribal African culture, it may be a symbol of something divine, thus evoking a feeling of reverence to Ancient Egyptians, Mesopotamians, or Indians. Saint Augustine, De civitate Dei (The City of God), Lk. 8:9-10; cf. Mt. 13:11. This quotation sounds like Jeremiah’s statement: “They have eyes and do not see, they have ears and do not hear!” Jr 5:21, and Ezekiel’s saying: “Son of man [Jesus], you are living with that set of rebels who have eyes and never see, ears and never hear.” (Ezk.12:2) These similar verses have been quoted, in turn, by Matthew the evangelists. : “The reason I [Jesus] talk to them in parables is that they look without seeing and listen without hearing or understanding.” So in their case this prophecy of Isaiah [Is. 6:9-10] is being fulfilled: “You will listen and listen again, but not understand, see and see again, but not perceive. For the heart of this nation has grown coarse, their ears are dull of hearing, and they have shut their eyes, for fear they should see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their heart, and be converted by me. But happy are your eyes because they see, your ears because they hear! I tell you solemnly, many prophets and holy men long to see what you see, and never saw it; to hear what you hear, and never heard it.” (Mt. 13:1317; see also Lk. 10:23-24 and Mk. 8:18-21.) Lk. 18:18. Mt. 23:37-39. Lk. 10:28. Lk. 10:29. The abstract concepts of ‘horse-ness’ or ‘neighbor-ness’ are called “universals” or “universal concepts,” while the concept of a specific ‘horse’ (as in “this is a winning horse”) and the concept of a specific ‘neighbor’ (as in “my neighbor John”) are called “particulars” or “particular concepts.” Pasqualino says here that while theologians and philosophers endeavor to give a sophisticated answer that only the erudite may understand, the answer of Jesus is simple, one that common people would understand and relate to. This is why the parable was for Jesus the typical means with which Jesus conveyed his ideas. The answer of Jesus to the question as to who “my neighbor”

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is was illustrated by a parable in which we see the “neighbor” to be whoever is near us and needs our help. 256 The Summa Theologiae (or Summa Theologica, being The Sum of Theology) is an encyclopedic work by Saint Thomas Aquinas in which he expounds, topic by topic and argumentatively, many issues of Christian theology. While this work is primarily addressed to the Christians, and particularly the scholastic students of medieval times, or future priests, monks, and nuns, there is another work titled Contra gentiles (Against The Gentiles), which is addressed primarily to non-Christians, and uses a philosophical rather a theological approach to argue issues that are generated by both philosophical and theological interests. The basic foundation of Thomas Aquinas’s works consists in the conception of philosophy as being the handmaid (ancilla) of theology, that brought about the famed Thomistic and Medieval Latin declaration “Philosophia ancilla theologiae est,” meaning: Philosophy is the handmaid of Theology. 257 The attribute “the angelic Doctor” refers to Saint Thomas Aquinas (1225–7 March 1274), a major medieval theologian. 258 The “Doctor of the Law” means here “the Doctor of the Mosaic Law” or one who knows the Biblical Law. 259 Lk. 10:36,37. 260 Lk. 18:20, 21. Cf. Mt. 19:18-22; Mk. 10:20-22. 261 This seems to be the most crucial point of the book, recurring in different forms that illustrate what Jesus Christ is accomplishing: To enact “The Parable of Parables” that is the most problematic dilemma of all dilemmas. God the Omnipotent paradoxically becomes, in the person of Jesus, subject to weaknesses and tribulations that are conflicting with the claimed Omnipotence. One may argue saying that God had already chosen since eternity to reincarnate in the person of Jesus, and had already chosen, also since eternity, to suffer as a human being in order to give the ultimate example of love, forgiveness, and redemption to all human beings, His creatures. This is why Pasqualino’s description of Jesus who “finds himself left with nothing...” is simply a literary device dramatizing a meaningful paradox, not as a truly philosophical or theological argument that ought to be understood in the strict literal sense. 262 Mk. 2:16; see also Mt. 9:10-13 and Lk. 5:29-32. 263 Lk. 15:17. 264 The term ‘Jehovah’ (Hebrew: ‫ יהךה‬Yahweh) is one of the common names, or attributes, of God and means ‘I Am The One Who Is,” while the other, also common, term ‘Elohim’ (‫)אלה'מ‬ means ‘God.’

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Lk. 23:34. In footnote j to this verse of Luke, The Jerusalem Bible comments: “This verse is to be retained despite its omission by some good ancient authorities.” However, the JB cross-references the circumstances of the event in the other three evangelists (Mt. 27:35-38; Mk. 15:24-28; and Jn. 19:1724), none of which quotes this verse. Lk. 15:19. The Book of the Way and Virtue is a translation of the Chinese title Dao De Jing, a short book of philosophical poetry by Lao Tse (or Lao-Zi), who lived from the 6th to 5th century BCE and is the founder of Taoism (or Daoism). The main message of the book is that the Tao (or Dao, meaning Way) is paradoxical in the sense that the opposites, as incompatible as love and hate or suffering and happiness, and represented in the Ying and Yang symbol, constitute “the ultimate ordering principle in the world” (Alan Miller, “Religions of China” in Niels C. Nielsen, Jr. and others, Religions of The World, page 264, col. 1, paragraph. 3). In order for one to discover the Way, or “the ultimate ordering principle in the world,” one needs to understand the paradoxical principle of harmony inherent in things. Once this is discovered, then one has the Power, or Virtue, (De) to accept as normal, and work through, or by means of, the things that appear to be, or are, paradoxical. The concluding remark of The Earrings of God summarizes succinctly the whole book, focuses on the paradoxical aspect of the subject, or the apparent absurdity of its content. Jesus, who understood the paradoxical character, and thus the absurdity, of the Way, loved humanity so much, despite so much hatred displayed by the same humanity towards him. He, therefore, provided so much happiness (and eternal salvation) to the ungrateful humanity that caused him so much undeserved suffering. In other words, Jesus accepted being a slave to his Father, and thus to his salvation mission—and wearing the earrings of slavery is nothing but a symbol for accepting doing almost blindly the Will of the Almighty. This Will turned out to ask for the execution of what appears to be unjust or illogical. It asked to reward hatred with love, and to award happiness to the ungrateful. Obviously, this principle fits the Far Eastern Wisdom that would, in this respect, coincide with the Christian wisdom (or the other way around), of the paradoxical unity of contraries: love-and-hatred, happiness-and-suffering. Such paradoxical wisdom does truly transcend the Old Testament’s teaching of the “tooth for a tooth and eye for an eye.”

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Logic is an intellectual skill used for making, among other things, valid arguments to convince others of a specific claim. An argument is a set of statements expressed in sentences called “premises” that are assumed or known to be true and are offered in support of a specific claim or statement called “a conclusion.” If the premises give support to the conclusion, then the argument is accepted as valid either with certainty or with probability, depending on the kind of argument being made. There are two kinds of argument, the “deductive” and the “inductive.” In a valid deductive argument, the conclusion must be true if the premises are true. In this case, the argument is called “a valid and sound deductive argument.” In a strong inductive argument, the conclusion has a high probability of being true if the premises are true. The term ‘metaphysics’ is of Greek origin (μεταφυσική metaphysiki) and refers to Aristotle’s book that was placed after (μετα metà) the Book of Physics (φυσική physiki). The content of the [former] book refers to topics that use physics as a starting point but departs from the physical world of things, and goes “beyond” (also μετα) the physical world, to the related but abstract world of thought. Metaphysics cannot, therefore, be called “science of the physical world” but is rather a kind of “philosophy of science.” For example, the abstract (metaphysical) concept of causation is based on the sensory perception of two physical objects in relationship; one bringing the other, a consequence, into being. A cabinet-maker makes or brings about a cabinet from wood. When we abstract the concept of the cabinet-maker, we get a “cause.” And when we abstract the concept of the completed cabinet, we get the “effect.” This is how we come up with the abstract or metaphysical concept of “causation.” In more general terms, metaphysics is the study of being, starting from the concepts of being in inanimate physical objects, to being in the vegetative, the motive, and the reflective entities, and ending up with diverse abstract theoretical concepts of relationship. Questions that it answers include: “What are the various kinds of causation?” “What is the relation, if any, between mind and body?” “Are we free or determined in our thinking and actions?” and “Is God truly the Ultimate Cause of all beings?” These are some of the questions that the metaphysician answers. Linguistically, it would not be accurate to refer to God with the masculine pronoun “He,” or even the feminine pronoun “She,” because as a spirit that, as such, has nothing to do with a physical body or sexual differentiation, Therefore, God

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ought not be referred to with a sex-related pronoun. The neutral pronoun “it,” that is normally used for objects and animals without sexual differentiation, may still not be applicable to God as God is neither an animal nor a physical object. However, the masculine pronoun “He” is used here simply because it has been used for centuries when referring to God anthropomorphically. Among these non-theistic (including atheist and agnostic) philosophers who claim that human existence is, as such, meaningless and valueless unless one creates for it a personal meaning and value in order to live happily, there are: German Nietzsche (1844-1900), French John-Paul Sartre (1905-1980) and Albert Camus (1913-1960), just to mention a few. The main figure in ancient Greek thought who advanced the thesis of human free will (also called “choice”), and inspired many later philosophers, is Aristotle (384-322 BCE). In his Nicomachean Ethics (NE), Aristotle distinguishes between “the voluntary” and “choice” or “free will.” While “the voluntary” is shared by younger immature human beings and animals, “choice” or “free will” is typical of mature human beings: “Choice, then, seems to be voluntary, but not the same thing as the voluntary, the latter extends more widely. For both children and the lower animals share in voluntary action, but not in choice…” (NE, Bk. III, Ch. 2, 1111b 4). By “choice,” Aristotle implies the existence of knowledge, deliberation, desire, and action, all of which are involved in finding or creating meaning and value to one’s life. The capability to choose makes it possible for a person to deserve praise or blame: “Since virtue is concerned with passions and actions, and on voluntary passions and actions praise and blame are bestowed, on those that are involuntary pardon, and sometimes also pity…” (NE, Bk. III, Ch. 1, 1109b 30). The issue of free will (or choice) vs. determinism has been a subject debated throughout the history of philosophy, and the debate still continues. These theistic (and deistic, such as Voltaire and other) philosophers claim that existence has meaning and value but that one needs to transcend the physical to the metaphysical realm to find meaning and value arising from The Ultimate Source or Cause of Being, namely God. Some of these theistic philosophers are: Danish Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855), French Paul Claudel (1868-1955), and Gabriel Marcel (1889-1973). Although both theists and deists believe in God as the Ultimate Cause and Harmony Maker in the universe, the theists believe, due to human rational limitation, in the need for divine

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revelation to better know God, while the deists believe in human rationality to reach God without needing divine revelation. Although there are various forms of determinism, these can be divided into two main groups, the scientific (mechanical, biological, or psychological) and the philosophical (secular or religious). Like the mechanical and biological scientists, such as Darwin (1809-1882), who claim that the universe of physical or biological objects runs like a well-tuned machine, where the elements are subject to cause-effect processes, the scientific psychologists, like B. F. Skinner (1904-1990), advocate that human behavior follows the same process of machine-measurable cause-effect (conditioning-response) performance. Similarly, there are in the theological field some determinist theologians, like John Calvin (1509–1564) and Spinoza (16321677) in the modern European West, and Abu Ali al-Ḥusayn Ibn Sīna, known in the West as Avicenna (circa 980–1037) in the medieval Middle East. These advocate a metaphysical determinism that is similar to the scientific/physical cause-effect process. According to these theologians, God is the Ultimate Cause of all beings’ existence and The Maker of the harmonious functioning of the world, including human beings’ behavior and destinies. Basically, free will (or freewill) proponents are those who believe that human beings have the capability to make self-motivated choices, which explains why people feel they “could have done otherwise” or why they feel guilty and deserve punishment for falling short in fulfilling their responsibilities. Among the proponents of free will are: Aristotle (284-322 BCE) St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), Descartes (15961650), Leibniz (1646-1716), and Kant (1724-1804). “Then Moses said to God, ‘I am to go, then, to the sons of Israel and say to them, “The God of your fathers has sent me to you”. But if they ask me what his name is, what am I to tell them?’ And God said to Moses, ‘I Am who I Am’.” (Ex, 13-14) Plato, The Republic, Book VII. The reference is to: “And yet not one [sparrow] falls to the ground without your Father knowing. Why, every hair on you head has been counted.” (Mt. 10:29-30) Although the Bible (both the Old and the New Testaments) is not a philosophical treatise, where issues are discussed in a systematic manner, it is full of philosophical glimpses. The notion of a personal God to whom one prays does not exist in Buddhism. Instead, Buddhists believe in an impersonal Absolute Being, which is a power that manifests itself through

