Buddha’S Tooth

By U. C. Fate

U. C. Fate has only one little thing to do before he dies. That is, to kill God. The novel opens on the very day Fate has scheduled for this public execution. We are in Sri Lanka, at the Buddhist Temple of the Tooth during Esala Perahera (the sacred procession of the Tooth Relic.) But a not-so-simple twist of fate interrupts U. C. Fates plans. God easily escapes, while Fate himself is killed (and by a pious mob of monks, no less.) Yet, instead of experiencing death, our protoplasmic protagonist is rescued by an unasked-for Resurrection. U. C. Fate instantly Awakens; both with God Consciousness and a far better sense of humor. From here, all the way to the hereafter, U. C. Fate goes on a Magical Mythos Tour. He revisits thousands of years of religious history, each of his steps on this Inter and Intra-Religious journey are taken while wearing satiric slippers. Culture, chronology, and traditional time simply lose their fixed frames as Ancient Greeks, modern Rock n Rollers, Catholic Conquistas of Spain, and present day Mormons, argue with tribal American Indians over whose Truth is True. The Incarnated God Quetzalcatl is also here to fulfill Meso-American prophecy (i.e. The Second Coming only salsa style.) After this cosmic Love connection we come to the long awaited meeting with The Buddha. Buddhas Paradiso bridge is only open for Open-Ended-BeginningsThis means U. C. Fate must return Buddhas Tooth! He does so, thereby restoring every religion to their Rightful Rites.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: May 6, 2015
• ISBN: 9781496951045

U. C. Fate

U. C. Fate chooses to remain completely anonymous. However, in his stead, he has designated James Manseau Sauceda, Ph.D., to be his sole and official literary representative. Dr. Sauceda is a native son of Los Angeles. He is the Founding Director of the Multicultural Center at California State University, Long Beach, and a Professor in Communication Studies. He holds a doctorate from USC in Communication Arts and Sciences. His dissertation, Performing James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, included a one-man theatrical performance. Dr. Manseau Sauceda is the author of The Literary Lennon: A Comedy of Letters and, at Yoko Ono’s request, contributed to Memories of John Lennon. As “Dr. Boogie” he created and hosts The Roots ‘n’ Roll Radio Show. Moreover, he has published in the field of Interfaith Dialogues as well as creating many professional workshops on understanding World Religions. Finally, Dr. Manseau Sauceda is a nationally sought after keynote speaker and performance artists who uses his original piano compositions, poetry, prose and drama to explore issues of cultural and religious identity.

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© 2015 U. C. Fate. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 05/05/2015

ISBN: 978-1-4969-5105-2 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4969-5104-5 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014920116

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Buddha’s Tooth

CHAPTERS

1) Buddha’s Tooth

2) ¡ Hey Zeus!

3) Sing a Song of Seven Saviors

4) Wave Oats Ranch Chair Rose

5) Outside the Gates of Eden

6) From Whom Light? From Whom Darkness?

7) Phoenixes Don’t Form Flocks

8) Burning with Birth

9) Another Name For what Never Begins

10) Resident at the Rains Retreat

11) On the Road to Sāvatthī

12) Right In the Jungle In the Back of Beyond

13) Drive Across to the Beyond.

14) Beyond the Yonder of the yond

15) In the Ashes of the Arahant

Dedication

For

My

Beloved

Lynmarie:

You

are

She

who

ignites

All Wonder

in

me

Men of sound intellect and probity weigh with good understanding what lies hidden behind the veil of my strange allegory.

La Divina Commedia

Inferno, "The Heretics

Canto IX: 58-60

Like its predecessor by Dante, Buddha’s Tooth is indeed a strange allegory. The novel is, well, novel in that it is porous to genre; part story of self-discovery, part philosophic critique of religious history, part biography of Buddha, part screenplay, part poetry—and all woven together in a new cosmic comedy.

About the Art-thor

U. C. Fate chooses to remain completely anonymous. However, in his stead, he has designated James Manseau Sauceda, Ph.D. to be his sole and official literary representative. Dr. Sauceda is a native son of Los Angeles. He is the Founding Director of the Multicultural Center at California State University, Long Beach, and a Professor in Communication Studies. He holds a doctorate from USC in Communication Arts and Sciences. His dissertation, Performing James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, included a one-man theatrical performance. Dr. Manseau Sauceda is the author of The Literary Lennon: A Comedy of Letters and, at Yoko Ono’s request, contributed to Memories of John Lennon. As Dr. Boogie he created and hosts The Roots ‘n’ Roll Radio Show. Moreover, he has published in the field of Interfaith Dialogues as well as creating many professional workshops on understanding World Religions. Finally, Dr. Manseau Sauceda is a nationally sought after keynote speaker and performance artist who uses his original piano compositions, poetry, prose and drama to explore issues of cultural and religious identity.

