Worms and...Nature Knows No Compassion?

 Isaac Bashevis Singer

PGO NOTE: Because this blog is for the Central New York State Buddhist Sangha you might wonder why I am posting quotes from Noble Prize winning author Isaac Bashevis Singer here. 


I have just recently discovered Mr. Singer's work and I find it to be so wonderfully refreshing and brilliant and in sinc with much of my own thinking that I can hardly put his vintage novels down. I do not agree with all his sentiments that I quote but I find them worthy of note. I intend to read every one of his stories that I can get my hands. Having read several of his novels and numerous short stories in the past few weeks I have yet to be disappointed. I highly recommend him.

The relation to Buddhism here is the fact that Mr. Singer, the immigrant son of a Polish rabbi, fills his writings with themes of spirituality, religion, religious philosophy and analysis of the human condition with much speculation about who we are, what we are, why we are here, where we came from, where we are going and what God might or might not be if it exists at all.

From The Mentor, Part 2:

"Nature knows no compassion. As far as nature is concerned, we are like worms."

[This reminds me of a statement I read by a Buddhist scholar which is as follows:
"God is compassionate, humankind has some compassion, nature has no compassion." The implication here was that this was a very good reason for showing respect for Mother Nature].

You taught me the Bible, and my father stuffed me with the miracles that God performed for the Jews. But after what happened to them one must be absolutely stupid and insensitive to believe in God and all that drivel. What's more, to believe in a compassionate God is the worst betrayal of the victims. A rabbi from America visited here [PGO: nascent mid 20th century Israel], and he preached that all the six million Jews sit in paradise, gorge themselves on the meat of the Leviathan, and study the Torah with angels. You don't need to be a psychologist to figure out what that kind of belief compensates for. [PGO :?].
In Jerusalem there's a group that dabbles in psychic research. I became involved in a little--I even attended their seances. It's all fake. If they don't swindle others, they deceive themselves. Without a functioning brain, there is no thought. If a hereafter really existed, it would be the greatest cruelty. Why should a soul remember all the pettiness of its existence? What would be so wonderful if my father's soul continued to live and recall how his partner stole from him, how his house burned down, how my sister Mirele died in childbirth, and then the ghettos, the camps, and the Nazi ovens. If there is one iota of justice in nature, it is the obliteration of the spirit when the body decays. I don't understand how one can thin differently.

"Orthodox Kismet" Peter Gumaer Ogden, Santa Fe, New Mexico. Mixed media collage ca. 2008.

[Click on image to enlarge].

PGO: It doesn't get much more cynical than that! Why shouldn't a soul wish to remember all the joys of its earthy life?

"There is some mysterious strength in fools. they are deeply rooted in the primeval chaos."

"...there is some weakness even in the strong."

CONTACT: peterogden7x7@yahoo.com