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laws of nature and makes the universe function like a welltuned machine. Therefore, what Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, and others call “prayer” is replaced in Buddhism by “meditation” on how to become wiser and live life naturally and peacefully by listening to, and learning from, the laws of nature. In this Buddhist perspective, meditation becomes a temporary state of immersion in, and a fusion with, the Absolute Being, the source of all wisdom. In this Buddhist (and Hindu) perspective, incarnation serves to have the individual become in the successive reincarnations more and more purified, more and more perceptive or illuminated. At the last reincarnation, one reaches the final state of illumination, Nirvana or dissolution of the individual self into the impersonal Absoute Being. Analogically speaking, though analogies do not always provide perfect insight, one may visualize the Buddhist, or Hindu, dissolution of the individual’s self identity into the Absolute Being, or the divine, as a drop of water that falls and vanishes into the ocean. In the perception of a personal God, the individual would, at death, not lose its individual identity, and can be likened to, for example, a grain of lentil thrown into a heap of lentils, where the individual person can, figuratively, be numbered, and eventually identified and retrieved. Obviously, the individual human person, a finite being, cannot properly speaking be likened to the infinite Being and Ultimate Source of all beings. There are several fields and subfields within ethics. For example, the field of ethical theories covers various schools of ethical thought such as utilitarianism, hedonism, virtue ethics, and deontological ethics. The field of applied ethics covers both professional ethics and environmental ethics. The field of professional ethics, which is a sub-field of applied ethics, derives rules of conduct in the various professions such as business, law, medicine, and education. The field of environmental ethics, which is also a sub-field of applied ethics, derives rules for human beings when dealing with animal and environmental issues that, in the end, will benefit human beings. The religious beliefs and religious dictates affecting social interaction are also called “morals,” a Latin-origin term Mores, meaning: manners or habits in human conduct. Linguistically, the term ‘morals’ is equivalent to the Greek term ἦθος (ethos), where the term ‘ethics’ comes from. The term “morals’ and the phrases “religious dictates” and “religious beliefs” have been used to refer to the dictates of the individual’s religious beliefs or the individual conscience. In the case of personal

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ethics, rational or religious, the only means that reinforces compliance is, usually, remorse or the expectation of reward or retribution on earth or in the hereafter heaven or hell. “There you shall offer him as a burnt offering, on a mountain I will point out to you.’” Genesis, 22:1-2. “You shall not kill.” Exodus 20:13. An example of God’s kindness is found in the Old Testament in Exodus: “I [Yahweh your God], show kindness to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.” (Ex. 20:6). In the New Testament, an example of God’s love can be “God loved the world so much that he gave his only Son.” (Jn. 3:16) Both the Old and the New Testaments constitute, in Christian theology, The Bible. While The Old Testament is what the Jews accept as “The Bible” or “Holy Scripture,” Christians accept both the Old and the New Testaments, as part of “The Bible” or “Holy Scripture,” The reason for this discrepancy is the fact that the Jews do not believe that Jesus was the true Messiah who would come to save his own Jewish people from the tutelage to foreign political authorities. The Christians believe that the historic Jesus, “the Nazarene” who was born during the reign of the Roman governor Herod in Palestine, was the true Messiah who came to save both the Jews and the non-Jews from the tutelage to sin. Thus, it is not an exclusive salvation from the tutelage to foreign political powers. In Christian understanding, The Bible consists of both the Old and the New Testaments. The Old Testament, written before the Christian era, consists of the Pentateuch (five books), The Historical Books (such as The Book of Joshua and The book of Judges,…), The Wisdom Books (such as Job and The Psalms,…), and The Prophets (such as Isaiah, Jeremiah and others). As for The New Testament, written in the early Christian era, it consists of four canonical gospels (of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John), the Acts of the Apostles, the Epistles of St. Paul, and Revelation. There are also the apocrypha that are claimed to be part of the bible, but are actually unauthorized versions of the bible. Typically, the apocrypha were written by devout early Christians not directly taught by the apostles of Jesus, and not formally trained in Christian theology. For that reason, the apocrypha contain wrong, and thus unorthodox, understanding of The Bible. They contain well-meant but incorrect historical accounts or undue exaggerations. These errors were condemned at formal Christian councils. In Judaic tradition, the expected Messiah (Hebrew ‫משיח‬ Mshiaḥ, Syro-Aramaic Mshīḥo or Mesopotamian Aramaic

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Mshīḥa .,+)( meaning “The anointed”) is an anointed ruler or king, like David or Solomon, who is expected to come, save the Jews from tutelage to the Romans, and rule as a king. In the section ‘Self consciousness’ of the Phenomenology of the Spirit (1807), Hegel elaborates on the “independent and dependent consciousness.” The independent consciousness affirms its freedom of choice but soon it realizes that it is at the same time dependent on some invincible higher power. This conflict creates what Hegel terms “unhappy consciousness.” This is a triadic process of discovery of new knowledge: a thesis; an antithesis that conflicts with the thesis; and the tension between the two causes the consciousness to be divided and unhappy due to its contradictory nature. “The significance of the Sisyphus fragment is rather as further evidence of the fact that in the late fifth century the rationalistic approach to the natural world, including human nature, provided the intellectual foundation of a range of views hostile to traditional religion, including explicit atheism. From Protagoras himself we have a first-person declaration, not of atheism, but of agnosticism, in what was apparently the opening of his work On the Gods: ‘Concerning the gods I am not able to know either that they exist or that they do not exist or what their nature is; for there are many things which prevent one from knowing, both the unclarity (sc. of the subject) and the short span of human life’ (DK 80B4).” (Internet Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “The Sophists,” First published Fri Sep 30, 2011; substantive revision Wed Sep 9, 2015, Section 3. Religion. In his Dialogue, titled Cratylus, Plato quotes Socrates referring to Heraclitus’ doctrine of flux: “Heraclitus is supposed to say that all things are in motion and nothing at rest; he compares them to the stream of a river, and says that you cannot go into the same water twice.” (Cratylus 402a = DK22A6). Cratylus was a student and follower of Heraclitus. The Collected Dialogues of Plato, including the Letters, edited by Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns, with Introduction and Prefatory Notes, Bollingen Series LXXI, Princeton University Press, Seventh Printing, August 1973. “This is indeed the first question we have to ask: is generation a fact or not? Earlier speculation was at variance both with itself and with the views here put forward as to the true answer to this question. Some removed generation and destruction from the world altogether. Nothing that is, they said, is generated or destroyed, and our conviction to the contrary is an illusion. So maintained the school of Melissus and Parmenides. But however excellent their theories may otherwise be,

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anyhow they cannot be held to speak as students of nature.” The Basic Works of Aristotle, Edited with an Introduction by Richard McKeon, Random House, 24th Printing, 1941, On the Heavens (De Caelo). 3.1.298b14–16. “I presume we shall say a man is [just] in the same way in which a city was just … But we surely cannot have forgotten this… that the state was just by reason of each of the three classes found in it fulfilling its own functions.” The Collected Dialogues of Plato, Including the Letter, Edited by Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns, Bollingen Series, Princeton University Press, 1961-1973, Republic, Book IV, 441d. “It happened some time later that God put Abraham to the test. ‘Abraham, Abraham,’ he called. ‘Here I am’ he replied, ‘Take your son,’ God said, ‘your only child Isaac, who you love, and go to the land of Moriah. There you shall offer him as a burnt offering, on a mountain I will point out to you…. But the angel of Yahweh called to him from heaven. ‘Abraham, Abraham’ he said, ‘I am here’ he replied. ‘Do not raise your hand against the boy’ the angel said. ‘Do not harm him, for now I know you fear God. You have not refused me your son, your only son.’ Then looking up, Abraham saw a ram caught by its horns in a bush. Abraham took the ram and offered it as a burnt-offering in place of his son. Abraham called this place ‘Yahweh provides’, and hence the saying today: On the mountain Yahweh provides.” (Gn 22:1-14) “Thomas, called the Twin, who was one of the Twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. When the disciples said, ‘We have seen the Lord’, he answered, ‘Unless I see the holes that the nails made in his hands and can put my finger into the holes they made, and unless I can put my hand into his side, I refuse to believe. Eight days later the disciples were in the house again and Thomas was with them. The doors were closed, but Jesus came in and stood among them, ‘Peace be with you’ he said. Then he spoke to Thomas, ‘Put your finger here; look, here are my hands. Give me your hand; put it into my side. Doubt no longer but believe.’ Thomas replied, ‘My Lord and my God!’ Jesus said to him: ‘You believe because you can see me. Happy are those who have not seen and yet believe.’” (Jn 20:24-29.). “After psalms had been sung they left the Mount of Olives. Then Jesus said to them, ‘You will all lose faith in me this night, for the scripture says: I shall strike the shepherd and the Lamb of the flock will be scattered, but after my resurrection I shall go before you to Galilee. At this, Peter said, ‘Though all lose faith in you, I will never lose faith.’ Jesus answered him,

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‘I tell you solemnly, this very night, before the cock crows, you will have disowned me three times.’ Peter said to him, ‘Even if I have to die with you, I will never disown you’. And all the disciples said the same.” (Mt 26:30-35) “When evening came he was at table with the twelve disciples. And while they were eating he said, ‘I tell you solemnly, one of you is about to betray me’. They were greatly distressed and started asking him in turn, ‘Not I, Lord, surely?’” Mt 26:20-22. The mental state of Jesus was felt by the disciples who, in turn, were distressed as well. Mt 26:39. Mt 27:46. “He went round the whole of Galilee teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the Good News of the kingdom and curing all kinds of diseases and sickness among the people.” Mt 4:23. “It was about the sixth hour. When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, ‘Give me a drink’. His disciples had gone into the town to buy food. The Samaritan woman said to him, ‘What? You are a Jew and you ask me, a Samaritan, for a drink?’—Jews, in fact, do not associate with Samaritans.” Jn 4:7-9. “He got back in the boat, crossed the water and came to his own town. Then some people appeared, bringing him a paralytic stretched out on a bed. Seeing their faith, Jesus said to the paralytic, ‘Courage, my child, your sins are forgiven’. And at this some scribes said to themselves, ‘This man is blaspheming’. Knowing what was in their minds Jesus said, ‘Why do you have such wicked thoughts in your hearts? Now, which of these is easier: to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven’, or to say, ‘Get up and walk’? But to prove to you that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins,’—he said to the paralytic— ‘get up, and pick up your bed and go off home’.” Mt 9:1-7. “People brought little children to him, for him to lay his hands on them and say a prayer. The disciples turned them away, but Jesus said, ‘Let the little children alone, and do not stop them coming to me; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of heaven belongs’. Then he laid his hands on them and went on his way.” Mt 19:13-15. “But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees they got together and to disconcert him, one of them put a question, ‘Master, which is the greatest commandment of the Law?’ Jesus said, ‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and the first commandment. The second

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resembles it: You must love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang the whole Law, and the Prophets also.’” Mt 22:34-40. “In your prayers do not babble as the pagans do, for they think that by using many words they will make themselves heard. Do not be like them; your Father knows what you need before you ask him. So you should pray like this: ‘Our Father in heaven, may your name be held holy…” Mt 6:7-10. “But the man was anxious to justify himself and said to Jesus, ‘And who is my neighbor?’ Jesus replied, ‘A man once on his way down from Jerusalem to Jericho and fell into the hands of brigands; they took all he had, beat him and then made off, leaving him half dead. Now a priest happened to be travelling down the same road, but when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. In the same way a Levite who came to the place saw him, and passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan traveler who came upon him was moved with compassion when he saw him. He went up and bandaged his wounds…. Which of these three, do you think, proved himself a neighbor to the man who fell into the brigands’ hands?’ The one who took pity on him’ he replied. Jesus said to him. ‘Go and do the same yourself’.” Lk 10:29-37. “And there was a man who came to him and asked, ‘Master what good deed must I do to possess eternal life?’: Jesus said to him …if you wish to enter into life, keep the commandments.’ He said, ‘Which?’ ‘These:’ Jesus replied ‘You must not kill…. And you must love your neighbor as yourself.’” Mt 19:16-19. “He was still speaking when Judas, one of the Twelve, appeared, and with him a large number of men armed with swords and clubs, sent by the chief priests and elders of the people… At that, one of the followers of Jesus grasped his sword and drew it; he struck out at the high priest’s servant, and cut off his ear. Jesus then said, ‘Put your sword back.’” Mt 26: 47-53. John, the evangelist, identified that “one of the Twelve” as “Simon Peter…” Jn 18:10-11. “So as he stepped ashore he saw a large crowd… his disciples came up to him and said, ‘This is a lonely place and it is getting very late, so send them away… He replied, ‘Give them something to eat yourselves’. They answered, ‘Are we to go and spend two hundred dinari on bread for them to eat? ‘How many loaves have you?’ he asked ‘Go and see.’ … ‘Five and two fish’. Then he ordered them to get all the people together. Then he took the five loaves and the two fish, raised his eyes to heaven and said the blessing; then he broke the loaves and

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handed them to his disciples to distribute among the people… They all ate as much as they wanted. They collected twelve basketfuls of bread and pieces of fish. Those who have eaten the loaves numbered five thousand men.” Mk 6:34-44. “There was a man named Lazarus who lived in the village of Bethany with the two sisters Mary and Martha, and he was ill…The sisters sent this message to Jesus, ‘Lord, the man you love is ill’. On receiving this message, Jesus said, ‘This sickness will end, not in death but in God’s glory, and through it the Son of God will be glorified….’ On arriving, Jesus found that Lazarus had been in the tomb for four days already…. Jesus wept…When he said this, he cried in a loud voice, ‘Lazarus, here! Come out!’ The dead man came out… Jesus said to them, ‘Unbound him, let him go free’.” Jn 11:1-44. “Do not imagine that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets. I have come not to abolish but to complete them. I tell you solemnly, till heaven and earth disappear, not one dot, not one little stroke, shall disappear from the Law until its purpose is achieved.” Mt 5:17-18. The syllable “Om,” pronounced as “Aum,” is a syllable with “mystical connotation” used in the scriptures of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism as a tool for meditation. It refers to “something divine” that is the cause of all forms of life or being and is called Brahman and Atman. It is possible that the German verb “atmen,” meaning “to breathe,” has a Sanskrit origin, “atman,” that also means “to breathe” and refers to life or being, and the Ultimate Source of Life or Being, which is the Ultimate Being or, in a theistic term, God. So, the utterance of the syllable “Om” triggers in Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism an automatic reference to the presence of Brahman, Atman, the Ultimate Being or God, which ought to bring about owe and prostration. Similarly, the reference of the Sanskrit “atman” to “breath” and “breathing” resounds also in Hebrew, where the verb “rawah” (‫ )רןח‬means “to breathe” and the noun “ruwāh” (‫ )רןח‬means “breath,” “wind,” “spirit,” or “that which has life/being,” which also suggests the presence of the source of all life or being, that is God. “‘Iddio mio, Iddio mio,’ e non altro.” See I fioretti di San Francesco, chapter 2, ed. Taschabili Economici Newton, Roma, 1993, p.18. According to Plato, the world of ideas is the world of the nonphysical, abstract, or universal forms that never change, while the world of the physical forms or particular physical objects is the world of continuous change, and thus subject to destruction and eventual non-existence. Since God is, in this Platonic

