[Buddha-l] review of Shiva exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum

[JKirkpatrick]

" They embark on big feel-good social projects, like creating the
world, then have doubts, regrets, urges to trash their work and
start again."

This is why some folks say that God is, or was, an artist.
Artists (like gods) are notoriously fickle. (See scripture.)
Their love cannot be relied upon despite offerings, appeasements,
and so on. One of them chose the role of son of God and look what
happened to him, with his own connivance.  Artists are
self-serving, self-referencing sociopaths, even as they create
things that often make us think or enjoy certain prospects that
they lay before us. If our world had no artists, it would not be
a better place. Is this an argument for God? 

Probably not. Perhaps this is why thinking folks decided to dump
God. God is not an artist. S/he is an hypostasised (therefore
unreal), wishful or fearful form of us.  Meanwhile, artists come
and go, they create, we see and enjoy or loathe their works, they
are human like us. They live, they suffer, they enjoy, they die. 

Gods aren't humans. The suttas do not allocate gods to a very
elevated loka, since it's a realm of delusion and forever sensual
pleasure. It appeared I believe in Hindu and Buddhist history as
a means for winning the karmic lottery, as an enticement for
humans, for those who choose not to aspire higher but go in for
good behavior. 

Dealings with the gods--Shiva, Vishnu, the rest-- are
transactional, based on contract. Insight in Buddhism, far as I
could tell, is not based on contract, but simply on effort and I
guess for some, trust in the record.

Joanna