60 Ancient Ideals
other, perhaps more subtle, teachings to dispense. Buddhism is es-
sentially a godless religion, if it is a religion at all. There is no su-
preme being. There is no transcendent fi gure that one is obliged to
worship. The gigantic statues of Gautama that dot the East and draw
worshippers with their fl owers, incense, and prayers for well- being
and prosperity are a manifestation of error. They ought not to exist.
Buddhism does not revolve around worship. Meditation is not
prayer. If one gives thanks as a Buddhist, one does so in the spirit
of paradox. One is grateful, even though there is no One—no di-
vine originator—to whom one is grateful. There is joy in Buddhism.
But it is the joy that comes from clearing the mind and achieving
uninhibited being in the moment. To be awake and pre sent is to ex-
perience marvels. But joy does not come as a result of contact with
a deity. Gautama is an exemplar, not an incarnation. Buddhism is a
post- religious faith.
The Buddhist sense of time is radical. Gautama teaches that all
stability— except perhaps for the apparent stability of the noble
truths and the divine path—is illusory. Nothing abides; everything
passes. Human beings impose stability—or seek to—to obscure
what inevitably awaits. The world of human culture teems with il-
lusions. Love is an illusion, family is an illusion, friendship, the
same. Perhaps the most pernicious of the illusions, because the most
desperately maintained, is the illusion of Self. Self, to Gautama, is
a defensive bulwark. It is conducive to errors about stability and con-
trol. Jacques Lacan says nothing new when he announces that the
ego is a paranoid structure.
To Gautama, virtually all humanly conceived structures are
paranoid, betraying fear of the inevitable even as they work to sup-
press the fear. All is mutability; nothing endures but time and
change. And since all beings live on the wheel of time and of suf-
fering, there is only one right attitude to assume toward them: the
attitude of compassion. Human beings must proceed gently with