The great confession of No God—A portrait of Jesus as an atheist by Haya Akegarasu (1877-1954)
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| Haya Akegarasu (1877-1954) |
Anyway, after reading the book’s two introductions I chose to go straight to the essay reproduced here because in it Haya Akegarasu talks about his own understanding of Jesus. Now, speaking myself as a Christian atheist who has been profoundly influenced by the radical (death of God) theology of Thomas J. J. Altizer — a man who engaged deeply with Buddhism and Buddhist thinkers connected with the Kyoto School of Philosophy (also a passion of my own) — this essay resonated very strongly with me and I reproduce it here without further comment.
I have resonated to the cry of Jesus Christ on the cross — “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” — “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” After I had touched this Jesus, I wanted to know more about him, so throughout one cold winter night, like a madman, I read all four Gospels of the new Testament.... Since earliest times, whenever a spiritual leader arises, people are spellbound by him. Of course, while he is alive they don’t respect him so very much! But then after his death they naturally begin to miss him; and somehow they begin to worship him blindly; and they make an idol of him, and in this way they found a religion.
I have my own Teacher, Manshi Kiyozawa, whom I respect. This year it will be twelve years since he passed away. Out of respect for him I have written about his life, but even while he was alive I never thought of his way as my way. I even made a special effort to discover my own way by fighting with my Teacher! So when he died I had no intention of making him into an idol. But my friends and I did pool our efforts to interpret our Teacher’s life; then many people came to idolize Kiyozawa, instead of using his teachings to discover their own way.
For some people now, Reverend Kiyozawa is like a saint beyond ordinary human life. Whenever people listen to his words without testing them by their own experience, they turn his teachings into a rule that they must follow. At first I was pleased that so many people thought highly of my Teacher. But I came to realize that they were only idolizing him in order to cover up their own ignorance, and were not discovering their own life through his teachings.
The same thing happened to Gautama Buddha and Jesus Christ after they died. Innumerable people idolized them — which they would have hated — and many of these people tried to put their own free life to sleep and cement weaker people into a Group.... I want to destroy all this idolatrous Buddhism and Christianity, this fossilized organized religion, and try to develop the true way of awareness.... People who try to discover their own way — whatever religion they profess, whatever they worship — I feel they are my friends. For me the issue is not whether a person worships the Buddha’s image or a cross or a shrine, but whether he discovers his own way. That is the most important thing.... I feel that I am a disciple of Gautama Buddha and of Shinran. I feel I am a true Buddhist. But Jesus Christ is not my enemy, nor 0-Mi-ke, nor Mohammed, nor Nichiren. I respect them as honest truth-seekers, and I want to touch their lives.
—o0o—
Christ’s followers, it seems, were all weak and easily drawn by temptation. Among them all, Judas was the most unique. He is the one who committed the worst sin; yet when he became aware of what he had done he committed suicide.... As I think back over this episode of Judas, I imagine he may have thought his act would not have serious consequences, that he was temporarily blinded by money into the betrayal of his Teacher. Yet he remains great: for when he realized what he had done he immediately committed suicide. That is why I say that Judas was a virtuous man. There is only one who shared the death of Jesus Christ, and there is only one who was reborn as Jesus was reborn. That one was Judas. He attained a special enlightenment. Those others, who slept while Jesus was in anguish or who said, “I don’t know Jesus,” can never know the enlightenment of Judas....
—o0o—
Jesus grew up in a family of deep faith, receiving an awareness that he was born the Son of God. He naturally wanted to live the life of the Son of God, expected to live the life that the prophets had predicted, just as Nichiren expected his own life to fulfill the predictions of the Jo-Gyo Bodhisattava in the Hokke Sutra. Thus all his life Jesus respected God’s will in his own life and tried to practice the teaching of the scriptures.... If he had been born into a family of Sadducees or Pharisees, he might have had no difficulty, but he was raised as one of the common people and he tasted a different teaching than the priests did. So they labeled him a traitor or a lunatic. They also happened to believe that he was standing in the way of their power. So they crucified him.