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perception, the Ultimate Cause and source of all existing beings, the world of ideas is the Mind of God or simply God Himself. The Platonic concept of “table,” or “tableness,” is the abstract or universal shape that inspires all the particular shapes of the various imaginable tables that are reproducible in the material world. While a particular table can change color or shape, be burned and destroyed, the abstract concept of “table”—“tableness”—is a set of abstract qualities, such as flatness and elevation that are common to all possible tables, and for that reason, these qualities are permanent or eternal. Similarly, the concept of “justice” is that abstract or universal concept that inspires the specific conceptions of various particular individuals who are called “just people.” While a particular just person can change looks, and eventually die, the abstract concept of “justice” is not changeable but is, on the contrary, eternal. In other words, the definition of “justice” as “giving to each what is due” no matter whether the just people are living or dead. For further reading on the subject of “the world of ideas,” “the world of eternal forms,” or the “universals,” read any of Plato’s Dialogues, and particularly Plato’s “Myth (Analogy, Metaphor, or Parable) of the Cave,” found in Plato’s Republic. In this Myth, Plato depicts human beings like prisoners sitting and unable to move around in the cave, facing the wall of the cave, where images of real objects (the universals) are hidden behind the prisoners. The projected images of the real objects are wrongly taken by the prisoners to be the real objects themselves. These hidden objects are the eternal “World of Ideas” or “The World of the Divine Mind.” (See also Plotinus, The Six Enneads, V) This perfect world is described by Isaiah in metaphorical terms: “The wolf and the young lamb will feed together, the lion eat straw like the ox, and dust will be the serpent’s food. They will do no hurt, no harm on all my holy mountain, says Isaiah.” (Isaiah 65:25) “Yahweh said to Moses, “Leave this place, with the people you brought out of the land of Egypt, and go to the land that I swore to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob I would give their descendents… Go to the land where milk and honey flow, I shall not go with you myself—you are a headstrong people—or I might exterminate you on the way…” Exodus 33:1-3. Gautama (5th Century BCE), the Buddha, was the son of an Indian prince, Suddhodana, who wanted his son to become a king, and for that reason, he kept him pampered as a future king in his well-protected palace. However, at the age of 29,

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Gautama left the palace, contrary to his father’s wishes, to experience life outside. While outside the palace, Gautama discovered that the common existential truth of ordinary people’s life was suffering (dukkha). In fact, as he was wandering, he encountered four people (an old man, a sick man, a corpse, and an ascetic monk) who made him reflect on how to overcome suffering. After deciding to leave the luxurious life at the palace, Gautama went to study under famous religious teachers who, as he claimed, did not teach him a permanent triumph over human suffering. Then, he went on his own, trying to reflect and discover a new existential path to overcome suffering. His reflections led him to discover that in order to overcome suffering, one ought to recognize the source of that suffering, and then find a path to overcome it. The source of suffering consists, for Buddha, of four truths: 1- suffering is a true reality; 2- the origin of suffering is one’s instincts; 3- in order to terminate that, one needs to take a firm action, following a healing path; and 4- the healing path is eightfold. These are called the four truths. As for the eightfold healing path, it consists in acquiring and exercising eight skills: 1- Right Perception or Understanding, 2- Right Intention or Thought, 3- Right Speech, 4- Right Action, 5- Right Livelihood, 6- Right Effort, 7- Right Mindfulness, and 8- Right Concentration. “In due time, John the Baptist, appeared; he preached in the wilderness of Judaea, and this was his message: ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is close at hand.’ This was the man the prophet Isaiah spoke of when he said: ‘A voice cries in the wilderness: Prepare a way for the Lord, make his paths straight.’” (Mt. 3:1-4). “But when he saw a number of Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism he said to them, ‘Brood of vipers, who warned you to fly from the retribution that is coming? But if you are repentant, produce the appropriate fruit.’” (Mt. 3:8-9). “Then the kingdom of heaven will be like this: Ten bridesmaids took their lamps and went to meet the bridegroom. Five of them were foolish and five were sensible. The foolish ones did take their lamps, but they brought no oil, whereas the sensible ones took flasks of oil as well as their lamps. … Those who were ready went in with him to the wedding hall and the door was closed. The other bridesmaids arrived later. ‘Lord, Lord,’ they said ‘open the door for us.’ But he replied, ‘I tell you solemnly, I do not know you.’ So stay awake, because you do not know either the day or the hour.” (Mt. 25:1-13)

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“As he [Jesus] was returning to the city in the early morning, he felt hungry. Seeing a fig tree by the road, he went up to it and found nothing on it but leaves. And he said to it, ‘May you never bear fruit again;’ and at that instant the fig tree withered.” (Mt.21:18-19) There are some scholars who claim that Lao Tse was only a mythical figure. Others claim he was a contemporary of Confucius, and went to India where he inspired Gautama the Buddha. For our purpose here, it is not relevant to go into such historic or biographical discussion, as the focus is the Eastern thought on the absurdities encountered in human life and the related illuminating wisdom expressed in paradoxes that the Tao Te Ching is famous for. While Kant (1724-1804) believes that “the ultimate goodness found on earth, [is] reason,” Schopenhauer (1788-1860) disagrees in the sense that the will is. More specifically, Schopenhauer writes in his World as Will and Idea: “My philosophy alone leads out of this dilemma, for it for the first time places the true being of man not in the consciousness but in the will, which is not essentially bound up with consciousness, but is related to consciousness, i.e., to knowledge, as substance to accident, as something illuminated to the light... Now we can comprehend the indestructibleness of this our real kernel and true being, in spite of the evident ceasing of consciousness in death, and the corresponding non-existence of it before birth. For the intellect is as perishable as the brain, whose product or rather whose action it is. But the brain, like the whole organism, is the product or phenomenon, in short, the subordinate of the will, which alone is imperishable.” (Quoted from Schopenhauer, World as Will and Idea, in S. E. Frost, Jr., ed., Masterworks of Philosophy, vol. 3, McGraw-Hill, New York, 1946-1972, pp. 57-58.) For the distinction between “means” and “end,” read Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, particularly the first few chapters (also called “books” despite their relative briefness). For Aristotle, happiness is an “end” that in order to reach it one needs to choose and exercise the right “means.” More specifically, in order to be happy, one needs to choose the right means in practicing virtuous acts by exercising courage, justice, and patience. However, virtuous acts can be misunderstood and misused. In fact, not all means are ethically justifiable even though the end is good. For a Christian analysis of the claim that the goodness of an “end” does not justify the use of evil “means,” see Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, First Part of the Second Part, Question 18, “The good and evil of human

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acts, in general.” Most relevant to the distinction between means and end is Art. 4 under Question 18, on the topic: “Whether Human action is good or evil from its end?” The One Thousand and One Nights is a celebrated collection of popular Middle Eastern fairy tales the events of which supposedly took place in China, India, Iraq, Egypt, Turkey, Greece, and Iran. This suggests the authors and the protagonists may have been of diverse ethnicities. However, the one personage who makes the unity of this collection of tales is the story teller, Shahrayar, the daughter of a prince in Central Asia, possibly India or China, who tells these tales to the local sovereign king. This king, who was angered by the infidelity of his first wife while he was away pursuing his adventures, killed his unfaithful wife and her accomplices. Then, he decided to marry a woman every day and kill her until one day, Shahrayar asked her father to offer her in marriage to this king. After the approval by Shahrayar’s father, and the acceptance of the offer by the king, Shahrayar married the king. But Shahrayar’s continuous stories were so interesting and intentionally unfinished over one night so that she could continue telling them the following night, she coverd many nights of story telling that the king gave up his plan to kill Shahrayar. Some of the main protagonists of these tales were Aladdin, AliBaba, and Sindabad. The collection was known in the 9th century, at the time of Abbasid Caliph Hārūn al-Rashīd ( ‫ھﺎرون‬ ‫ )اﻟﺮﺷﯿﺪ‬who ruled 786 AD-809 AD, but Ibn al-Nadīm (‫)اﺑﻦ اﻟﻨﺪﯾﻢ‬ mentioned the One Thousand and One Nights (‫ )اﻟﻒ ﻟﯿﻠﺔ وﻟﯿﻠﺔ‬in his Kitāb al-Fihrist (‫ )ﻛﺘﺎب اﻟﻔﮭﺮﺳﺖ‬in the tenth century. Aladdin was a poor boy living in a hut with his mother somewhere in China. One day, a man, presenting himself as a wealthy merchant, asked the mother permission to take her son and make of him a wealthy man. The mother and son agreed, and the next day the merchant and the son travelled long distances until they stopped in the middle of nowhere. The merchant threw colored dust on the ground that made a thick cloud that revealed to the merchant the location of a mysterious deep cave. The merchant asked the boy to get in the cave and find a lamp among gold, jewels, and precious stones. The boy realized that the merchant was a magician, and agreed reluctantly to enter the cave. What the magician had told the boy was proven to be true, and the boy pocketed as much gold and jewels as his pocket could hold, and grabbed the lamp as well. When returning to the exit of the cave, the magician asked the boy to hand him the lamp, but the boy, suspecting that the magician might take the lamp and leave

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him in the cave, wanted the magician to pull him out of the cave before he would hand him the lamp. The angered magician threw the colorful dust at the entrance of the cave, and a large boulder covered the entrance. The boy could not get out. Then, the disappointed and fearful boy happened to rub the dusty lamp by accident, and a genie appeared in the midst of a cloud, addressed the boy as a “Master,” and asked him to make a wish. The boy asked the genie to take him back home, so the genie took the boy back home to his mother. Then, when at home, the boy rubbed the lamp again, and asked the genie to give him a castle, and his wish was made true. He then married a princess, and lived in that castle. Later, the magician heard of the good luck of the boy, and came to the castle asking the princess, wife of Aladdin, to exchange her husband’s old lamp for a newer lamp. The princess, not knowing anything about the lamp, exchanged the lamp. At that time, the magician rubbed the lamp, and asked the genie to transport Aladdin’s castle to a remote location. When Aladdin came back home, and could not find his castle, he remembered he had a ring from that cave. He rubbed it, and another genie appeared asking Aladdin to make a wish. Aladdin asked the genie to bring him to his wife, and the genie transported him to the exiled wife and the castle, where he finally met his wife. While in the castle, he noticed both the stolen lamp and the magician. Aladdin swiftly grabbed the lamp, rubbed it, and asked the genie to exile the evil magician to a far away land where he could not cheat people anymore. Ali Baba, a poor man, made a living selling wood that he collected from the forest, while his brother, Qasim, was married to a rich woman. One day, while Ali Baba was in the forest, he saw a gang coming his way on horses. Scared, he climbed a tree to hide. While on the tree, Ali Baba heard the captain of the gang say to a rock’ Iftaḥ yā Simsim!” “‫( اﻓﺘﺢ ﯾﺎ ﺳﻤﺴﻢ‬Open Sesame!), and the rock opened to a cave that all the forty thieves entered. After the thieves had left the cave, Ali Baba wanted to see if he too could open the cave like the captain. He uttered the same phrase he had heard the captain utter in front of the rock, and the rock opened to a cave. Ali Baba entered the cave, and discovered all the gold and silver that the thieves had stolen and hidden in that cave. He took as much gold and silver as his donkeys could carry and went home to tell his wife how rich they were becoming. The wife went to her sister-in-law to borrow a scale to weigh the gold. Eventually, Qasim and his wife learned of Ali Baba’s secret. However, when greedy and jealous Qasim went to the cave and entered it, he forgot the

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password, and got stuck in the cave. When the thieves arrived, they killed him and cut him in four pieces and hanged these pieces inside the cave. When Qasim did not return home, his wife informed Ali Baba of what her husband intended to do. Ali Baba went to the cave and saw the four pieces of his brother’s cadaver. He brought the pieces back home and informed Qasim’s wife of the tragedy, and to calm her, he offered to have her live with him as his wife. Qasim’s wife later found a cobbler who could sew the pieces of the cadaver of her husband. She brought him blind-folded so that he would not know where the house was. When the thieves returned to their hiding cave and found that the four pieces of the cadaver had disappeared, they realized they had been discovered. Two of the thieves were sent into town to find out who knew the password and removed the dead body. Although they discovered the house of Qasim and the cobbler who sewed the cadaver of their victim, their plan was not completely successful. Thanks to the shrewdness of Qasim’s maid and slave, Murjana, the markings by the two thieves on Qasim’s house were duplicated on several other houses, which confused the thieves, so their plot to assassinate Ali Baba failed. As originally agreed, the two thieves were killed by their colleagues to redeem their failure to find the intruder. This time the captain himself offered to find the sought intruder. He had his gang buy nineteen donkeys and thirty eight leather bags, large enough to fit one thief each. One of the bags was filled with oil; the other bags were smeared, from the outside, with some oil to give the impression that they were oil bags to be sold later at the town market. At dusk, the captain thief, now dressed as an oil merchant, went to Qasim’s house, now Ali Baba’s house, and asked Ali Baba to host him for the night for the next day’s market. c Alī Bābā allowed him, and asked his maid to feed the guest, and house his donkeys in the yard. The captain’s plan was to have his fellow thieves get out of their hiding in the oil bags, and assault and kill Ali Baba at night. Marjana, needing oil to light up the house, was led by the captain to the one bag that had oil, but curious Marjana, checked the other bags as well, and found there were thieves in them. The thieves thought it was their captain who was checking on them, and they asked if it was time to get out. The answer was: “Not yet.” Murjana prepared supper for Ali Baba and the guest, then boiled the remaining oil and poured it into the bags that contained the thieves, thus killing them all. After the supper, all lights were turned off, and the captain thief thought it was time to call his fellow thieves and execute the assault-and-kill plan. He threw

