Antiheroes In Palestine

By Mel C. Thompson

A naked Jain holy man is brought back from the ancient past, and a half-discredited Los Angeles Zen monk is transported from the future. They arrive at Joshua's military encampment just before he is to cross the Jordan and conquer the Holy Land. However, since no such destructive invasion, such as the one described in the Book of Joshua, ever historically happened, our myth has it that Joshua is lovingly foiled at every turn, but still ends up quite a celebrity living in the lap of luxury. In this win-win scenario, most everyone, regardless of religion or nationality, comes out human, in spite of some occasionally skulduggery. Of course there are times when things take an ugly turn and some horrific things happen, but overall, the goal of the book, to create an alternative mythology that humanizes everyone concerned, is achieved. But lest any worry that the thing should become too boring, there are enough drug dealers and hookers and bloodthirsty deeds to keep the thing from ever quite being sanitized or politically correct.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mel C. Thompson
• Release date: Jul 31, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370519545

Mel C. Thompson

Mel C. Thompson is a retired wage slave who survived by working through temp agencies and guard agencies. Unable to survive in the real world of full-time, permanent work, he migrated from building to building, going wherever his agencies sent him, doing any type of work he could feign competency in and staying as long as those fragile arrangements could last. He somehow managed to get a B.A in Philosophy from Cal-State Fullerton in spite of his learning disorders and health problems. Unable to sustain family life due to depression, anxiety, sleep disorders, lack of transportation and lack of income, he lives alone in low-income housing and wanders around California on buses and trains. He began writing at the age of 14 and continues till the current day. (He turns 64 in June of 2023). In his early years he wrote pathetic love poetry until, in his thirties, he was engulfed by cynicism and fell in with a group of largely antisocial poets who wrote about the underground life of drugs, sex, alcohol, poverty, prostitution, heresy, isolation and alienation. In his fortes he turned to prose and began to write religious fiction with an emphasis on the comedic aspect of theology and philosophy. He now writes short novels focusing on the attempt to find meaning in a economic world beset with money laundering, unethical marketing, contraband smuggling, human trafficking, patent trolling, corrupt contracting and every manner of spiritual and psychological desperation and degradation. When he is not writing, he wanders from hospital to medical clinic to surgical room attempting to sustain what little health he has left after a lifetime of complications resulting from birth defects and genetic problems. When he is able, he engages in such hobbies as reading, walking, yoga and meditation; and whenever there is any money left over from his healthcare-related quests, he goes to wine tastings and searches for foodie-related bargains. Before the pandemic, he spent many years gaming various travel-points systems and wrangled many free trips to Europe. He is divorced and has no children, no pets, no real estate, no stocks nor any other assets beyond the $550 in his savings account. His career peaked in the early 2000s when he did comedy gags for a radio station and had about 10,000 listeners per week. However, currently, he may have as few as five active readers on any given day. He no longer has the stamina to promote his work and only finds new readers through ran...

Book preview

ANTIHEROES IN PALESTINE

Joshua Revisited

Mel C. Thompson

Copyright © 2012 and 2017

Mel C. Thompson Publishing Company

3559 Mount Diablo Boulevard, #112

Lafayette, CA 94549

[e-mail]

Table of Contents

1. The Unknown Tirthankara

2. A Prostitute And A Naked Lunatic

3. Where’s The Ark of The Covenant?

4. The Five Unclean Ones

5. The Wilderness Had Been Hard

6. The Queen of Earthly Pleasure

7. Baking All Day And Night

8. A Raging Storm of Arrows

9. All Sorts of Alien Idols

10. Impaled Heads

11. A Master of Intimidation

12. The Authorization of Canonical Works

13. They Are Called Renunciants

14. Something Is Wrong With My Omniscience

15. An Armed Coalition Sent By Thirty-One Kings

16. Intercepted By The Rabbi

17. Crown Prince of All The People

18. Some Extremely Nubile Woman

19. What Is This Thing — Tel Aviv?

20. The Promised Lands Collective Defense Authority

21. All Administrative Powers

22. A Sky Clad Monk

23. He Arranged For A Pillar of Fire

24. The Ordinary Goods of Life

1. The Unknown Tirthankara

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Sensei had this queasy feeling in the pit of his stomach. He'd already intervened too much in history, and the excessive time-travel was really a violation of his precept to not indulge in the supernatural. But, as things stood, he was nosy, and abused his semi-omniscience by inquiring into too many problems that were not his own. In short, he was guilty of straying from the path. But, upon further thought, with a smirk, he wondered if this meddling was any worse than his womanizing, his boozing and his scathing speech. There was no doubt about it, he was just not much of a Buddhist, but a Buddhist he would remain, nominally, anyhow.

