the young monk was in the process of having himself crucified on a cross when his guru happened to walk by. after rebuking him harshly and dismissing the others with him, he questioned the monk about his motive.
“i wanted to get god’s attention,” he said.
the monk told the guru that he wanted a spotless world. he wanted the human race to be spotless of sin. he wanted a pristine humanity. he wanted everyone to love each other as the good lord intended. he wanted to rearrange the human genome to make it a gentler, caring creature of the earth. war and murder and violent crime would be a thing of the past, an aberration corrected. the human race perfected.
his guru gave him a thoughtful look and smiled. “you are implying that god wanted a conflict of sorts between his creations.”
“i did not mean to be disrespectful,” said the monk.
the guru told him that some truths are not easy to accept, but he needed to understand that god wanted hunger to dominate and blood lust to rule the species. the ones with sharp teeth and big bite are his tools in this world. the rest are their sustenance. he made stomachs to bring forth the beast soul that lay dormant in the animal nature of earth’s creatures, to be roused by hunger and want.
“he did not want a perfect creature,” said the guru. “he wanted something flawed and vicious.”
freewill was just the beginning. there was also the ego, an individual identity that needed to be cultivated and hardened in the toothy species so that they knew full well that love went only as far as their own kind and no further than their skin. the group’s separate identity needed to be preserved. separate and certainly not equal. that would be too egalitarian, too self-defeating. selfishness needed to be encouraged to give rise to other self-centered tendencies and conflicts. war was a game that needed to be encouraged. self-preservation insured that greed was a built-in component.
“god, the supreme, knew exactly what he was doing,” said the guru.
before leaving to go meditate, he told the young monk not to try crucifying himself again. it had already been attempted and it had done no good.