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a stone, but no reaction. He threw a second and third stones, but no reaction from his fellow thieves. He went to his donkey in the yard and found out the thieves were all dead in their respective oil bags. Disappointed, he ran away at night. Nonetheless, he did not give up. Later on, disguising himself as a wealthy merchant, Khwaja Hassan, he opened a store opposite the store of Ali Baba’s son and befriended the son. One day, Ali Baba wanted to reciprocate with kindness the kindness of the kind merchant. At the dinner party, Marjana, the astute maid, found out that the merchant was the captain of the thieves and had a dagger at the dinner party. While she was showing her dancing skills to entertain Ali Baba and the guest, she carried a dagger as part of the performance and dug it into the heart of the disguised guest. Ali Baba and his son were surprised and scolded their maid who told them the truth about the guest who actually was the captain of the thieves and was planning to kill both Ali Baba and his son. Then, Ali Baba offered to have her marry his son as a reward for saving their lives. “Sindabad, the Sailorman” (‫ )ﺳﻨﺪﺑﺎد اﻟﺒﺤﺮي‬is a set of tales that were a later addition to the One Thousand and One Nights, the details of which took place at the time of the Abbasid Caliph Harun al-Rashid (‫ ھﺎرون اﻟﺮﺷﯿﺪ‬Hārūn al-Rashīd, 766-809, became the 5th Caliph in 786). Sindabad had seven adventurous sea voyages. During these voyages, seemingly an Arabian replica of the Greek Homer’s The Iliad and The Odyssey, Sindabad encounters many dangerous situations that he survived, including ship wrecks and facing ferocious animals, dragons, and man-eating birds. While the details of voyages in the Odyssey refer to the seas surrounding Greece and Turkey, the details of the Sindabad voyages refer to the seas extending between the Arabian Peninsula, East Africa, and India. Despite all these adventures, Sindabad returns back home in Baghdad alive and victorious. Arabic Sindabad (or Sindibad) is transliterated in English as “Sindbad” or “Sinbad.” The Italian popular character and major protagonist Pinocchio of the tale The adventures of Pinocchio (originally published in 1881) was written by Carlo Collodi. The book was written as a children’s educational book that aimed at teaching children good moral principles that promote the need to study and become professional, to work hard for success and benefit not only themselves but also their families and fellow citizens. Due to the appeal of this tale to children and adults alike, it became a precious Italian literary jewel.

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Plato, The Republic, Bk. VII, “Myth of the Cave” (verses 514a to 520a). This is a dialogue in which Socrates describes to Plato’s brother Glaucon that the facts and events of our experiences in this world are not true reality as they are believed to be. These are nothing but dream-like shadows of the true reality that transcends the appearances of our physical world. True reality is, then, to be found in the metaphysical and atemporal, and thus eternal, World of Ideas, the reflections of which are embodied in the physical and temporal, and thus non-eternal, world of physical matter. This World of Ideas is, according to Socrates “the intelligible region”: “And if you [Glaucon] assume that the ascent to, and the contemplation of, things above is the soul’s ascension to the intelligible region, you will not miss my surmise.” (517b). Scriptural examples can be found in John 6:32-58; Matthew 26:26; Luke 22:17 -23; and 1 Corinthians: 11:24-25. More specifically, John: 6:53-57 states: “Jesus said to them, ‘I tell you the truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life … For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in him … so the one who feeds on me will live because of me.” Such statements by Jesus irritated the ears of the Jewish leaders. The Bhagavad-Gita is a 700 verse portion (Chapters 25-42 of the 6th book) of the Hindu epic, the Mahabharata. While on the battle chariot, Lord Krishna advises Arjuna of his duty as a warrior (Kshatriya) to fight his own family, relatives, and friends. These relatives and friends represent Arjuna’s (and each human being’s) base instincts. By following Krishna’s advice, Arjuna, and by extension all human beings, will attain liberation (Moksha). The Gospels of Matthew (8:14)-17, Mark (1:29-31) and Luke (4:38) describe Peter as a married person. John the Evangelist describes himself as “the disciple Jesus loved” (Jn 13:23; Jn 19:26; Jn 20:2; Jn 21:20) probably because he was available whenever Jesus needed him, which cannot be readily the case with married people who have families to take care of. Also, when Jesus was on the cross, he said to his mother: “Woman, this is your son. Then to the disciple he said, ‘This is your mother.’ And from that moment the disciple made a place for her in his home.” (Jn 19:26) A married man, with a wife and children would likely not have the availability that John had. When Peter asked “What about us? We left all we had to follow you,” Jesus said: “I tell you solemnly,

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there is no one who has left house, wife, brothers, parents or children for the sake of the kingdom of God who will not be given repayment many times over in this present time and, in the world to come, eternal life.” (Lk 18:28-30). This suggests that Jesus includes celibate priests serving the Christian message. The name Ganesh (Ganesha) is Sanskrit, and means “Master” (Isha) of a “Group” (Gana), the group of God Shiva’s servants. There is more than one mythical account of the creation of Ganesh. The following is a summary. When Parvati, the wife of God Shiva, wanted a guardian to protect her privacy, she created Ganesh and had him guard her abode. When Shiva came to see his wife, he saw this guardian, who was unknown to him, and who forbade him to enter. Shiva was angry and severed his head. Parvati seeing her son with a severed head was sad and angry. Shiva, wanting to appease her, ordered his servants to get the head of the first animal lying facing the east. The first animal they found was an elephant. They cut its head and brought it for Shiva to replace Ganesh’s head, and so Ganesh had a human body with an elephant head. The elephant’s head was a symbol of intelligence. The elephant is also known for its peacefulness and kindness, as an elephant does not kill to eat. Instead it eats vegetables and is, nonetheless, the strongest animal in the forest. There are two other animals associated with Ganesh: a snake around his belly and neck, and a mouse on which the elephant stands. The snake represents energy, and the mouse, the weakest of animals, represents humility. Although there is a difference between a parable and a fable, in this context the terms are taken to refer to an extravagant story that has a moral message. A parable is a short story whose characters are human beings who convey a moral or religious message, while a fable is a story that can be short or long, but whose characters can be animals, plants, inanimate objects, or natural phenomena that convey a moral or political message. An example of a parable is “The Good Samaritan,” found in the gospel according to Luke10:29–37. An example of a fable is “The Ant and the Grasshopper,” found in “The Fables of La Fontaine” of the French writer Jean de la Fontaine. A parable usually addresses adults, while a fable addresses and amuses not only adults but children as well. “The word ‘Gospel’ is derived from the Anglo-Saxon word ‘godspel’ or ‘good story,’ and was substituted for the original Greek word ‘euaggelion’” (coldcasechristianity.com/2018/what-doesgospel-really-mean/). The reference of the “good story” or

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“good news,” is to the coming of the Messiah Jesus Christ, his life, teaching, miracles, and redeeming action. In his “Myth of the Cave,” found in The Republic, Book VII, Plato describes how the ideas are eternal by giving an allegory whereby what we see in our physical, changing, and thus mortal world (depicted as shadows reflected on the wall of a cave) is nothing but reflections of the non-physical, unchanging and thus immortal ideas (depicted as real objects standing between the sun, the source of light, and our physical reality). Then, in his Dialogue Phaedo, Plato describes how the human soul, being capable of recognizing the eternal ideas as distinguished from the reflections of these eternal ideas, is immortal as well. As an illustration of this belief, Plato describes the last events of Socrates’ life, whereby Socrates gives his proofs of the eternity of the human soul, which made him accept willingly the unfair verdict of the Athenian jury to have him drink hemlock, which he did in the expectation of the eternal and peaceful life. “Therefore the first heaven must be eternal. There is therefore also something which moves it. And since that which is moved and moves is intermediate, there is something which moves without being moved, being eternal, substance, and actuality.” R. McKeon, The Basic Works of Aristotle, Metaphysics, Book Lambda (XII), Chapter 7, 21-25. In the early history of the Semitic languages, such as Aramaic, Hebrew, and Arabic, the diacritic marks (vowels and other marks transliterated as dots, dashes and other marks above or below the consonants pronounced to make the consonants short or long) were not written. Without these diacritic marks, the reading of written texts is difficult and may cause misreading of the text. For example, if we were to write the English word ‘Messiah’ without the vowels, it would be written as ‘Mssh,’ which would be difficult to read. Similarly, if we were to write the Arabic word ‫ ﻣﺴﯿﺢ‬Masīḥ without the vowels, it could be read as Masīḥ or Māsiḥ. Also, the Hebrew word ‫משיח‬, if written without the diacritic marks, could be pronounced as Meshiyaḥ or Mesiyaḥ. This problem urged the linguists and scholars of the various Semitic languages to supply the diacritic marks, following the example of the Greek language that has vowels as regular letters. The addition of the diacritic marks (above or below the consonants) are now supplied in Aramaic, Hebrew, and Arabic as vowels, with the same right to exist as the consonants in the word. “One of these two who became followers of Jesus after hearing what John had said was Andrew, the brother of Simon Peter.

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Early next morning, Andrew met his brother and said to him, ‘We have found the Messiah’—which means the Christ—and he took Simon to Jesus. Jesus looked hard at him and said, ‘You are Simon son of John; you are to be called Cefas—meaning ‘Rock.’” (Jn 1:40-42) Although the two terms ‘apostles’ and ‘disciples’ may have the same meaning, the term ‘apostles’ refers in the context of the gospel to the select Twelve who were with Jesus most of the time, and had a mission to act as messengers who would witness for and preach the teaching of Jesus. As for the term ‘disciple,’ it refers to the larger number of faithful followers of Jesus. “So I now say to you: You are Peter and on this rock I will build my Church. And the gates of the underworld can never hold out against it.” The name ‘Peter’ is in Latin ‘Petrus,’ from the Greek πέτρα petra, meaning ‘rock.’ The Syro-Aramaic name of ‘Peter’ is .54/ ‘Kefa’ or ‘kefo‘, which means ‘rock,’ and refers to the ‘foundation’ on which a structure will be built. The term ‘Church’ refers in this context to the followers of Jesus Christ or the Christian community of faithful. The Complete Word Study Dictionary [of] the Old Testament, by Warren Baker and Eugene Carpenter, explains the equivalent Hebrew term kippah ‫( ִכָּפּה‬number 3712, page 519) as “A feminine noun referring to a palm branch… as well as more developed branches (Isa. 9:14[13]; 19:15) but with reference to the leaders of Israel.” This suggests that the Syro-Aramaic term kefa/kefo or Hebrew kippah refers to a leadership position described as “a rock” on which a building can be built, or “a major palm branch” that can overshadow, cover, or protect other branches. Here the primacy of Peter as the head of the apostles seems obvious. However, while the Catholic Church claims that the successor of Peter, being the bishop of Rome (the Pope), has primacy among all Catholic Christian bishops all over the world, the Orthodox and Protestant/Evangelical churches deny that primacy. In Catholic understanding, the primacy of the bishop of Rome over other bishops is not a rank like ranks in the Army. For example, in the Army, a general is higher in rank than the colonel, and the colonel is higher in rank than the major, and the major is higher in rank than the captain. The higher in rank commands the lower in rank. In the Catholic religious hierarchy, the primacy of the Pope is a primacy of one among equals (“primus inter pares,” first among equals), not as in the military ranking. Such a primacy helps, primarily,

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keep the homogeneity of the faith, and also it serves as an administrative tool to keep the unity of the faithful. As Jesus had predicted, before the cock crew, Peter would have denied knowing Jesus three times: “Jesus answered him, ‘I tell you solemnly, this very night, before the cock crows you will have disowned me three times.” (Mt 26: 34) It was the time when Jesus was being interrogated and humiliated by the high priests, before he was led to Pilate to be formally condemned, and eventually crucified. In the meantime, the apostles had scattered out of fear. The gospel according to John describes Peter’s three denials as follows: (1) “The maid on duty at the door said to Peter, ‘Aren’t you another of that man’s disciples?’ He answered, ‘I am not.’” (Jn 18:17) (2) “As Simon Peter stood there warming himself, someone said to him, ‘Aren’t you another of his disciples?’ He denied it saying, ‘I am not.’” (Jn 18:25) and (3) “One of the high priest’s servants, a relation of the man whose ear Peter had cut off, said, ‘Didn’t I see you in the garden with him?’ Again Peter denied it; and at once a cock crew.” (Jn 18:27) However, Peter repented and “wept bitterly”: “At that moment the cock crew, and Peter remembered what Jesus had said, ‘Before the cock crows you will have disowned me three times.’ And he went outside and wept bitterly.” (Mt 26:75) “Unless I see the holes that the nails made in his hands and can put my finger into the holes they made, and unless I can put my hand into his side, I refuse to believe.” (Jn 20:25) To be skeptical, as Thomas was, can at times be a positive attitude that may lead to proving truth and lead to belief. Similarly, skepticism in science is an asset for discovering truth. A scientist can, after initial skepticism and painstaking research, discover or prove a scientific truth that people will eventually take for granted. “Saul [Paul] entirely approved of the killing [of Stephen].” (Acts 1:1} “I [Saul/Paul] thank Christ Jesus, our Lord, who has given me strength and who judged me faithful enough to call me into his service even though I used to be a blasphemor and did all I could to injure and discredit the faith.” (1 Tm 1:12-13) In footnote “s,” the commentator of the Jerusalem Bible clarifies that this cry was “A cry of real distress but not of despair, this lament which Jesus takes from the scriptures is a prayer to God and is followed in the psalm by an expression of joyful confidence in final victory.” As for the different pronunciations of the same phrase sabachtani and shabaqtani (You have deserted me), it is due to dialectical phonetic difference,