Here he was, some three thousand years ago, give or take a few hundred, with a naked man lying beside him in some patch of rocky dirt near a cliff overlooking the Jordan River. The man, some sixty-billion years old, would be furious when he woke up. The man was the unknown Tirthankara, truly the first Jainist. A few singularities had come and gone, and a few universes had gone completely out of existence due to entropy, vast cosmic fire or complete implosion, since this fellow had been mortal. The Jains never knew his name, and only the gods and a few saints were even aware of him. Sensei, with his practice being beneath mediocre, had no right to be entrusted with such secrets, but, for inexplicable reasons, he was.

Sensei looked over at the unconscious, nude man, almost with a sneer, knowing again, that he was already in over his head, and that this job, once begun, would have to be seen through to the finish. As always, he would end up on the cosmic shit-list for a few billion lifetimes; but this didn't really matter, since he could meditate his way through millions of lifetimes in half an hour, without even trying. That was the unfair part about his spiritual life, how he never really had to suffer for his realizations like the other monks did. He was flippant to the point of meanness, and he knew it, and sometimes it disgusted him to think that he was beyond caring about his moral lapses.

The man had been lying there, with Sensei by his side, for about twenty thousand years. Sensei liked to check out his mission sites in great detail before beginning any project. Since Sensei was exempt from the rules of the universe until his interventions began, and since Tirthankaras exist beyond all time and space, neither was affected, for the moment, by this indulgence. Sensei was not missed at his home temple, since all of this could be condensed into a single night of dreaming at his bed, (unless someone woke him up in the middle of the night, which sometimes caused real complications in the space-time fabric).

This Tirthankara's name, unknown to almost every entity in the universe, but a select few, was Sweet Innocence. This was really his nickname. His full title was He Whose Innocence Is Complete To The Point of Utter Self-Abnegation. But that was rather an ungainly mouthful, and so for those few in the know, and for the Tirthankara himself, Sweet Innocence was well enough.

As the Tirthankara began to breathe more deeply and rapidly, slightly stirring here and there, Sensei thought to himself, You see! This is what your fiddling around gets you! But the moment the Tirthankara's eyes flickered open, Sensei forgot all his doubt and hesitation at once and rushed over to look down at his face.

Sweet Innocence! cried Sensei with joy.

Sensei! exclaimed Sweet Innocence with both friendliness and annoyance. What are we doing here? And what am I doing in a my old mortal body? Don't you know it's been billions of years since I've stooped to occupy these filthy things called bodies? What sort of funny business have you gotten us into?

The general Joshua is about to cross over this river here with his army to reoccupy his ancestral homelands, and I'm fixing to alter his plans a little, replied Sensei.

These are ancient worldly matters which are none of your business and far outside the work of attaining final liberation, declared Sweet Innocence.

Ah, but you seem to have forgotten the Mahayana Sutras which enjoin us to save all living beings, past, present and future, responded Sensei with a righteous tone, now deciding to defend his misadventures.

You seem to forget that I never subscribed to the teachings of Buddha, countered Sweet Innocence. All that 'middle way' business seemed like too much of a sell-out to the worldly people. Besides, they are born with the knowledge of The Way in their hearts. Let them choose to follow it when they are ready. Your interventionism strikes me as just another ego trip, frankly.

Ego trip or not, snapped Sensei, I got the gods to go along with this, so you can't go back to being beyond all time and space and form until our job here is done!

You've kidnapped and conscripted a holy Tirthankara! scolded Sweet Innocence. You'll have a lot of karmic debt to pay on this little charade!

Now look who's on an ego trip, said Sensei with a smile. Stop pouting and put on this robe I brought you.

Robe!

Yes, just put it on.

