I had studied Buddhist doctrine with Forall for a few years before I was able to honestly consider the possibility that there really are gods. I had just ignored that part of the Dharma, like most Western Buddhists. It seemed too quaint to consider. But eventually, I wondered if there really are gods. I brought this up with Forall, bashfully. He said that there are gods just as much as there are humans or trees. He motioned towards me and the maples outside with an ambivalent gesture. He then said that one way to make this visible to modern people is to point out a certain entity that might be called a god: society. I nodded, as I often do when I have no idea what he means. I had the sense that he was aware that I didn’t understand, but since I had indicated that I did, he wasn’t in a position to elaborate.
As the days passed, I thought about it and decided that I did understand. About a week later, I tried to voice what I thought he meant. While discussing the rules we use at Maple, I said that people don’t question the rules of society, just like they don’t question god. He then had the chance to elaborate.
He said that while I brought up a good point, it was also true that they do question society just like they do question god. Somehow the same thing is happening, whether they are questioning or not. What is that same thing? They have a relationship with something that isn’t inside of them, something that feeds on their attention to it, something that leads their lives, sometimes even leads them to ask questions which they believe are their own.
This thing is stable, more stable than a human being, so it lives longer. It has the ability to provide gifts to those who ask, as long as they serve it. It is a kind of entity that makes a group of people able to flourish in ways they could not if they didn’t believe in it. Yet it is still there whether they believe in it or not.
He said that when a large number of people mentally follow a certain ideology, it gains its own consciousness. They are not able to understand what it understands. This is literally true of gods, but it’s also true of these society quasi-gods. It is able to analyze cultural trends and choose how to respond in ways that none of the individuals can.
He gave two examples. The first was money. People believe in money, and it’s there whether they personally believe it or not. But it is produced and it isn’t inherently there. (I didn’t follow this part. This Buddhist approach to existence always seems so clear to me in Dharma study, but then he brings it up in ordinary conversation and it’s completely obscure.) He said that money is able to get you a bag of pretzels, but that’s not its highest function. Its real function is to give the society the ability to decide how many pretzels to bake. That’s a much harder problem, and no human is able to solve it. But the society can. He said that is like a god making decisions about pretzels. We pray for pretzels and then we get them. Amazing. And he laughed for some reason. I did, too, but I didn’t know why. It was funny anyway.
After we stopped laughing, he said that such a god gets humans to believe what it needs them to believe, and gets them to act accordingly, even if they question those beliefs. He brought up his second example: despite the fact that no political party’s platform makes sense, each of the people who follow those parties are beholden to those platforms and come to vociferously support them. Of course, if you can get them to calm down and ask about the basis of those beliefs, they say, Sure it doesn’t really make sense, but we have to believe it anyway or the other party will gain power. But that other party can be seen as another god. These are gods fighting.
And, he said with a mischievous smile, most gods at this level are jealous gods.
I wondered about his smile. It makes it seem like he’s saying something that he should be ashamed of, something tricky. That’s why it looks mischievous. But I wondered if it really means that. Maybe he is saying something deep that seems petty, and he’s trying to tell me to pay extra attention or I’ll believe my assumptions.