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whereby the sh and s sounds are interchangeable. For example, the word ‘heaven’ in Hebrew and Aramaic is Shamayīm and Shmāyo/Shmāya respectively, while in the sister language Arabic, it is samā’. Similarly, the Hebrew proper name ‘Ishmaēl becomes in Arabic ‘Ismacīl. After stressing the difficulty of giving irrefutable proofs for or against God’s existence and the hereafter, Blaise Pascal states that the wager in favor of having commonsense faith would, at times, lead to a greater certainty than the rational proofs would: “The end of this discourse.—Now, what harm will befall you in taking this side [i.e. believing in God and the hereafter]? You will be faithful, humble, grateful, generous, a sincere friend, truthful. Certainly you will not have those poisonous pleasures, glory and luxury; but will you not have others? I will tell you that you will thereby gain in this life, and that, at each step you take on this road, you will see so great certainty of gain, so much nothingness in what you risk, that you will at last recognise that you have wagered for something certain and infinite, for which you have given nothing.” Blaise Pascal, Pensées, Translation by W. F. Trotter, published by Christian Classics Ethereal Library, Grand Rapids, MI; Section III, sub-section 233, page 40. “Beware of the false prophets who come to you disguised as Lamb but underneath are ravenous wolves. You will be able to tell them by their fruits. Can people pick grapes from thorns, or figs from thistles? In the same way a sound tree produces good fruit but a rotten tree bad fruit. A sound tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor a rotten tree bear good fruit.” (Mt 7:15-19) According to Wikipedia.org, “Benjamin was the last-born of Jacob’s thirteen children (12 sons and 1 daughter), and the second and last son of Rachel in Jewish, Christian and Islamic traditions. He was the progenitor of the Israelite tribe of Benjamin. In the Hebrew Bible, unlike Rachel's first son, Joseph, Benjamin was born in Canaan.” To see the names of the twelve sons of Jacob, born to several wives of Jacob, see Genesis 35:22-26. “If, when men come to blows, they hurt a woman… But should she die, you shall give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, stroke for stroke.” (Ex 21:22-25). Jesus amended this commandment with one of forgiveness: “You have learnt how it was said: Eye for eye and tooth for tooth. But I say this to you: offer the wicked man no resistance. On the contrary if anyone hits you on the right cheek, offer him the other as well…” (Mt 5:38-39)

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The teaching on the Trinity (Three Persons in One God) is proclaimed in the Nicene Creed. This ecumenical council held this as an article of faith in 325 CE in Nicea (present day Iznik), Turkey, and it was confirmed as such in the First Constantinople Council in 381CE. While the original version of the creed starts with “We believe in one God” (Syriac version: 7#+"&6( 16:‫ ܐ‬9,8 Mhayminān bḥād alaha/aloho), the Latin version uses the first personal pronoun: “Credo in unum Deum” (“I believe in One God.”) The linguistic difference has no serious dogmatic implication as the “we” in this statement involves the community as a unified body of faithful, which also includes the “I’ as a member of this body of faithful. Also, the “I” in the statement does not exclude the “we,” which is the sum of all the individual “I”-s of all the members of the community united in prayer. The Trinity is referred to when one reads (1) the term ‘Father’: “We believe in one God, the Father Almighty,” (2) the term ‘Son’: “and in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, begotten of the Father,” and (3) the phrase ‘Holy Ghost’: “and in the Holy Ghost.” Since the Trinity sounds like a further absurdity in the sense that if God is one, how can it be three persons, the Nicene Creed starts with “I/we believe” as an act of faith. Theologians of all ages tried to explain how to conceive of this mystery of faith in rational explanations and analogies, supposedly more accessible to human understanding. Examples of such imperfect attempts would be: Like the sun that includes heat and light, and like the finger that includes three joints, so the Trinity includes three elements. Augustine of Hippo wrote a treatise titled On the Trinity (Latin: De Trinitate). In this treatise, Augustine explains how God, the Triune (Three-in-one) can be explained along the lines of the Nicene Creed as one essence (Latin essentia) in three persons (Latin: personae). After the excommunication of King Henry VIII in 1533 by the Pope of Rome, the Parliament’s Act of Supremacy, of 1534 (See: Encyclopedia Britannica) gave the King the religious supremacy in addition to his existing political supremacy. The persecution of Christian Catholics in England followed; and all those who expressed allegiance to the Pope were tortured or killed. In 1537, the Chancellor of Saint Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin was executed on that basis. With the accession to the Throne of England by the Catholic Queen Mary (1553-1558), the persecution halted, but in 1559 after her death, the Parliament of her sister, Queen Elizabeth I, reinstated the Act of Supremacy (See: World Heritage Encyclopedia) with minor,

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moderate, changes. However, later on, the persecution was on and off. Between 1885 and 1887, twenty three Anglican and twenty two Catholic converts were executed at the order of Mwanga II, the Kabaka (King) of Buganda (See: Encyclopedia Britannica), which is presently part of Uganda. In 1964, the Catholic Church canonized the twenty two Catholic martyrs. During the 19th century, masses of converts to Christianity were executed because their faith was contrary to traditional Confucian principles that are based on class-and-hierarchical division of society. The new ideology disrupted the local, centuries-old ideology. Among the 20,000 Christians in Korea, half of them, young and old, lay or religious people, were executed. In 1984, 103 were canonized on the shores of the Han River. Also, in the 20th century the advent of Marxist communism made more Christian martyrs (See: Wikipedia, “Korean Martyrs”). In the midst of the warfare among political factions, communist and otherwise, religious leaders were teaching peace and forgiveness based on the example of Jesus Christ. This caused them to suffer intimidation and persecution by these factions. One such leader was Archbishop Romero, who was shot on March 24, 1980 while giving his homily in the chapel of the Cancer Hospital in the city of San Salvador. At his funeral, 39 people were killed by an explosion and gun fire.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Aquinas, Thomas. The Summa Theologica. Ed. Christian Classics. Vol. 5 Volumes. Ave Maria Press, 1948. Alighieri, Dante. La Divina Commedia. Ed. Andrea Galeazzi. Firenze (Florence, Italy): Nardini Editore, 1997. Aristotle. The Basic Works of Aristotle. Ed. Richard McKeon. New York: Random House, 1941. Augustine. De Civitate Dei–The City of God. Trans. P. G. Walsh. Aris and Phillips Classical Texts, 2014. —. De Trinitate (On the Trinity). Ed. Sr. & William G. T. Shedd Paul A. Boer. Trans. Rev. Arthur West Haddan. Buffalo, NY, USA: Veritatis Splendor Publications, 1886-2012. Bacon, Leonard, trans. The Song of Roland (La Chanson de Roland) Yale University Press, 1914. Baker, Warren & Eugene Carpenter. The Complete Word Study Dictionary-Old Testament. Chattanooga, Tennesee, USA: AMG Publishers, 2003. Bible, The Jerusalem. Ed. General Editor Alexander Jones. New York: Darton, Longman & Todd, LTD. and Doubleday Company, Inc., 1966. Brault, Gerard J., ed. La Chanson de Roland (The Song of RolandFrench & Oxford Text). Pennsylvania State University Press, 1978-1990. Bugetti, P. B. I fioretti di San Francesco. Grottaferrata: Collegio San Bonaventura di Grottaferrata Quaracchi, 1926. Collodi, Carlo. Pinocchio. Trans. M. A. Murray (Original Translator) and Revised by G. Tassinari. New York, NY, USA: Penguin Books, 2002.

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Davies, Brian. Thomas Aquinas's Summa Contra Gentiles: A Guide and Commentary. Oxford University Press, 2016. Denzinger, Henry, and Peter Hunermann. Enchiridion Symbolorum... de rebus fidei et morum (A Compendium of Creeds, Definitions, and Declarations of the Catholic Church). Ed. Peter Hunermann. Vols. Latin-English, 43rd Edition-This compendium is revised and extended to the Pontificate of Pope Benedict XVI. Freiburg im Breisgau, Switerland (First Publication): Ignatius Press, 1854-2012. Dictionary, Dizionario Moderno. Milano, 1931. Dictionary, Websters Student Dictionary. New York,Cincinnati, Chicago, Boston, Atlanta: American Book Company, 1938-1946. Encyclopedia, Britannica. “Act of Supremacy 1534.” (January 1, 2020). —. “Mwanga, King of Buganda.” Encyclopedia, Shorter Encyclopedia of Islam. Cornell University Press, 1953-1974. Encyclopedia, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. (1995.). Encyclopedia, World Heritage. “Act of Supremacy 1559.” Encyclopedia, World Scope. New York: Universal Educational Guild, 1959. Freud, Sigmund. Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (Drei Abhandlungen zur Sexualtheorie). Trans. James Strachey. Leipzig and Vienna, 1905. Fumagalli, Giuseppe. Chi l'ha detto? Milano: Hoepli, 1983. Funk, Charles Earle. A Hog on Ice and Other Curious Expressions. New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 1881-1985. Gregory-of-Tours. A History of the Franks (Historia Francorum). Trans. Lewis Thorpe. Penguin Classics, 1974. For an Internet version, see also: https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/basis/gregory-hist.asp#halsall Gross, Rita. Buddhism after Patriarchy: A Feminist History, Analysis and Reconstruction of Buddhism. SUNY Press, 1992. Hegel, George Wilhelm Friedrich. Phenomenology of the Spirit (Phänomenologie des Geistes). Trans. Terry Pinkard et al. Cambridge University Press, 1807-2019.

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Hendelson, William H. World Scope Encyclopedia. New York: Universal Guild, 1904-1959. Heraclitus. The Art and Thought of Heraclitus. Ed. Charles F. Kahn. Cambridge University Press, 1981. Homer. The Iliad. Trans. Samuel Butler. London: Longmans, Green, & Co., 1898; Bartleby.com, 2011, 1898-2011. —. The Odyssey. Ed. Emily Wilson. Trans. Emily Wilson. New York, NY, USA: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2018. Jess Stein, Editor in Chief, ed. The Random House Dictionary of the English Language (Unabridged Edition). New York: Random House Inc., 1966-1983. Kant, Immanuel. Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals (Metaphysik der Sitten). Trans. James Ellington. Hackett Publishing Company, 1785-1993. Lao Tse. Tao Te Ching, Annotated & Explained. Trans. Derek Lin. Woodstock, Vermont: Skylinght Paths Publishing, 19642009. Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm. La Monadologie. Paris: Hachette, 1714-1886 (Nouvelle édition). Mahdi, Muhsin, ed. One Thousand and One Nights. Trans. Husain Haddawi. New York, N.Y., USA: Norton Paperback, 19902008. Marx, Karl. Über die Differenz der demokritischen und epikureischen Naturphilosophie. Iena: University of Iena (Doctoral Dissertation), 1840/41-2014. Mead, G.R.S. “The Hymn of the Robe of Glory.” Echos from the Gnosis. Vol. X. The Gnostic Society Library, 1908. Merriam-Webster, ed. Webster's Dictionary for Students (Fifth Edition). Darian, Connecticut, USA: Webster Federal Street Press, 2015. Nielsen, Niels C. and others. Religions of the World. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1983. Origen. De Principiis (On the Principles), from Ante-Nicene Fathers. Ed. F. Crombie. Trans. F. Crombie. Vol. 4. Buffalo, NY: Christian Literture Publishing, 1885. http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0412.htm. (Accessed December 2019).

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Panzini, Alfredo. Dizionario Moderno. Milano: Hoepli, 1931. Parmenides. Peri Fusios (On Nature). Trans. D. Gallop. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1984-2013. Pascal, Blaise. Pensees. Trans. W. F. Trotter. Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA: Dover Publications, 1670-2003. Patrick, George T. W. The Fragments of the Work of Heraclitus of Ephesus on Nature. Kessinger Publishing, 2007. Plato. Republic, The Collected Dialogues of Plato. Ed. Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns. Trans. Paul Shorey. Vol. LXX1. Princeton: Bollingen Series, 1961-1973. Plotinus. The Enneads. Ed. Lloyd P. Gerson. Trans. John M. Dillon, Lloyd P. Gerson, R. A. H. King, Andrew Smith, and James Wilberding George Boys-Stones. Cambridge Unisersity Press, 2018. Radakrishnan, Sarvepalli and Charles A. Moore. The Bhagavatgita. Princeton, NJ, USA. Princeton University Press, 19571973. Rahner, Karl, and Herbert Vorgrimler. Theological Dictionary (Kleines Theologisches Wörterbuch). Ed. O. P. Cornelius Ernst. Trans. Richard Strachan. Freiburg, New York, London, 19651968. Roland de Vaux, O.P., General editor, 1961, and Alexander Jones, General Editor, 1966, ed. The Jerusalem Bible (La Bible de Jerusalem, Les Editions du Cerf, Paris, 1961). Darton, Longman & Todd, LTD, and Doubleday & Company, 1966. Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. Emile (1762); Trans. Barbara Foxley. J. M. Dnet & Sons; London, 1911; and E. P. Dutton & Co, Inc., New York, -1961. Rousseau, John-Jacques. Discourse on Inequality (A Discourse on Inequality). Trans. Maurice Cranston. Penguin Classics, 1985. Schopenhauer, Arthur. The World as Will and Representation (Die Welt als Wille und Forstellung (1818); Trans. E. F. J. Payne. Two Volumes. Dover Publications Inc., 1958-1969. Shakespeare, William. The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. 1st WORLD Publishing, Incorporated, 2005.

