The Last Testament: A Memoir (42 page)

¹⁹
But as the Unseen Force doling out providence, I can tell thee this: to the extent there is anything resembling karma operating on earth, it is
not
a boomerang.

²⁰
Karma is a bullet.

²¹
And if another bullet comes back and hits thee, it means thy aim was off.

CHAPTER 2

¹
H
induism may have its merits, but Buddhism I hate with every fiber of my being.

²
I hate the Buddha; I hate Buddhist monks; I hate Tibetan bells; and I hate each and every one of their 31 planes of existence—a veritable Baskin-Robbins of nonsense.

³
Heed me: I am a doer. Moses was a doer. Jesus was a doer. Muhammad was a doer.

⁴
Life is for doers.

⁵
Be-ers are good for drinking during football, but not for living.

⁶
Seeing life as an illusion, desiring escape from worldly suffering, seeking unity with the All—these can only be seen as the deluded spiritual goals of 500 million crazy stupid cowards.

⁷
I ask thee: what kind of religion has as its primary objective the extinguishing of the Self?

⁸
I gave each human being a Self to serve as his loyal servant; to supply him with everything from a personality to a spirituality to a preferred style of peanut butter (mine: Skippy® Super Chunk®).

⁹
Thy Selves are the best things thou hast going for thee!

¹⁰
To forsake thy Self to leave thyself selfless is
selfish.

¹¹
And for what? “Nirvana”? If that were but another word for heaven, so be it, but it is not; for heaven is a place, but nirvana, we are told, is “a state of mind.”

¹²
Please; thou art far likelier to find happiness in the state of Maine, than a state of mind.

¹³
And another thing: having spent some time with the Dalai Lama, I can report with supreme confidence that he is the 14th reincarnation of jack-all squat.

¹⁴
O, he talketh a good game about serenity and transcendence and nonmateriality; but I have been inside his body, and it is every bit as fleshly and earthly and thing-y as thine.

¹⁵
I do not trust that man as far as I can throw him; yea, yea, I know, I could throw him across the universe, but thou takest my meaning.

¹⁶
And kōans? Rhetorical questions designed to break through rational thought to unlock intuition?

¹⁷
Desirest thou a kōan? Here is one: what is the sound of one people too busy staring at their navels to keep from getting run over by Chinese tanks?

¹⁸
Answer:
!

¹⁹
Wouldst thou follow Four Noble Truths? Here are four: 1) Meditation is pointless; 2) Life is
not
an illusion; 3) Richard Gere has not been in a good movie since
Pretty Woman
; and 4) The end of suffering comes from liberation from Buddhism.

²⁰
I hate, hate,
hate
Buddhism more than any other single thing in the world today.

²¹
Yea; even baby seals.

CHAPTER 3

¹
T
here are several other religions devoutly followed by millions of people that merit my breezing over them in a line or two.

²
According to Wikipedia—which, by the way, nice try—the largest of these is “Chinese folk religion.”

³
Verily: it cannot be all that great, if after thousands of years it still hath no better name than “Chinese folk religion.”

⁴
Taoism also leaves me cold: the whole yin-yang notion means everything ends in a tie, so nobody wins, which nobody likes.

⁵
Yet I do have a soft spot for Confucianism: a wise and well-thought-out religion that is practical, sensible, and focused on living an ethical life in the real world.

⁶
The only thing wrong with it as a religion, is that it is not a religion.

⁷
I also like Sikhism very much; it is like Hinduism but fully monotheistic; in fact I just asked my angels to find out whether their god is me or not; if it is I owe a lot of apologies.

⁸
The Ba’hai Faith is the same way; I’m almost positive I am their God; for I have read their holy books, and the way they talk about him sounds
exactly
like me.

⁹
Jains, however, are wusses.

¹⁰
Fellas: wearing surgical masks to avoid killing microbes by inhaling them?

¹¹
That gurgling thou hearest in thy stomach is the sound of the 100 trillion microorganisms
already living in each of your digestive tracts
laughing at thee.

¹²
Shintoism seems fine.

¹³
Wicca? Please.

¹⁴
Rastafarianism is a big excuse to smoke pot.

¹⁵
(The irony is that there is no need for such an excuse as far as I am concerned, for I support marijuana; I created it to be smoked; indeed, I meet many of the nicest, hungriest people that way.)

¹⁶
But my favorite non-me-based religion,
by far
, is Scientology.

¹⁷
L. Ron Hubbard, I salute thee; for I have read
Dianetics
; I have visited thy Celebrity Center (I deemed myself A-list enough); I spent $250,000 of my hard-created cash to take thy courses; I have attained level OT VIII; I even spent a relaxing week aboard thy cruise ship
Freewinds,
during which I visited thy secret underground headquarters beneath the Marianas Trench;

¹⁸
And at no point in any of these experiences did I detect a single particle of anything that could be considered substance.

¹⁹
Thus, Ron, thou art the only being other than me to create an entire universe out of absolutely nothing.

CHAPTER 4

¹
I
am left with one last faith: none.

²
My publisher says he expects many of those reading these words right now to fall into the atheist/agnostic/ nonbeliever category.

³
This pleases him, for he saith it is the third-largest sector of today’s bookbuying market; right after dummies and idiots.

⁴
I trust he knows his business, but I find it strange so many would purchase a book by a writer they do not believe in.

⁵
(Of course, I well know an author credit is by no means proof that the person so designated is the actual author, or even
is.

⁶
Look at James Patterson; he sold 14 million books last year, most of which were written by monkeys and typewriters locked in a room;

⁷
And not even the proverbial thousand monkeys on a thousand typewriters working 24 hours a day, but a mere three monkeys sharing two typewriters and working nine-to-five five days a week.)

⁸
When I think of atheism, I think of the many memorable and dumb quotations it has produced.

⁹
The most notorious, of course, is Nietzsche’s “God is dead”; which long ago inspired the classic comeback, “God is dead.—Nietzsche. Nietzsche is dead.—God.”

¹⁰
Lo; if ever something was mirthful because it was true, it’s that.

¹¹
There is also Voltaire’s quote: “If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.”

¹²
That is an elegant turn of phrase that breaks down upon reflection; for if I did not exist, neither would the tools needed to invent me; and more importantly neither would the patent office, meaning the inventor would lose a
lot
of royalties.

¹³
Voltaire’s line prompted this quip of Bertrand Russell’s: “There’s a Bible on the shelf there. But I keep it next to Voltaire—poison and antidote.”

¹⁴
Verily, Bert? Then here is my comeback: “The Bible is poison.—Russell.
Russell is poison.—God!”

¹⁵
Hmmm; that works better with Nietzsche.

¹⁶
Edmond de Goncourt: “If there is a God, atheism must seem to him as less of an insult than religion.”

¹⁷
Not really, no.

¹⁸
Frank Lloyd Wright: “I believe in God, only I spell it Nature.”

¹⁹
No, Frank; it’s spelled G-o-d; n-a-t-u-r-e is a different word entirely.

²⁰
Ernest Hemingway: “All thinking men are atheists.”

²¹
Lo, Ernie; and all thinking gods prefer F. Scott Fitzgerald!

²²
A. A. Milne: “The Old Testament is responsible for more atheism, agnosticism, disbelief—call it what you will—than any book ever written; it has emptied more churches than all the counterattractions of cinema, motor bicycle and golf course.”