In case you forgot, I am Sky Clad, clothed in nothing more than the skin on my body. You may hold me hostage for a million years, but I'll never consent to pollute my body with clothing.

Do you realize how this army down there is going to react to a naked foreign man suddenly appearing among them?

My friend, Tirthankaras do not worry themselves over the reactions of others. Our path is Timeless. The reactions of others are less than mere trifles.

Sensei, wearily collapsed down upon the rock he had been sitting on previously and put his hand on his forehead and groaned, I never, ever learn. Oh Lord Shiva, help us.

A Buddhist praying polytheistic prayers? Sweet Innocence said with an arched brow and pursed lips. Good Heavens! Do you keep even a single precept of your faith?

2. A Prostitute And A Naked Lunatic

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As they began to make their way downhill toward the massive encampment below, a couple of men came toward them from one direction, seemingly in a great hurry, while, from the opposite direction a lone woman made her way toward them at a more leisurely pace.

Sensei said with a knowing, cynical smile, Ah, trouble comes to us from all sides, and we've not even made it a quarter of the way to the army itself.

The men, as they made their way in great haste, wore gravely serious expressions, the sort that seem to say, We are not expecting any mercy, and we certainly will be having no mercy. All about them broadcast earnestness, boldness and implacability.

From a distance, one could already see the woman was overdressed for such a landscape, and the way she plodded along, taking in the scenery, radiated a kind of feminine defiance, as though she hadn't a care in the world, but at the same time would hold her own against any who dared challenge her.

The men were crossing their path presently and Sensei hailed them. Hello there, good men. May I ask what drives you forward at such a frantic pace? And to what odious duty do you owe your hideously-serious expressions?

We are on a secret mission, said the elder of the two, about which we are forbidden from speaking to anyone, including impertinent, foreign-looking heathen such as yourself. Know only this: Were we not in such a hurry, we should pull out our swords and disembowel you this instant. For one of you dares expose his nakedness before Heaven and the other speaks like a mocker. You'll have no part in the kingdom we are to establish and shall soon enough meet a rightfully-painful death.

Hmm, mused Sensei, going to spy on Jericho then?

Are you of a mind to try to stop us? asked the younger one. For any who stand in our way or try to delay our undertaking shall be slaughtered.

I sense, said Sweet Innocence with a concerned, but artless tone, that the purpose of your espionage is connected with preparations being made for war. As such, it constitutes an act of war itself and is therefore a form of violence. And this sort of thing I must admonish you against undertaking.

The elder of the two spies furrowed his brow and declared, We are foot-soldiers in the service of Joshua, and are under orders to complete our mission. Were we to turn back and disobey our orders, we would be subject immediately to execution. Thus the words of this unclothed philosopher cannot dissuade us. Now, if you gentlemen insist on detaining us further, prepare to go to the house of the dead.

Suddenly the eyes of the younger one sprung open as the woman stepped right into the circle of men before they dispersed. She was lovely, voluptuous, but not overweight. She was dressed provocatively, like a prostitute, which she turned out to be. Her breasts were large and her waist thin. The younger one who had never known sexual relations with a woman was awe struck. The elder looked upon her with a mixture of revulsion and suppressed lust, which he did a poor job of hiding.

Hey boss, is that a real-life prostitute? said the younger one. Oh my! She is so pretty. Let us take her as a slave. Perhaps one of us shall be allowed to take her as a wife.

I wouldn't try that, said the prostitute who suddenly produced from the thick folds of her dress a sharp weapon of her own. Many a customer of mine has had the same idea and ended up dead on the floor of my brothel.

Sensei, pulled out a large knife and added, So, you see, we have you outnumbered; and we say that it's not time for you to breach the perimeter of that city.

Sweet Innocence turned to Sensei with outrage and said, A man of the saffron robe is never, ever to bear a weapon, but rather vows to die before harming another human being!

They all stared at him, and Sensei replied. The precepts were never my speciality. I should have never been ordained, but I was. That's that. I'm not going to suffer the pains of death on this over-rated patch of dirt in Palestine.

The prostitute then gazed more closely at Sweet Innocence and said in a sultry voice as she batted her eye lids, "After I'm done killing these sad excuses