maps in V. and Vineland?

[Dave Monroe]

Within the pagan horizon, the Event of Christ is the
ultimate scandal. The figure of the Devil is specific
to the Judeo-Christian tradition. But more than that,
Christ himself is the ultimate diabolic figure,
insofar as diabolos (to separate, to tear apart the
One into Two) is the opposite of symbolos (to gather
and unify). He brought the "sword, not peace," in
order to disturb the existing harmonious unity. Or, as
Christ told Luke: "If anyone comes to me and does not
hate his father and his mother, his wife and children,
his brothers and sisters--yes even his own life--he
cannot be my disciple." In order for there to be a
properly unified "symbolic" community of believers,
Christ had to first come and perform the Holy Spirit's
separating "diabolic" founding gesture.

Thus the Christian stance is radically different from
the teachings of paganism. In clear contrast to the
pagan wisdom that the universe is the abyss of the
primordial Ground in which all "false" opposites--Good
and Evil, appearance and reality, folly and wisdom,
etc.--coincide, Christianity proclaims as the highest
action precisely what paganism condemns as the source
of all evil--the gesture of separation, of drawing the
line, of clinging to an element that disturbs the
balance of All.

What this means is that the Buddhist all-encompassing
Compassion has to be opposed to the Christian
intolerant, violent Love. The Buddhist stance is
ultimately that of indifference, of quenching all
passions that strive to establish differences, while
the Christian love is a violent passion to introduce a
difference, a gap in the order of being, to privilege
and elevate some object above others. Love is violence
not (only) in the vulgar sense of the Balkan proverb,
"If he doesn't beat me, he doesn't love me!" The
choice of love itself is already violent, as it tears
an object out of its context and elevates it to the
Thing. In Montenegrin folklore, the origin of Evil is
a beautiful woman: She makes men lose their balance,
she literally destabilizes the universe, coloring all
things with a tone of partiality.

http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/article/2122/


		
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