Acknowledgments

With a gatefold of Gratitude:

To CynaeTheos, Goddess Tax Collector, Mayor of MacDougal Street, and Director of Dictaphones.

And to

lucillo vanini (late of pablo fanque’s fair)

your words Burn with Birth (true friendship is a Fire)

Thank You, Brother

Invocation

In the beginning was the beginning of the idea that there had to have been a beginning.

In the ending was the beginning of the ending idea that there had never been a beginning.

In place of the places our needs once needed us to invent came the territory twice beyond any need of our inventions.

In the space of the spaces imagination created came the creation of creation beyond spaces or imagination.

In the new beginning beginning in the ending was the beginning without ending.

CANTICLE

O

N

E

INFERNO

image01.jpg

By Circa 45 BC Roman Sculptor (http://www.answers.com/topic/virgil-large-image) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3APublius_Vergilius_Maro.jpg

"Lift up

Your Eyes

and search…

If Fate calls you on…

Freely, easily,

all by itself it comes…"

Virgil

The Aeneid

The Kingdom of the Dead

Book Six, lines 173-175

image02.jpg

Portrait de Dante by Sandro Botticelli - http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/01/12/wdante12.xmlhttp://www.pileface.com/sollers/article.php3?id_article=312. Licensed under Public domain via Wikimedia Commons - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Portrait_de_Dante.jpg#mediaviewer/File:Portrait_de_Dante.jpg

"WHY DO YOU BUTT AGAINST

FATE’S

ORDINANCE?"

Dante

La Divina Commedia

Inferno: The Virtuous Pagans

Canto IX: 94

AND SO IT WAS that I came to kill God (or at least destroy his dentures.) Since life is terminal (and since cancer was coaching my body to sprint to the finish line) I figured I’d simply take-out God as a kind of grand gesture for humanity. Yep, just snuff um right out of his holy shrine (and then add my own little * stamp of finality to his eternity.) Oh, I’d certainly exit with panache then (no flicker here brother, no T.S. Whimper there sister) I’d disperse my spirit BIG TIME, in a nova, no, in a Super Nova.

Here’s an old Chicano joke for you. So Chevy cleverly reduces the size of an exploding star by naming one of it’s compact cars the Nova, they then try to market it in Mexico only no one tells da brass that in Spanish no va means doesn’t go. ¡Órale! Let’s go buy a ride that doesn’t go anywhere¡! (Well, at least they had the cultural sensitivity to name their company after Che.)

And so it was

That even though Chevrolet had backed the Good Dr. Guevara in Cuba (and by extension all revolutionary insurgencies committed to the complete annihilation of capitalist/imperialist oppressors) Ford Motors is not to be overlooked for its own brand of spiritual wisdom.

And so it was

That Ford, a role-model T of an American car company, stood up unafraid and referenced Buddha early on in its PR by inherently invoking a classic line drawn from the Māhaparinibbāna Sutta:

"…whichever ford Buddha uses to cross the

Ganges, that shall be call the Gotama Ford."

Duly Rendered into American syntax and slanguage as:

"Got a Ford, ma?"

(Duuuuude, for like further study dig deep into the Dīgha Nikāya;

Sutta 16:1.32.)

P/S The mind imbued with wisdom becomes completely free from corruptions.

And just like Chevy’s Mexican fiasco, God, Too, would soon be gone; No Va. Time to move his sorry timelessness off the lot. With O A.P.R. and No Down Payment. (Oh and remember starting this weekend the finance charges begin only after you die.) No Va.

But first, I needed some physical piece of God to work with, or at least a piece of what people believed to be a real piece. Yes, some artifact saturated with sacredness that I could smash. Had to be a public demolition of Divinity too, cuz you know, it’s just not real unless it’s on T.V.

Trans Scent

Dental

I first entered into the Temple of the Tooth after I died for the second time. Now, I certainly never expected to exit (much less be reborn or born again or anything) but I did. (Exit that is.)

Only not in the Christian use of that phrase or, before them, not in the Hindu or Greek notion of being twice born either.

It was something More. Like having survived my second death I somehow became first born. Soooo(take breath)ooooooooooo

So, anyways, in the country of Sri Lanka (formerly the country of Ceylon) at the former King’s Court of Kandy is this sacred relic: Buddha’s Tooth. It sits (if teeth sit at all) in a jeweled casket that gets ritually paraded during Esala Perahera, a wondrous festival filled with costumed elephants, mahouts, and swing-swaggering Kandyan dancers (as all the while you breathe in ancient drums and sneeze out spirituality.)

