My Wife Is a Scientist

The great battle

The battle between the Yoruba pantheon and the Jade Emperor’s Heavenly Court did not end in glorious victory or crushing defeat, which would have caused turmoil in the heavenly court of every pantheon around the universe. In that sense, many could actually wonder what roles human beings may have. It would be shorter than just saying that they potentialize their exponential power. The more you try to worship them, the more they get power. In that sense, every deity would get infinitely powerful beyond any kind of letter of the divine rank but without surpassing it.

Too often, notions of God have been used as a means to control and to promote a narrow worldview. In Naming the Unnameable, renowned theologian and author Matthew Fox ignites our imaginations by offering a colorful range of divine names gathered from scientists and poets and mystics past and present, inviting us to always begin where true spirituality begins: from experience. In that sense, Divinity Connection explores the sacred and divine aspects of life, encouraging a sense of unity with the divine within and around us, fostering spiritual growth. For it to become true, we need to embody it within the terms of what it means to be alive. In doing so, we live by it.

It turned with silence.

Gautama the Buddha, the Awakened One stepped into the contested sky between African clouds and Chinese stars. He did not arrive with armies or declarations. He simply sat beneath a tree that bloomed in the space where no tree should exist, legs crossed, eyes half-closed, the faint smile of one who had already seen the end of every possible war.

In the world. Indeed, the founder of the tradition, Siddhartha Gautama Sakyamuni (the “Buddha” or “awakened one”), famously refused to answer questions about such airy metaphysical ponderings like “Does the world have a beginning or not?”, “Does God exist?” and “Does the soul perish after death or not?” Convinced that human knowledge was best suited and most usefully devoted to the diagnosis and cure of human beings’ own self-destructive psychological obsessions and attachments, the Buddha compared a person convinced he could find the answers to such ultimate questions to a mortally wounded soldier on a battlefield who, dying from arrow-delivered poison, demanded to know everything about his shooter before being taken to a doctor.

Ultimate knowledge cannot be attained, at least cannot be attained before the follies and frailties of human life bring one to despair. Unless human beings attain self-reflective, meditative enlightenment, ignorance will always have the upper hand over knowledge in their lives, and this is the predicament they must solve in order to alleviate their poorly understood suffering. The early traditional texts show how the Buddha developed a method for refusing to answer such questions in pursuit of ultimate, metaphysical knowledge, a method which came to be dubbed the “four error” denial (catuskoti). When asked, for example, whether the world has a beginning or not, a Buddhist should respond by denying all the logically alternative answers to the query; “No, the world does not have a beginning, it does not fail to have a beginning, it does not have and not have a beginning, nor does it neither have nor not have a beginning.”

This denial is not seen to be logically defective in the sense that it violates the law of excluded middle (A cannot have both B and not-B), because this denial is more a principled refusal to answer than a counter-thesis, it is more a decision than a proposition. That is to say that one cannot object to this “four error” denial by simply saying “the world either has a beginning or it does not” because the Buddha is recommending to his followers that they should take no position on the matter (this is in modern propositional logic known as illocution). This denial was recommended because wondering about such questions was seen by the Buddha as a waste of valuable time, time that should be spent on the much more important and doable task of psychological self-mastery. The early Buddhists, unlike their Brahminical philosophical counterparts, were skeptics.

But in their own view, their skepticism did not make the Buddhists pessimists, but on the contrary, optimists, for even though the human mind could not answer ultimate questions, it could diagnose and cure its own must basic maladies, and that surely was enough.

The Orishas paused. Shango’s axe hovered mid-strike. Ogun’s blades lowered. Even Olorun’s golden light dimmed with recognition.

The Jade Emperor’s celestial generals held their positions, scrolls of fate trembling in their hands.

Gautama spoke. His voice was soft, yet it carried across every realm like the first breath after long suffering.

Gautama: All this clamor. All this righteous thunder. All this beautiful, ancient anger. You fight over which truth should rule the sky, yet both of you are already suffering because you believe one truth must devour the other. That is to say that no one could ever pretend harmony is possible when every side still clings to the idea that only their way can be complete. The thing is, this love cannot pretend it does not include the middle way between order and wildness, between law and life.

He looked first at Olorun and the Orishas.

Gautama: Your dance is beautiful. Your fire brings rain and growth and laughter that shakes the earth. But when the dance refuses to end, even joy becomes another chain. When the storm believes it must always answer injustice with greater storm, suffering simply learns new shapes.

Then to the Jade Emperor and his court.

Gautama: Your order is precise. Your ledgers try to make consequence fair. But when law becomes more important than the living hearts it was meant to protect, justice turns into another form of cruelty. When the wheel of karma spins only because it has always spun, even balance becomes a cage.

The battlefield grew profoundly still.

Gautama continued, gentle but unrelenting.

Gautama: There is no final victory here. Only the choice to stop pretending one sky must consume the other. Let the thunder speak when thunder is needed. Let the ledgers record when recording serves life. Let the Orishas dance and the dragons bring rain without one needing to erase the other. The middle way does not weaken either side. It simply refuses to let either become trapped in its own truth.

For a long moment, nothing moved.

Then Olorun lowered his hand. The golden light softened.

Olorun: Your words carry the weight of one who has walked through every illusion. We will not yield our sky. But we will… share it. Honestly.

