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| | | Book Name: God is Dead, Now Zen is the Only Living Truth | Previous Next | |
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intense understanding. When he says all religions are against God, he is saying God gives you sex, and religions teach you celibacy. What do they mean? God gives you greed, and religions teach you no greed. God gives you violence, and religions teach you no violence. God gives you anger, and religions say no anger. It is such a clear-cut argument, that all religions are against God.
Ivan Karamazov said, "If I meet him anywhere I am going to kill him, but before killing him I am going to ask all these questions."
The whole novel is a tremendous argument. The third brother is not their real brother. He is born of a woman who was not the wife of their father, who was only a servant. The third brother is kept out of the eyes of society, so he remains retarded. He is almost like an animal: he eats, drinks, and lives in a dark place in the vast palace of the Karamazovs. Certainly his life is absolutely meaningless.
And Ivan Karamazov said, "Think about our cousin-brother, illegitimate, who God also created. What is the meaning of his life? He cannot even come out in the sun, in the air. Our father keeps him shut in darkness. Nobody ever comes to see him, nobody ever comes to greet him. Nobody is his friend in this whole earth. He knows nobody else. He cannot speak well because he has never spoken to anybody. His whole life is just like an animal: eating, drinking, sleeping; eating, drinking, sleeping.... He will never know any woman, he will never know any love. What will happen to his sex instinct?"
It is a very intense argument about all the problems any intelligent man is going to face. Ivan is bringing all those problems: "What do you believe God says about my cousin-brother? What is his meaning? Why has he created him this way? If anybody is responsible, he is responsible, and I am going to take revenge. Just let me find him! And I hope," Ivan Karamazov says, "that Nietzsche is not right, that he is not dead. Otherwise I will miss the chance to murder him. I want to murder him so that the whole of humanity becomes freed from him."
But once you make humanity free... freedom for what? For fear? For death? For suicide? For murder?
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