The Tooth was retrieved at Kushinagara, the cremation site of the Buddha circa 483 BCE, (or maybe it’s 543 or 477, how’s 400?) Well, so say the Sacred Sayers. Anyway, no matter the exact date, it truly was His Tooth (and don’t believe those renegade Portuguese who claim of having stolen and destroying the same Tooth from the Malabars in 1560 CE…riff…raff…Come on, The Tooth was then in Jeffrapatnam secreted for safety by the Singhalese) Follow? Not really. Me neither.

Still, on cremation day following the Buddha’s Nirvana, his left canine Tooth was saved having been summarily sifted from the ashes (from the same ashes others mistakenly took to be just, well you know, ashes, and not the dust of dreams.)

Twenty five hundred years later, or so, our divine dentine still sleeps (probably snoring) but abruptly awakes always in August. Yes, enshrined in splendor, under a hand carried canopy requiring three men on either side of an enormous Temple elephant, plus two more Kandyan Headmen riding on their mini-mastodons (just for traffic control) tusks as headlights the Tooth thrusts forward in hip hobble gait during a procession lasting ten full days and nights (how The Tooth feels in his howdah is unknown) though most of us are easily trapped by the trappings of silver, gold, and opulent fabrics (and it sure seems cool to me to be drowned in petals especially when caught up in the caparisoned tom-tom percussion of pageantry.) Still, I doubt that The Tooth even noticed. Butt then I doubt Everything…particularly doubt itself, or I should say, doubted, speaking from the present tense about my past, which for you is past tense of my present (soon to be, for us, a future where no tenses are necessary.) But, don’t fear, you do stay free so you can still goof off with tenses (if you really like tenses) hard habit to break like my tall triple-shot Turtle Caramel Latte with whip cream and chocolate toppings in the morning (see, I really do know all about God.)

Back to the elephant. Throughout the year this appointed sacred family member, this trans-species adoptee, this descendent of Shovel Tuskers, resides in a breeding stud that is attached to the Temple of the Tooth (just follow the young fireflies through the old Audience Hall of Kings into the Royal Palace Gardens and chenas, maybe count coconuts as you go, fun to watch the Jak trees get jealous) admire, with awakened nostrils, the docile and aromatic cinnamon (that’s the same spice Europeans literally killed to get.) Our mountain with legs casually smashes plantains by the pound in MahaNuwara-the Great City- (city? Huts really, holy hovels) lowered in trees around a half filled moat, but there still is the large pool where thousand- year-old turtles swim (looking not a day over a century.) This chosen One this venerated Temple Elephant Guy looks sooooooooo rad in his special Esala getup; Star headed, burst circled, magic eye mask wearer- (betcha he has his own Temple tailor too, yeah don’t laugh, you go try sewing up a form fitting trunk-tux feted for a festival!)

Didn’t mention the bare feet yet, did I? Or the armor or the chains either. See, the tusks have these protective garments posing as ornaments on their tips. Get the concept? No goring. Need the real threat of death-thrusts to be covered over with color; we must disguise our dying with dazzle designs. Chains on hooves, too, and around the neck which also are conspicuously concealed in beauty (and cancelled out by both wealth and condescension.)

The pious barefoot servants are each carrying staffs (walking sticks ala Moses) only these staffs have hooks for parting the flesh of elephants not the Red Sea (er…ah read the Reed Sea God’s typo, ya know, or some Greek grammarian’s yam suph-up.)

But I’ve left out what you need the most. Left it right out cuz from here on in it gets delicious and dangerous. (Damn it, man, I still feel like leaving it out even as I’m telling you that I left it out) Yep, dangerous and delicious.

Which first?

The Devil Dancers?

The Sneak Preview of Vishnu?

Naw instead get me a mad moon to give you. A mad moon-La Luna (Lun-a-tick-ing-in-the-tall-King) of Ceylon. Get me a mad moon to give you.

Better pause again.

Sometimes it takes torchlight to catch a messiah’s attention. Perhaps because gifts of mystics come from being friends with Fire. And in a torch the magic’s massiveness is now made miniature; a Star on a stick. (On that point I am not at all surprised. On all the rest of it, I am astoundagast, to quote the late great Greek poet, John Lennon; another Star on a stick.)