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Spinoza, Benedictus [Baruch/Benedict] de. Spinoza's Ethics and De Intellectus Emendatione.Ed. Ernest Rhys. Trans. Andrew Boyle. Vol. 481 in Everyman's Library. J. M. Dent & Sons, 1930. —. Tractatus Theologico-Polititcus (Theological-Political Treatise). Trans. Robert Harvey Munroe Elwes. Independently Published, 1670-2019. Spirito, Ugo. Storia antologica dei problemi filosofici. Ed. G. C. Sansoni. Vol. Teoretica II. Firenze (Florence, Italy): Carmelo Lacorte, Italo Cubedda, 1968. Wikipedia. “Korean Martyrs.” (W.W.W. site accessed in December 2019).

INDEX Aaron, 7, 29, 65, 170 Abba, Father, 12, 81 Abbasid caliph, 120, 175, 215, 218 Abraham, xxv, xxvi, xxxviii, xli, 5, 8, 68, 78, 80, 81, 82, 92, 93, 96, 98, 125, 148, 167, 169, 208, 212 Absolute, The, 3, 45, 49, 50, 121, 123, 124, 125, 126, 127, 128, 131, 132, 133, 134, 135, 136, 138, 139, 152, 153, 169, 205 Absolute Being, 10, 125, 126, 127, 128, 129, 131, 133, 134, 169, 196, 204, 205 absurd, vii, x, xix, xx, xxi, xxii, xxiv, xxv, xxvi, xxvii, xxviii, xxx, xxxi, xxxix, xl, 4, 5, 13, 50, 58, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 94, 98, 100, 101, 109, 110, 113, 114, 116, 118, 119, 120, 121, 123, 124, 125, 127, 128, 135, 138, 140, 142, 143, 144, 146, 150, 151,

152, 156, 182, 201, 214, 225 Adam, 23, 167, 188 Advent, 27, 31, 40, 55, 89, 101, 181, 226 Africa, xl, 50, 130, 176, 179, 218 Agape, 111, 153 agent, 91, 92, 163, 192 agnostic, 79, 88, 151, 203 agnosticism, 89, 207 Aladdin, 115, 176, 215, 216 Al-Farabi, 120 Al-Ghazali, 120 Al-Hallaj, 119, 120, 184 Ali Baba, 215 Almighty, vii, x, xxiv, xxvi, xxvii, xxviii, xxxi, 45, 76, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 95, 106, 134, 149, 201, 225 Al-Muqtadir, 120 Alpha 40, 181 analogy, xxxi, 8, 91, 99, 101, 103, 105, 109, 173, 183, 198, 212 angelic Doctor, the, 200, 64 anthropomorphic attributes, 54, 82, 89, 134

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anthropomorphic terms, 82 antidote, 75, 76, 79, 82, 83, 87, 94, 95 Apocalypse, 6, 35, 99, 105, 149, 156, 171, 195 apocalyptic vision, 54, 102 apologetic literature, 152 apostles, xvi, 9, 13, 15, 16, 93, 96, 98, 141, 144, 146, 147, 151, 158, 160, 162, 179, 206, 222, 223 Aquinas, xxxvi, 32, 64, 150, 172, 200, 204, 214, 227 Arimathaea, 189 Aristotle, 18, 91, 112, 121, 122, 163, 164, 172, 184, 203, 204, 208, 214, 221, 227 Arjuna, 52, 53, 54, 55, 125, 132, 133, 192, 193, 220 ascent, 45, 123, 126, 127, 128, 132, 135, 138, 152, 153, 219 Ascent, iv, 155, 161 aspiration, xxvii, 114, 118, 123, 135 atheism, 89, 207 atheist, 88, 151, 203 atheists, 51, 100, 142 Augustine, xxiii, 23, 100, 122, 150, 156, 168, 191 Avatar, 127, 133, 185, 192 Avatar gods, 127 Avicenna, 184, 204, 120 Babylonian pantheon, 51

Baptist, 28, 32, 59, 60, 61, 62, 69, 85, 86, 102, 123, 135, 139, 140, 146, 148, 166, 172, 173, 197, 198, 213 Barabbas, 25 Barbara, xi, xii, xv, 112, 230 Baruch, 10, 166, 231 believer, xxiv, 80, 153 Benjamin, 60, 197, 224 Bhagavad Gita, 185, 187 Bhagavat Gita, 124, 125, 186, 193 Bible, xxiii, xxxv, xl, 5, 19, 22, 29, 30, 31, 45, 60, 73, 81, 82, 83, 92, 104, 139, 146, 155, 156, 157, 158, 165, 166, 167, 168, 169, 170, 173, 181, 188, 197, 198, 201, 204, 206, 223, 224, 227, 230 Blind, xxi, 62, 86, 139, 143, 148, 167, 217, Blood, 8, 13, 31, 33, 35, 40, 106, 149, 157, 173, 181, 182, 219 Bloodshed, 112, 130 Blue River, 45 boat, 144, 145, 209 body, ix, xxxviii, 4, 52, 54, 105, 148, 161, 163, 173, 178, 181, 182, 184, 189, 202, 217, 220, 225 bomb, 56, 192 Book of Tao, xxxiv, 36, 37, 38, 39, 41, 42, 45, 174, 185

INDEX Brahman, 107, 125, 131, 133, 169, 186, 187, 211 Brahmaputra, 124, 185 bread, 20, 31, 33, 40, 46, 59, 86, 96, 141, 145, 171, 173, 181, 182, 210, 211 bridesmaids, 102, 171, 214 British colonialism, 133 Buddha, 3, 11, 18, 19, 20, 30, 37, 43, 47, 49, 50, 124, 126, 155, 185, 186, 187, 188, 212, 213, 214 Buddhism, xxvii, 46, 47, 49, 99, 121, 123, 124, 125, 126, 127, 128, 129, 130, 134, 136, 155, 169, 187, 188, 190, 192, 196, 204, 205, 211, 228 Buddhists, 46, 49, 106, 123, 124, 125, 129, 130, 132, 169, 187, 188, 189, 190, 192, 205 caliph, 118, 120, 175, 215, 218, 220 Calvary, 61, 68 Calvin, 204 Cana, 20, 59, 60, 63, 96, 144, 197, 197 Capernaum, 86, 145, 160 caritas, 111, 153 castration, 49, 128, 130, 191 Cat With Boots, 38, 178 Catholic, xv, xvii, xxxv, 41, 130, 152, 156, 172, 173, 182, 183, 191, 222, 225, 226, 228 causation, 202

235 cave, 4, 6, 20, 78, 92, 107, 115, 118, 212, 215, 216, 217, 219, 221 celibacy, 128, 129 Centurion, 85 Ch’an, 41 Chandogya-Upanishad, 58 Change and becoming, 90, 91 changelessness, 91 Chant of the Blessed, 124, 46, 55, 56 chastity, 46, 127, 128, 129 Children, xiv, 133, 138, 142, 145, 153, 155, 167, 170, 177, 178, 185, 191, 203, 209, 218, 219, 220, 224 Christian perspective, 83 Christianity, 49, 99, 120, 128, 129, 130, 131, 132, 136, 138, 151, 226 Church Fathers, 85, 188 civil disobedience, 37, 52, 55, 133, 174 civil manners, 81 commandment, 15, 46, 103, 129, 209, 224 Commonsense, xxvii, 81, 110, 118, 121, 123, 124, 126, 127, 129, 132, 224 Confucius, 41, 183, 214 Consciousness, xl, 13, 19, 89, 91, 132, 159, 174, 207, 214 consciousness of the world, 13 conscientious objections, 52 consciousness, 11, 13, 19, 39, 89, 91, 132, 159, 174, 207, 214

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consequentialist, 108 conversion, 141 Creator, 17, 19, 22, 23, 58, 110, 119, 125, 131, 132, 161, 168, 192, 194 criminals, 95 Crito, 174 cross, xxi, xxxii, 3, 5, 27, 47, 48, 61, 68, 69, 84, 85, 87, 94, 103, 139, 141, 169, 171, 182, 194, 197, 201, 219 crucified Jesus, xxiv, 8, 11, 83 crucifixion, xxxiii, 69, 86, 147, 149, 173 cupio dissolvi, xxxvi, 50 Dalai Lama, 189, 190 Dante, 55, 156, 195, 227 David, xxiii, 8, 19, 79, 82, 84, 93, 165, 207 dead, 48, 58, 62, 64, 65, 86, 96, 105, 139, 148, 149, 150, 157, 167, 168, 169, 210, 211, 212, 217, 218 deaf, 34, 62, 86,139, 148, 167 death, xvi, 3, 11, 14, 16, 19, 29, 24, 25, 39, 86, 90, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 105, 108, 109, 110, 118, 122, 139, 144, 148, 150, 155, 160, 161, 168, 169, 170, 173, 174, 175, 181, 190, 205, 211, 214, 225 deist, 203, 204, demon, 246, 191, 146, 191, 146, 191

demoniacs, 85 demons, 40, 56, 121, 171 Descartes, 153, 204 destiny, xvi, xxvi, 3, 13, 14, 16, 17, 22, 35, 38, 41, 48, 67, 89, 90, 95, 97, 98, 99, 105,106, 156 destruction, 148, 192, 207 determinism, xxii, xxiv, 78, 92, 106, 203, 204 Deus, 10, 11, 119, 158 Dialogue, ix, x, 4, 5, 36, 37, 53, 78, 162, 166, 170, 174 dictatorial voice, 78 dilemma, vii, viii, 3, 18, 51, 73, 78, 162, 174, 200, 214 Divine Almightiness, 82 divine attributes, 80 Divine Comedy, 55, 195 divine justice, 76 divine Master, 62, 63 divinities, 45, 50, 124 Doctor of the Law, 200 Don Yahweh, xxxix, 78, 79 doubt, 29, 140, 141, 142, 150, 153, 160, 165, 198, 208 Draunara, 39, 116, 179 Druga Kunleg, 47, 132, 188 Druga sect, 47 earrings, vii, xvi, xix, xx, xxi, xxii, xxiii, xxxi, xxxii, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 11, 31, 52, 73, 78, 82, 83, 101, 138, 142, 150, 155, 201 ears of man, 8, 83, 157

INDEX Eastern Religions, 138 Ecclesiastes, xxii, xxiv, 165, 166 Egyptians, 29, 30, 170, 199 Einstein, 40 ejaculatory prayers, 39 Elijah, 59 Elizabeth, xv, 140, 225 Elohim, 97 emanation, 91,119, 120, 158 Emotion, 99 emotional, 100 Enlightenment, xli, xxix, 49, 101, 119, 124, 125 Eros, 153 eschatological, 97 eternal, 6, 9, 11, 41, 54, 55, 63, 64, 76, 91, 92, 96, 100, 103, 104, 106, 107, 110, 118, 120, 140, 141, 147, 148, 150, 168, 172, 181, 196, 201, 210, 212, 219, 220, 221 eternity, 3, 72, 87, 105, 181, 191, 200, 221 ethical absurdity, 81 ethical standards, 80, 116 ethics, 41, 81, 122, 163, 172, 203, 205, 206, 214, 231 Eucharistic discourse, 63 evangelist, xxiii, 58, 60, 61, 65, 139, 140, 142, 144, 146, 147, 149, 168, 196, 197, 210, 219 Everest, 46 evil, xxii, 7, 11, 14, 20, 28, 33, 50, 51, 53, 59, 65, 67, 68, 69,

237 114, 116, 132, 134, 144, 151, 168, 173, 187, 188, 192, 193, 214, 215, 216 existence, vii, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 82, 83, 84, 89, 90, 99, 109, 116, 118, 120, 131, 138, 143, 151, 161, 164, 174, 182, 187, 195, 203, 204, 211, 214, 224 existential absurd, xxxix, 76, 77, 79 existential dilemmas, 89, 73, 74 existential fears, 89, 94, 97 existential philosophers, xxvi, 75, 77, 90 existential unrest, 78 Exodus, xxxv, 7, 30, 155, 170, 206, 212 expectations, 77, 115, 198, xxiv fable, 34, 58, 138, 142, 153, 220 faith, vii, vii, x, xxiii, xxv, xxviii, xxxi, xxxiii, 11, 16, 27, 31, 62, 65, 82, 83, 86, 87, 89, 92, 97, 120, 121, 122, 127, 128, 129, 141, 142, 143, 147, 148, 150, 151, 167, 173, 182, 185, 187, 190, 197, 208, 209, 223, 224, 225 Father, the, viii, xxi, xxii, xxxi, xli, 16, 22, 23, 62, 67, 68, 69, 73, 83, 85, 87, 106, 141, 142, 148, 150, 151, 189, 225 Fayḍ, 120

238

THE EARRINGS OF GOD: THE ABSURD AMONG US

fear, xxxvi, 7, 10, 11, 13, 14, 15, 19, 25, 29, 41, 49, 52, 60, 62, 80, 81, 83, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 97, 98, 99, 145, 157, 159, 198, 199, 208, 223 Feast, 25, 140, 148 felicity, 11, 55, 97 fig, xxxii, xxxiii, 31, 32, 102, 103, 104, 214 fish, 46, 96, 145, 189, 210, 211 Five Islands, 39 forgive, 23, 33, 68, 87, 102, 173, 209 forgiveness, 103, 104, 130, 134, 172, 181, 196, 200, 224, 226 Forms, 49, 68, 200, 204, 211, 212 Francis of Assisi, 20, 99, 100, 183 Franciscanism, 183, 41, 183 freedom of choice, xxi, xxii, xxiv, xxv, xxxix, xli, 72, 74, 76, 78, 79, 91, 103, 161, 207 freewill, xxvi, 9, 78, 92, 158, 204 Freud, 6, 156, 228 Galilee, 15, 21, 24, 58, 96, 144, 160, 208, 209 Galilian, 24 Gandhi, xxviii, xl, 37, 46, 50, 51, 55, 56, 112, 131, 132, 133, 134 137, 187 Ganesh, 52, 134, 192, 220

