God

The concept of an all-powerful omniscient deity who has to be obeyed under threat of terrible punishment is a concept that has gripped and shaped our collective psyche for many generations. And it is a concept that still carries enormous power in the world around us and has affected many if not all of us, and affected us deeply. As Buddhists we have to free ourselves from the powerful grip of this God concept. What this often means is blasphemy and rebellion against authority. To be free to live a truly spiritual life we have to stop being the obedient children of this tyrannical father God. So we learn disobedience. Just, as in the same way adolescents rebel against their parents in their bid for the freedom of adulthood, so, disobedience to God and to the decrees of God is the adolescent stage of the spiritual life. And as such it is an important and essential stage of the spiritual life.

Now it is easy to fool ourselves that we are free from the fear of God and free from the grip of this God concept when in fact we may still be simply in the stage of adolescent rebellion against it. And when we are in this stage of rebellion we may see the power of the tyrant, as it were, all about us. We have antennae that read everything in terms of authority or freedom. And anything that smacks of authority is to be rejected. We may be like the adolescent who rejects everything that is to do with the past, maybe rejects all art and music or literature of past generations, because it is associated with the past, and in that way throwing out the baby of excellence, as it were, with the bathwater of restrictions.