Into this cosmic chamber of commerce enter The Devil, yes, and his back-up band the fiends of the fire. Here known as Tovil or Devil-Dancers (they are a definite must see in the Estrella Peripheral Allah.) Sacred silences become mashed shrieks set to the bare blare of heavy metals’ ancestor; conch shells (downbeat and clashing cymbols of compassion.) A riot of rainfall in the dry night. Head bangers of heaven.

Before Buddha were the Devil-Dancers. Now I know, of curse, that certain Satan’s start out as soloists (like the counter creator Angra Mainyu of Zoroastrianism, or Mara the Evil One expounding a counterfeit path and trying to deprive the recluse Prince Gotama of life by tossing fantasy and fear into The Way just so he wouldn’t find the Buddha within.) He did anyway. (Find the Is he was, that is.)

Before Buddha, too, was Vishnu. And not just one Hindu Trinity is here. Check it out, God’s Road Company’s on the Serious Torch Light Tour, including the raucous N rollers of Natha and Kataragam (and the ever, forever, pre-Madonna; the Goddess Pattini.)

What a way to mix it all up. A coherent madness. Interlocking nerve endings and syncopated synaptic power chord switches. Sweet Kandy.

Dental High

Genes

My mind malignant, I set out to murder God. I’d use a hammer. Simple and profound. Laughable and terrifying. A hammer. The only weapon we honor every week, Thor’s Day, Hammer God Day, spoken in an all American slur, "Thurs-Day. T.V. crews would be alerted well in advance so hopefully they’ll be sent out in fullest force, instant karma, religious rockumentary", live satellite feed, international shockwaves. Will be picked up by CNN and FOX and Al JeeWiz-Rah then PBS, maybe eventually even the networks (but first Blogged, Pod Cast, and widely bootlegged on the Internet!) Yeah, that’s me putting out a contract on God, a mob hit for the whole World Wide Web to see (just like these newsbreak dancing Devil Dancers, bewildered and accumulated since beginningless time; Hungry Ghosts. Hungry Ghosts. Hungry Ghosts.)

OK

It’s time, doncha think, that we get down to the logistics? But Let It Be broadcast that I didn’t need any Light-Bearer or Day Star to tell me what to do neither. (Later, Iblis will add a few new steps to the line Dance of Deception, but like I said that’s way later. But still before Mick’s Sympathy for the Devil and, of curse, before Harrison’s posthumous The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea which wasn’t, I know, posthumous in the 1930’s when Harold Arlen and Ted Koehler were writing it, nor when Hari Son’s Son, Dhani, recorded it from his dad’s demo.)

So, here’s the succinct scenario…my simple plan was to sledgehammer the jeweled casket (after I, of corsica, had managed to break into its howdah housing) then, gently, I’d remove The Tooth and in an uncontrolled frenzy completely pulverize the palladium (with soft and savage sledge hammering.)

Couple a challenges here.

First up, schlepping a sledgehammer around town taint’ easy. Then, getting past Kandyan Headmen, each equipped with razor-sharp-claw-staffs, also is no joke, then there’s that little bit of me successfully stopping a huge pageant-in-progress just so I can, ya know, nimbly climb up on an elephant (er…uh…make that ascend the Temple Peak of a Behemoth) to do the Dirty Deed Dirt Cheap (ICU see AC/DC.)

Add to this, the multiplication of division. Yes, that’s Di-Vision (as in dreams divided into parcel posts) and Di-Vision (as in doubts about the present absence of seeing.) Add to this, the subtraction of multiplication. Yes, that’s Sub-Traction (as in loss of our grounding) and Sub-Traction (as in being below the high track of our potential.) Don’t you just love the English langwedge? The English slanguage? The Angle-ish languish?

Re: Joyce!

Point is I had no plan. Point is any plan would have failed. Point is any failure would have succeeded. Point is I never needed a plan. Point is pointless because life points everywhere at once. Point is I didn’t know that then. Point is I really did know that then (only I was in denial.) Point is I was afraid to feel. Point is we’re all pointed in the wrong direction. Point is I was afraid to die. Point is there is no death. Point is we’re all pointed in the right direction.

Big Breath

Now here’s how it actually all happened without me (Oh, sure I was there only not as the steering committee chair more like a bewildered bystander or maybe the phrase monumental dorkazoid would be more precise.) Cuz see, unBeknownst to me (doesn’t unbeknownst sound oddly Elizabethan? Oh, the Sacred Shapesphere: To be or not unbe to me, that is the knownst I dost not see in thee) Cuz see, unbe- knownst to me, on the very night that I had calendared out for my own spectacular unexpected execution, they had already scheduled a Special Showing of The Tooth! Yes, a sacred open – casket kinda deal too, the roof lifted (drum roll) to reveal (fanfare) The Tooth (uh, gasp). How bout that kiddo? A first ever-public viewing, a premier up-yours photo-op par-excellence. All concocted by the TV Team (who else) to boost ratings (why else) with a dash and dollop of Cirque Du Soleil (what else) right smack in the middle of the madness and the center of Esala Perahera (where else) and at the exact moment of midnight (when else.)