Ganges, 45, 55, 124, 185, 192 Gautama, 185, 187, 188, 212, 213, 214 Gela, 38, 175 Gerasene, 146, 157 Gethsemane, 11, 61, 96 Giuseppe Tucci, 46, 187, 228 Gnostic, 6, 156, 229 God, viii, x, xvi, xix, xx, xxi, xxii, xxiv, xxv, xxvi, xxxi, xxxii, xxxvii, xxxix, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 15, 16, 19, 20, 22, 23, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 38, 39, 50, 51, 52, 55, 58, 59, 60, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 72, 74, 76, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 93, 94, 95, 97, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 106, 107, 108, 109, 114, 116, 117, 118, 119, 120, 122, 125, 127, 128, 130, 131, 132, 133, 134, 135, 136, 137, 138, 139, 140, 141, 142, 146, 147, 148, 150, 151, 152, 155, 157, 158, 159, 161, 167, 168, 169, 170, 171, 172, 173, 179, 180, 181, 182, 184, 185, 188, 192, 196, 197, 199, 200, 201, 202, 203, 204, 205, 206, 208, 209, 211, 212, 220, 223, 224, 225 God’s almightiness, 79, 80 God’s justice, 80

INDEX Golgotha, 11, 26, 61 gospel, xxiv, xxxiv, 9, 16, 25, 28, 52, 58, 61, 62, 64, 65, 66, 139, 141, 142, 144, 146, 171, 172, 181, 182, 196, 197, 198, 220, 222, 223 Great Destiny, 38 guidance, vii, 3, 77, 101,102, 113, 118, 127 happiness, 106, 108, 109, 110, 111, 112, 113, 114, 115, 117, 118, 119, 120, 121, 123, 124, 125, 126, 128, 132, 134, 135, 178, 192, 201, 214 happy turnarounds, 116 Harijan, 133 Hasidism, 41, 118, 184 healing power, 76 Heaven, xxxiv, xxxv, xxxvii, 13, 14, 18, 19, 22, 28, 36, 37, 38, 39, 41, 48, 51, 60, 66, 85, 86, 96, 102, 105, 106, 109, 110, 121, 140, 141, 145, 150, 167, 169, 172, 173, 174, 179, 180, 182, 183, 191, 206, 208, 209, 210, 211, 213, 221, 224 Hegel, xxvi, xxxix, 89, 207, 228 Heraclitus, 19, 90, 91, 98, 166, 207, 229, 230 Hedonism, 205 Herod, 23, 24, 28, 84, 168, 206 high priests, 15, 23, 24, 34, 86, 223

239 Himalaya, 45, 51, 54, 58 Hinduism, xxvii, 121, 123, 124, 125, 126, 127, 128, 129, 131, 132, 134, 185, 186, 187, 188, 196, 211 Hindus, 51, 52, 106, 123, 124, 128, 131, 132, 134, 169, 186, 187, 188, 189, 192, 195, 196, 205, 219 Hiroshima, 192 Hitler, 112 Holy Scripture, 206, Holy Spirit, xxi, 28, 84, 93, 106, 150, 166 holy war, 56 Homer, xl, 175, 229 hope, 25, 35, 58, 67, 69, 97, 105, 116, 169, 171, 187 horseness, 64 Human Agency, 77, 78, 118 human existence, xxiv, 73, 74, 77, 99, 109, 116, 118, 138, 182, 203 human freedom, xxii, 79, 91, 162 human liberty, 17 human rationality, xxiv, xxvi, 77, 83, 87, 118, 120, 126, 127, 129, 204 humanism, 74 humanistic philosophies, 73 humility, 133, 220, 32 hungry, 48, 66, 96, 99, 159, 214 ideals, 6, 74, 77, 115 ideas, ix, xii, xxx, xxxiv, xxxviii, xxxix, 79, 91, 92, 100,

240

THE EARRINGS OF GOD: THE ABSURD AMONG US

104, 105, 112, 153, 161, 168, 185, 199, 211, 212, 219, 221137, 164, 165 Iliad, xl, 115, 175, 218, 229 immanent, 123 Immanuel, 84, 123 immortal, 221 immutability, 76, 79 immutable, 49, 80, 91 imperative, 4, 37, 42, 51, 53, 56, 78, 108, 110, 111 imperativeness, xxv, 5, 6, 7 incarnate, vii, x, xx, xx1, xxiv, 61, 83, 84, 99, 101, 127, 134, 138, 144, 151, 152, 196 incarnation, vii, xxxii, 84, 87, 98, 125, 140, 192, 196, 205 Indian school of Amaravati, 49 infinite wholeness, 130, 131, 132 inquisition, 130, 131, 132 Intellect, 90, 91, 92, 158, 163, 164, 172, 174, 214 interaction of opposites, 90 intuition, xxvii, 77, 100, 118 Isaac, 81, 96, 167, 169, 208 Isaiah, 10, 27, 32, 84, 100, 107, 157, 169, 172, 173, 199, 206, 212, 213 Islam, 119, 120, 130, 131, 184, 228 Israel Ben Eliezer, 118 Jacob, 22, 69, 197, 212, 224 Jainists, 99 Jehovah, 67, 200 Jeremiah, 7, 69, 79, 82, 167, 206 Jericho, 64

Jerusalem, xxiii, xxxiii, xxxv, 13, 14, 15, 16, 19, 21, 63, 64, 65, 146, 155, 157, 158, 160, 165, 166, 167, 168, 171, 181, 189, 197, 198 Jesus, vii, viii, x, xvi, xx, xxi, xxii, xiv, xxv, xxvi, xxvii, xxviii, xxxi, xxxii, xxxiii, xxxvii, xxxix, xli, 3, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 28, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 36, 38, 40, 47,48, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 73, 74, 76, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 89, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 108, 109, 118, 121, 122, 129, 134, 135, 138, 139, 140, 141, 142, 143, 144, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149, 150, 151, 52, 154, 155, 157, 158, 159, 160, 163, 166, 167 168, 169, 173, 174, 179, 180, 181, 182, 183, 185, 189, 196, 197, 198, 199, 200, 201, 206, 208, 209, 210, 211, 214, 219, 220, 221, 222, 223, 224, 225, 226 jewelry, xxv, 7, 42, 72, 73 Jewish people, 24, 28, 83, 97, 101, 102, 140, 167, 170, 206 Job, 16, 17, 69, 81, 93, 98, 157, 166, 206

INDEX John, xii, xiii, xxiii, xxxiv, 27, 28, 58, 60, 61, 62, 63, 65, 69, 85, 86, 102, 103, 123, 129, 135, 139, 140, 142, 144, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149, 153, 166,167, 168, 171, 172, 173, 181, 196, 197, 198, 199, 203, 204, 206, 210, 213, 219, 221, 222, 223, 230 John the Baptist, 28, 32, 62, 85, 86, 102, 103, 123, 135, 139, 140, 146, 148, 166, 172, 173, 197, 198, 213 John the evangelist, 60, 139, 140, 142, 144, 146, 149 Jordan, the, 59, 85, 123, 139 Jordan river, 45, 62, 85, 123, 139 joys, 95 Judah, 97 Judaism, 184, 120 Judea, 24, 61 just person, 91, 212 justice, 17, 76, 79, 80, 104, 115, 172, 183, 212, 214 Kant, 37, 174, 204, 214, 229, 37, 105, 108 110, 174 Karl Marx, 17 Kierkegaard, 203 killing of animals, 46 Krishna, 52, 53, 55, 125, 133, 192, 193, 194, 195, 219 Lady, 60 lake, 58, 144, 145, 188

241 lamb, vi, x, 20, 27, 33, 34, 35, 40, 42, 60, 62, 63, 67, 68, 85, 94, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 104, 105, 106, 107, 109, 120, 134, 138, 139, 140, 143, 146, 149, 150, 173, 182, 208, 212, 224 lame, 62, 86, 139, 148, 167 language of miracles, 63 language of parables, 63 Lao Tse, xxxiv, 110, 111, 117, 122, 173, 174, 180, 183, 185, 201, 214, 229 Last Supper, 15, 40, 60, 94, 181, 182, 197 laws, xxii, 17, 90, 122, 172, 174, 186, 195, 205 Lazarus, 25, 85, 96, 168, 211 lepers, 62, 86, 139, 148, 167 Levite, 64, 65, 66, 210 Little Red Hood, 38 Logic, ix, xxii, 4, 5, 18, 42, 81, 91, 202 logical absurdity, 75 logical inconsistency, 77 Logos, 31, 90, 91, 102, 191 Lord, xxv, 7, 16, 27, 29, 29, 31, 33, 38, 39, 53, 54, 55, 60, 64, 66, 67, 69, 78, 79, 84, 85, 122, 125, 130, 140, 141, 145, 146, 147, 150, 157, 159, 172, 187, 191, 193, 194, 208, 209, 211, 213, 219, 223, 225 love, vii, viii, x, xxiii, xxiv, xxv, xxvi, xxvii, xxviii, xxx, xxxi,

242

THE EARRINGS OF GOD: THE ABSURD AMONG US

xxxii, xli, 3, 10, 13, 15, 17, 20, 22, 23, 24, 30, 36, 37, 48, 51, 55, 56, 58, 59, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 69, 73, 74, 82, 83, 87, 89, 95, 97, 99, 101, 104, 105, 106, 109, 110, 111, 112, 113, 114, 115, 117, 121, 122, 123, 124, 126, 128, 130, 133, 134, 138, 139, 142, 143, 144, 147, 149, 151, 152, 153, 155, 157, 161, 162, 166, 169, 174, 178, 183, 189, 196, 197, 200, 201, 206, 208, 209, 210, 211, 219 Luke, 68, 101, 167 Luther, 122 macrocosm, 125, 168 Magdalene, 59, 85, 173 magic lantern, 76, 146 Maitreya, 191 Mammon, 100 Manasarovar River, 83 Mara, 83, 87 Mark, 68, 139, 167 Martha, 121 martyrs, 45, 103, 175 Mashiyaḥ, 139 Matthew, 219, 31, 61, 66, 142, 172, 190, 191, 199, 206 Maya, 194 meaning, vii, xix, xxi, xxiv, xxvi, xxvii, xxxiv, xxxv, xxxvii, 6, 19, 20, 32, 40,

42, 43, 66, 73, 75, 76, 77, 81, 84, 88, 89, 94, 99, 118, 127, 135, 149, 155, 156, 157, 158, 165, 172, 179, 184, 185, 188, 189, 194, 195, 196, 198, 200, 201, 203, 205, 207, 211, 222 meaningfulness, 42, 77, 199 meditation, 43, 118, 124, 205, 211 Meshiyaḥ, 121, 124 messenger, 83, 106, 135 144 Messiah, 15, 21, 59, 61, 62, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 93, 97, 102, 139, 140, 141, 144, 148, 166, 167, 191, 196, 198, 206, 221, 222 163, 164, 165, 166, 167, 169, 170, 172, 176 metaphor, 67, 156, 212 metaphysical dimension, 91, 126 metaphysical realm, 100, 118, 126, 203 metaphysician, xvi, 202 Metaphysics, 11, 18, 164, 221, 229 microcosm, 91, 143, 161 Middle East, xi, 129, 130, 204 Mind, viii, x, 4, 17, 20, 31, 35, 43, 48, 53, 54, 58, 61, 64, 65, 89, 90, 100, 101, 105, 108, 117, 118, 121, 131, 135, 161, 162, 163, 164, 168, 182, 184, 188, 193, 202, 209, 212

INDEX Ming-chia, 40, 41 miracle, x, 20, 60, 144, 153, 168 miraculous reversals, 109, 111 money, 63, 107 monkey, 5, 42, 51, 52, 132, 133, 134, 156, 191 Monza, 40 Moses, xxxii, 7, 11, 21, 22, 23, 29, 30, 65, 67, 68, 86, 101, 102, 170, 212 Mount of Olives, 15, 21, 68, 69, 87, 208 Mshīha, 207, 139 multiplication of the loaves, 59 Mundaka Upanishad, 107 mutable, 80 mysterious presence, 27, 99 mystical drunkenness, 50 mysticism, 5, 118, 119, 120, 121 myth of the cave, 92, 107, 118, 219, 221 nature of reality, 90 Nazareth, xx, 134, 140 need to pray, 10, 80, 88 Neoplatonist, 150 Neo-Platonism, 120 New Testament, 8, 84, 85, 86, 92, 93, 103, 189, 206 Nichomachean Ethics, 122, 163 Nirvana, 11, 18, 51, 124, 187, 192, 205 noble truths, xxxii, 42, 185 non-being, 18, 19, 51, 54, 162, 163, 194 non-believer, 80, 100, 153

243 non-violence, 37, 55 nothingness, 3, 9, 17, 22, 23, 50, 73, 133, 224 Old Child, 45, 185 Old Testament, xxii, 8, 28, 34, 39, 79, 82, 83, 84, 92, 93, 97, 100, 102, 103, 104, 139, 166, 167, 206, 222, 227 OM, 211, 27, 99,106, 169 Omega, 181 omnipotence, xxvii, 3, 5, 11, 17, 32, 51, 55, 65, 66, 68, 101, 200 Omnipotent, 11, 22, 23, 33, 34, 53,67, 68, 94, 101, 106, 116, 128, 142, 143, 150, 151, 156, 182, 200 omniscient, 80 One Thousand and One Nights, xl, 38, 39, 115, 116, 175, 176, 215, 218, 229 Origen, 129, 157, 162, 190, 191, 229 Orthodox, 41, 47, 129, 156, 172, 173, 182, 184, 188, 222 pain, xxxiii, 4, 19, 20, 28, 51, 53, 94, 96, 97, 125, 141, 142, 149 Panchen Lama, 49, 190 Pantheism, 119 Panzini, 230, 156 parable, 3, 32, 56, 58, 64, 138, 142, 147, 152, 153, 171, 199, 200, 212, 220