This was the greatest grace that he ever received. If he had lived a whole life without much sorrow or doubt, as a naive evangelist and Son of God, then he never would have understood life.... Before his doubt, Christ was a heaven-dweller; but after that greatest doubt, Jesus became a dweller on earth. If he had not had the cross, if he had not had the shout “Eloi, Eloi...” he would have remained a traveler from heaven to heaven. Then we people on earth could have touched the edge of his robe but could never have reached his heart. But because he collapsed and became earthly man, he became the flesh and blood of earthly people, became the being who is able to resonate to the voice that comes out of the human depths. Without his last tragedy he might have ended up as a magician or miracle-man. But this tragedy made him a spiritual leader in the true sense, and that is in the oneness of the spirit and the flesh.
What the Gospels added after the ending of his tragedy — that materialistic fixed idea of heaven or a resurrection — was all extra. If I speak positively about that part of the story: better not have it. The very dark ending of this tragedy is enough, isn’t it? That is the resurrection. It is useless to add more; and it makes me think that the authors’ understanding was not a thorough one.
—o0o—
....(In tracing the story of Jesus up to his death:) How can we contain our tears? He himself endured so well. He is great, as he is. One who has even a little experience of the cross can’t help but hate those people (who mocked and killed him), can’t help sympathizing with Jesus. But the Christianity based on this sympathy and on the virtue of his endurance is not a truly human religion. There is still some obstacle remaining within such a religion. We cannot stay within such a cheap faith. Where is the uncontrollable cry? As for me, I was thrown out of such a pretty, cheerful, decorated-with-gold-leaf faith. For me, any external or objective savior disappeared. The profound doubt came to me. The huge darkness came to me.
If Jesus himself had stayed within such a life, then he might still have become a great man for the scholars, he might still have been worshipped as an idol by people who live in a dream world and are greedy for peace; but he never would have become a real person. The life of Jesus that develops from this point onward is what makes him into a true human being.
“Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land until the ninth hour.” This is the shadow of his descent from the bright heaven into the greatest darkness of the world. He is no longer the Son of God, the King of the Jews, or the Righteous Man; he no longer stands on the right hand of the Mighty Power. For he has been thrown away by God and has left the bright world behind him. He has stood up naked in the greatest darkness of the world....
When it came to this point, Jesus met his real self, confessed his naked self. Once, observing the dark ending of his life, I thought that this man was confused. Now that I have become such a person, I embrace him. It is such an indescribable life, isn’t it? This is the great confession of No God — besides this manifestation of great doubt, what further words can we add? If anyone needs further words, he doesn’t understand what truth is.
Some Buddhists say, “Through doubt we attain enlightenment. But the truth is quite clear. I say that the greatest doubt is itself the enlightenment. And I imagine that very few Christians could understand the statement that because of Jesus’s greatest doubt the tomb is rent open and the saints who are sleeping in beautiful dreams awake. I imagine, none of them. Even though I don’t know very much about it, I never heard of any Christian sect based on the very great doubt of Jesus Christ. Of course the twelve disciples did not understand.Augustine and Tolstoy started to understand a little, but they finally got off the track. Luther, Calvin, Savonarola, Wesley — did not understand at all.... Those who are making a lot of noise about the Church, the Bible, Faith, Morality, the Temple — how can they understand? Most of them idolized Jesus before that greatest doubt he had. Those who are theists cannot understand the great doubt of Jesus. O atheist! — no, “ist” is no good. Condition of no God. The greatness of humanity is the state in which awareness comes crisply, thoroughly, and absolutely divorced from God. Of course I am not talking about the clever men who say that God is dead. One who can say absolutely that there is no God is the greatest one....
Later Buddhists made Gautama Buddha a theist, but he is an extreme atheist. Leaving the Himalaya Mountains and attaining enlightenment is the peak of the greatest doubt. Those who say, “Nirvana is very negative,” etc., have no chance of understanding this greatest doubt....
There are many Buddhists who don’t understand that the Twelve Causes is the nucleus of the Kegon Sutra. Such people say that Buddhism is this and that, as if they were lecturing. Terrible.
What did you say? “Isn’t Shiran’s Amida Buddha God?” Don’t ask me such a nonsensical question. Pantheism, Monotheism, Polytheism — don’t talk such nonsense. Those who are divorced from that Buddha of the monks and scholars are the only ones who understand what Buddha is.
Then are you asking me, “Don’t you worship the Buddha’s image?”
Of course I do, honestly.
“Then how can I understand what you are saying?”
Come, empty handed. “Empty handed” means life as such.
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