Break it down brother, Yo right, so the real deal dawg is that I felt stupendously stupid about all of this serendipity. See, I wanted to suffer, man, ya know? Not have the whole damn thing just served up! After all, I brought my own headline grabbing production, only now to be pre-empted, out-Donald, McMoused and post-toasted!

Too easy. No hero. So undramatic. Without even a cameo part that would sit you on the edge of your seat of cynicism. Only an unearned opportunity. So, yes, all I did was just surprise the silent sacred circle that had so perfectly spotlighted The Tooth by running up with my mere massive hammer and striking the mother hard. Head on. No obstruction. Couldn’t ask for better lighting (or more swing space); a sledgehammer’s dream (you Go Saint Peter Gabriel). And as fearsome fate would have it-all filmed live as I hammered out my deadly intent on God.

Only, you see, divinities are tricky.

The damn Tooth broke the goddamn hammer! (Actually more than just broke it, the hammer was, itself, hammered into ten thousand pieces – (Imagine, all this from one diminutive dentine).

Fortunately, being psychotic has its advantages.

I just acted out again (even Before any of the camera crew or stunned spectators had reacted to my first attack) Picking up The Tooth, I slam-dunked the tiny tusk, the spiritual spur, the theocratic thorn, into the nearest dish of burning charcoal (such flaming pies being conveniently available at most of yer sacred sites, thank god)

But, this timeless time,

a lotus flower rose gently upwards from the flames and The Tooth (that I had expected to be by now but a barbequed barb) dared to emerge unburned, unharmed, and nestled (ever so softly) into the lotus flower’s petals…

THEN

I was beaten to death. Brutally beaten.

"and all the pack sprang on him;

with their fangs they opened him

and tore him savagely"

(Inferno, Canto XIV: 126-128)

The shock by now had melted away, any and all paralysis dissolved and transmuted into action. The meek monks instantly being molded into some kind of molten revenge machine! Can’t remember who struck the lucky fatal blow, though it was delivered with the brand of hate only religion can bestow. You know, that wrongful and furious force that only comes from Righteous Indignation. That monstrous momentum due to Moral Outrage (that defends the life of God with the death of innocent others.)

That, fer instance, fueled Moses into ordering the murder of 3,000 of his own followers-all in one day-Just imagine that, a so-called profit of God being respunchable for killing 3,000 of God’s own Chosen People- all in one day—

"…strap on your swords and go through

the camp, killing your relatives, your friends,

and your neighbors." (Ex-Odious 32:27)

or put more prettily:

"…slay every man his brother, and every

every man his companion, and every man

his neighbor." (X Box 32:27)

The your being referred to here i.e. the perps, the thugs who are actually doin’ allah this indiscriminate butchering of the Brethren; this cold blooded death squad (it turns out) is none other than the personal Militia of Moses (MOM for short.) Now, good ole MOM is made up of really unstable men who are all members of Moses’ own tribe, The Levites. The Militia of Moses, dear ole MOM, will be rewarded handsomely for this Moses instituted massacre—yep, their reward for such off the hook out of control barbarism? The sweet blessings of the holy priesthood!

(ONLY IN SACRED SCRIPTURE)

So, why allah this murder spree? (One making Manson look the mild mendicant) why all of this killing was because Moses, apparently, just felt too embarrassed by his own incompetence as a leader. All because Moses was mad that he couldn’t effectively compete with the lusty allure of idols (Moses being incited to his unbridled brutality by the very sound of the Israelite’s singing to golden oldies).

But, you’d maybe think that after having just spent 40 days and 40 nights face to face with God, that you might come off the conversation with a bit more leniency (or, possibly even a Loving outlook?!) Well, at least not so psycho where he’d be like Completely Stressed Out!! And all of this was over a local little party for the deaf and dumb bull-calf (a community effort, by the way, made possible from the sacrificing of their own gold earrings—Well? Isn’t that better than the actual killing of a young bull for the ordination of priests?)

Anyway, why would anyone use this festive occasion to take the two tablets of the Law, just written an hour ago by the finger of God, and breaking them into pieces in a hissy fit of anger?! (Have you any idea what they’d fetch today on E-Bay?)

So, instead of