244

THE EARRINGS OF GOD: THE ABSURD AMONG US

paradox, xxxi, 40, 41, 48, 113, 120, 181, 182, 200 paradoxes, xxvii, xxxi, xxxii, 40, 41, 48, 50, 109, 110, 111, 113, 120, 121, 123, 182, 184, 214 perishable, 174, 114 Parmenides, 18, 90, 91, 98, 162, 164, 230 particular, the, 64, 212 particulars, 48, 163, 199 Parvati, 134, 188, 220 Pascale, 143 passion, xvi, xxxiii, 6, 14, 18, 20, 56, 147, 153, 163, 164, 173, 192 path, xxvi, 8, 14, 36, 45, 109, 110, 117, 121, 123, 126, 133, 135, 128, 139, 143, 172, 173, 185, 213, 229 Paul, xxiii, 27, 68, 141, 185, 203, 206, 223, 227, 230 Peace, x, xxviii, 19, 29, 33, 40, 45, 48, 100, 101, 107, 112, 117, 123, 126, 150, 189, 208, 226 Perceptions of Existence, 75, 76 perpetual slavery, 3, 8, 83 persecutions, 131, 136, 152, 171 Persians, 97 personal ethics, 81 personal God, 132, 134, 204, 205 pervert, 6, 47 Peter, xxxiii, 13, 14, 16, 25, 63, 85, 86, 93, 96, 98, 124, 141, 146, 147, 149, 160, 169,

179, 180, 191, 198, 208, 209, 210, 219, 221, 222, 223, 228 Phaedo, 221 Pharaoh, 11, 23, 29, 67, 68, 83, 101 Pharisees, 15, 20, 61, 66, 67, 102, 139, 209, 213 Philip, 16, 175 philosophers, xxiii, xxiv, xxvi, xxix, xxxix, 11, 76, 77,88, 89, 90, 92, 94, 98,110, 111, 117, 120, 151, 180, 184, 199, 203 philosophy, viii, ix, xi, xii, xv, xx, xxviii, xl, 6, 18, 38, 64, 73, 74, 89, 110, 112, 120, 133, 153, 161, 162, 164, 174, 175, 184, 185, 186, 187, 193, 200, 202, 203, 207, 214, 228 pierced hands, 8, 83 piercing, 155, 157 Pilate, 3, 23, 24, 25, 47, 48, 84, 141, 168, 189, 223 Pinocchio, 38, 115, 176, 227 Plato, 6, 91, 100 107, 117, 118, 122, 156, 165, 166, 172, 204, 207, 208, 211, 212, 219, 221, 230 Platonic shackles, 87 Platonic World of Ideas, 161 Plotinus, 9, 100, 119, 120, 158 poor, 14, 16, 24, 27, 30, 31, 33, 51, 62, 74, 86, 100, 114, 115, 148, 167, 215, 216

INDEX practitioners, not believers, xxxiii, 27, 100, 107 pragmatic, 100 prayer, 3, 11, 17, 23, 26, 51, 52, 54, 68, 69,102, 136, 147, 172, 179, 181, 184, 205, 209, 223, 225 pre-historic religions, 74 priests, xxxiii, 15, 21, 23, 24, 27, 34, 45, 59, 86, 100, 129, 159, 168, 188, 200, 210, 220, 223 primitive religions, 127, 151 prodigal son, 3, 66, 67, 69 prophets, 83, 84, 15, 27, 28, 33, 41, 59, 100, 156, 158, 171, 172, 213 Protestant, 173, 182, 222 Provider, 95 Psalm, 8, 9, 83, 142, 155, 157, 158, 167, 168, 169, 170 punishment, xxi, xl, 29, 69, 105, 108, 130, 204 puppet, xv, xvi, 38, 115, 116, 176 puppet theater, xv, xvi, 6 purification, 55, 124, 127, 192 Qabalah, 118 Qoheleth, xxiii, 98165, 166 quality of life, 75, 112 rationality, xxiv, xxvi, xxviii, 77, 86, 84, 87, 110, 118, 120, 126, 127, 129, 182, 204 reason, x, xxv, xxx, xxxv, xxxviii, 4, 11, 21, 24, 34, 37, 39,

245 61, 65, 82, 91, 92, 118, 122, 137, 143, 163, 174, 199, 206, 208, 212, 214 redeemer, xxviii, xxix, 88 redemption, vii, xli, 84, 87, 104, 196, 197, 198, 200 reductio ad absurdum, 75 reincarnation, 205, 47 religion, xi, 33, 8, 24, 27, 38, 49, 50, 58, 65, 100, 117, 118, 122, 128, 129, 130, 134, 136, 157, 207 religious belief, 46, 153 religious dictates, 81, 205 Republic, 91, 107, 156, 166, 172, 204, 208, 212, 219, 221, 230 Resurrection, 48, 85, 86, 87, 94, 144, 147, 148, 149, 150, 160, 173, 181, 198, 208 retribution, 79, 101, 104, 206, 213, Revelation, 29, 41, 92, 127, 129, 134, 135, 137, 149, 156, 171 reversals, 37, 109, 111, 121 revolt, 112, 133 Rig-Veda, 186, 196 robbers, 147 rock, 21, 22, 93,189, 216, 222 Roland, xl, 156, 179, 227, 230 Romans, 15, 19, 21, 24, 68, 83, 97, 140, 185, 198, 207 Rousseau, 37, 111, 230 Rūmi,55

246

THE EARRINGS OF GOD: THE ABSURD AMONG US

Sabbath, 13, 20, 148, 159 sabbatical year, xxxi, 7, 83, 171 Sabda, 196, 58 sacrifice, 5, 10, 11, 78, 81, 93, 96, 97, 101, 102, 105, 108, 134, 155, 172, 181, 184 Sadat, xx, xxviii, 36, 112 Saint Francis, 99, 100, 107, 183 salvation, 21, 55, 67, 68, 87, 94, 95, 97, 98, 99, 101, 102, 103, 105, 134, 142, 152, 160, 181, 201, 206 Samaritan, 59, 64, 65, 66, 86, 96, 97, 147, 148, 209, 210, 220 sanctions, 81 sanctuary, 148, 47, 86 sandal-strap, 59, 139 Sanhedrin, 48, 59, 61, 62 Sanskrit, 54, 99, 185, 187, 188, 196, 212, 220 Saracens, xl, 179 Sartre, 203 Savior, xxxii, 83, 84, 94, 101, 102, 134, 139, 140, 152, 167 Schopenhauer, 231, 37, 89, 111, 165, 174, 214 self abnegation, 50 self-contradictory, 75, 81 self-defense, 130 self-restraint, 122 Sexuality, 156, 228 Shakespeare, 18, 230 shepherd, 141, 149, 208 Shiva, 52, 125, 134, 188, 192, 220

Shun, 41 sin, 10, 22, 23, 28, 60, 83, 84, 85, 88, 99, 101, 103, 104, 106, 139, 140, 146, 151, 167, 168, 173, 181, 191, 206 Sindabad, 115, 176, 215, 218 Sindbad, 38, 115, 175, 218 sinners, 21, 66, 67, 95 skeptic, 85, 93, 141, 151 skeptical, 18, 87, 143, 223 skepticism, 87, 89, 93, 94, 142, 143, 223 slavery, vii, xxi, xxii, xxxi, 3, 7, 8, 10, 28, 30, 31, 48, 51, 73, 74, 82, 83, 101, 138, 142, 150, 155, 157, 163, 167, 170, 171, 201 small village, 48, 135 Snow White, 38, 176,177 Socrates, xvi, xxix, xl, 11,20, 105, 108, 112, 113, 117, 118, 166, 174, 207, 219, 221 Solomon, xxiii, 20, 93, 98, 165, 166, 207 Son of God, xxi, 6, 83, 84, 85, 106, 138, 140, 141, 146, 168, 211, 225 Son of Man, 14, 20, 62, 66, 160, 179, 199, 209, 219 sophists, 18, 19, 164, 207 soul, 14, 17, 50, 51, 53, 58, 62, 64, 102, 105, 107, 133, 163, 164, 166, 184, 188, 192, 194, 209, 221 Spinoza, 8, 10, 11, 157, 168, 159, 204, 231

INDEX Spirit, the, xxxix, 59, 60, 60, 139, 140, 159, 185, 228 spiritually inspired philosophy, 73 74 State of Yuhe, the, 40 suffering, xxi, 11, 30, 38, 62, 93, 97, 103, 105, 143, 144, 147, 160, 169, 185, 187, 196, 201, 213 Sufism, 4, 119, 184 Summa Theologiae, xxxvi, 64, 172, 200, 214, 227 supernatural, xix, 50, 73, 99, 100, 114, 116, 117, 123, 124, 136, 144, 145, 146, 172 Supreme Being, 54, 122 Supreme Truth, 94, 52, 191 sword, 25, 96, 169, 170, 210 symbolism, xxi, 41, 55, 73, 74, 107, 153, 156, 181 110, 111, 140 synagogue, 25, 86, 11 Tahāfut al-Falāsifa, 120 Tao, xxxiv, 36, 37, 38, 39, 41, 42, 45, 109, 110, 111, 114,121, 122, 123, 173, 174, 175, 184, 185, 201, 214, 229 Taoism, xxvii, 123, 124, 126, 128, 134, 183, 185, 201 taxation, 131 temple, 13, 21, 23, 24, 59, 63, 65, 86, 140, 147, 148 Ten Commandments, 81, 95 101 Tertullian, 156 theism, 120

247 theist, 88 theologian, 106, 191, 200 Theologico-Political Treatise, 8, 10, 83 theology, 32, 58, 64, 83, 101, 102, 172, 184, 191, 196, 200 206, viii, ix, x, xi, xxxvi Theosophical, 119 thinkers, vii, xxiii, xxv, xxviii, xxxi, 55, 76, 89, 98, 111, 117, 138, 186 Thomas, xxxvi, 14, 16, 32, 64, 85, 86, 93, 98, 141, 146, 150, 153, 160, 172, 200, 204, 208, 214, 223, 227, 228 Tibet, 45, 46, 47, 49, 123, 124, 135, 185, 188, 189, 190 Tientsin, 39, 180 tomb, 47, 149, 189, 198, 211 total fusion, 50 transcendent, 123 transfiguration, 61, 198 Trinity, xxi, 85, 106, 128, 150, 225, 227 true light, 61, 198 Ultimate Cause, 95, 126, 202, 203, 204, 212 Ulysses, xl, 40, 115, 175 unethical, 105, 108, 125, 176 universal, the, xli, 17, 19, 32, 41, 50, 58, 64, 17 universal harmony, 126, 134 unjust, xxi, 80, 82, 105, 112, 113, 122, 131, 172, 201

248

THE EARRINGS OF GOD: THE ABSURD AMONG US

unknowable, 124, 128, 129, 136, 196 Unmoved Mover, 140, 153 untouchable, 51, 133, 186 utilitarian, 108 utilitarianism, 205 value, xxviii, 48, 75, 76, 77, 98, 121, 122, 136, 137, 151, 153, 203 vanity, xxxii, 19, 73, 74, 93 Vedic literature, 124 verdict, 108, 113, 221 vinegar, 26, 149 Virgin Mary, xxxii, xxxiv, xxxv, 36, 41, 67, 69, 84, 172 virtue, 109, 121, 122, 157, 163, 164, 172, 173, 174, 201, 203, 205 Vishnu, 54, 125, 186, 192 Voltaire, 203 wager, 224,143 Way, the, xxxii, xxxiv, xxxv, 16, 21, 22, 36, 37, 47, 67, 60, 97, 106, 120, 173, 174, 201 Way of Heaven, 37, 106, 173 wedding, 20, 59, 60, 63, 96, 102, 144, 197, 213 Western literature, 115, 159 will to be, 77 will to continue being, 77 willful resignation, 95 wine, 20, 31, 40, 60, 61, 96, 144, 173, 177, 181, 182

wisdom, xxiii, xxiv, xxv, xxvii, xxxii, 11, 19, 42, 45, 60, 73, 93, 100, 101, 102, 106, 109, 110, 111, 117, 118, 120, 123, 124, 126, 134, 135, 140,152, 157, 165, 166, 172, 184, 189, 190, 192, 196, 201, 2205, 206, 214 witness, 61, 62, 96, 141, 146, 149, 152, 185, 198, 222, wolf, 23, 27, 33, 34, 35, 40, 55, 97, 99, 100,101, 104, 105, 106, 107, 109, 177, 198, 199, 212 Woman, xx, 6, 9, 21, 22, 24, 47, 58, 60, 86, 113, 115, 148, 170, 177, 197, 209, 215, 216, 219, 224 Word, 27, 58, 60, 90, 139, 140, 142, 144, 146, 153, 165, 181, 196, 198, 222, 227 World literatures, xxvii, xxix, xl, 73, 109, 113, 114, 115, 116, 123 World of Ideas, 126, 134, 144, 164, 165, 173, 174, 176 world political history, 110 World religions, 168 Wu wei, 41 Yahweh, xxxix, 5, 7, 11, 27, 29, 34, 65, 78, 79, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 96, 97, 101, 148, 157, 158, 160, 167,

INDEX 169, 170, 171, 200, 206, 208, 212 Yangste River, 45, 124, 185 Yangtze Kiang, 45, 185 Yellow river, 39

249 Yogi Ramacharaka, 54 Zachariah, 140 Zen, 41 Zhuang-zi, 40