It ended in negotiation, exhaustion, and the slow, stubborn recognition that two ancient truths could share the same sky without one needing to swallow the other. That is to say that no one could ever pretend different ways of ordering the cosmos could meet without changing each other forever. The thing is, this love cannot pretend it does not include the tension of old gods learning how to make room.

After Shango’s thunder clashed against celestial dragons, Ogun’s iron blades rang against heavenly spears, and Yemoja’s tidal fury met ordered rains for the war has shifted. It moved from open heavenly combat to something quieter and far more dangerous: influence across the mortal realms where African and Chinese diasporas lived side by side, prayed in overlapping languages, and carried both ancestral names and new hyphenated identities.

For the Indus, it would be quite different from the Dao. If you don’t find God here, where you are, then it is not possible anywhere else. Where the mind dissolves, Shiva is there. Be established wherever you are. The moment you are established and centered, you see that there is divinity present everywhere. This is meditation. One of the names of the Lord Shiva is Virupaksha, meaning one who is formless yet sees all. We know that there is air all around us, and we can feel the air as well. But what if the air also starts feeling you? Space is all around us; we identify space. But what if space also recognizes and feels your presence? This happens. Only we don’t know it. Scientists know this, and they call it the theory of relativity. The one who sees and that which is seen are both affected when seen. The Divine is all around you and is seeing you. He doesn’t have a form. He is the formless core of existence and the goal. He is the seer, the sight, and the scene. This formless Divinity is Shiva. To simply wake up and experience this Shiva tattva is Shivratri.

Usually when there is celebration, awareness is lost. Deep rest in celebration with awareness is Shivratri. When you face some problem, you become aware and alert. We are at rest when everything is well; on Shivratri we rest with awareness. It is said that a yogi remains awake when everybody else is sleeping. For a yogi, every day is Shivratri. Lord Shiva is beautifully explained in a verse by Adi Shankaracharya (Gurudev recites a few lines from the verse).

Olorun and the Jade Emperor met again, not as enemies but as old sovereigns who had grown tired of unnecessary ruin.

Olorun: Your order is beautiful, Jade One. It records. It balances. It tries to make consequences consistent. But your ledgers forget the living pulse, the laughter after rain, the dance that has no purpose except joy, and the child who asks why and is not punished for asking.

The Jade Emperor, seated upon his throne of jade and red lacquer, stroked his long beard once, eyes calm but heavy with centuries of administration.

"Perhaps," he replied, his voice reverberating like distant thunder, "but order provides a foundation upon which joy can flourish. Without structure, how can the dance of life be appreciated?" Well, it would be normal for a commander to glorify the presence of the wholeness of the truth. He leaned forward, intrigued by Olorun's perspective, eager to explore the delicate balance between chaos and harmony.

Jade Emperor: And your wildness, Sky Father, brings life but also chaos. Your Orishas love fiercely, but their love can become a storm. Your people suffer because the gods play too freely with fate. My court at least attempts to make suffering meaningful through recorded karma.

Shango stepped forward, lightning crackling around his double axe.

Shango: Meaningful suffering is still suffering. We do not need your scrolls to know when justice has been served. The thunder decides. The earth answers.

A celestial general replied with measured calm:

General: Thunder without law becomes tyranny. Your justice is personal. Ours is written and witnessed. Both have value. Neither is complete.

The true negotiation happened not in grand declarations but in small, persistent moments across the world.

In Lagos and Guangzhou, in New York and São Paulo, in the dreams of migrants and the prayers of their children, the Orishas and the Heavenly Court began to influence each other.

Yemoja’s waters met the dragon kings of rain. Sometimes they fought. Sometimes they danced. The oceans grew richer for it.

Ogun’s iron met the celestial forges. Weapons were broken and reforged into tools that could build instead of only destroy.

Obatala’s calm wisdom spoke with the Jade Emperor’s bureaucratic patience. Together they began quietly rewriting certain karmic ledgers, not erasing justice, but making room for mercy that did not require perfect scores.

Even the Eight Immortals took interest.

Lü Dongbin dueled Shango in a dream once, sword against axe, and both walked away laughing, bloodied but strangely respectful.

Li Tieguai sat with Obatala under a baobab tree that existed in no single realm, sharing wine and stories of being broken and still choosing to walk.

The battle did not end in victory for either side.

It ended in the rarest outcome of all:

Mutual recognition.

Olorun and the Jade Emperor met one final time at the border between sky and sky, where African clouds touched Chinese stars.

Olorun: Your order has beauty. Mine has life. Perhaps the heavens are large enough for both.

Jade Emperor: Your wildness has truth. Mine has continuity. Let the wheel turn without one needing to devour the other.

Shango and the celestial generals exchanged wary nods of respect.

Ogun and the heavenly smiths shared techniques for forging weapons that could also heal.

Yemoja and the dragon kings agreed to let their waters meet without one conquering the other.

The pantheons did not merge.

They simply stopped pretending the other should not exist.

Somewhere far away, in the small house in Carlisle, Karl felt the distant echo through the Omega ring two ancient powers choosing honest coexistence instead of endless war.

He smiled faintly, turning the ring on his finger.

Karl: Even the gods are learning how to finish old conflicts cleanly.

The honest new story continued.

And somewhere in the heavens, African and Chinese skies learned how to share the same horizon without one needing to swallow the other.

The battle between one African pantheon and the Jade Emperor had not ended in conquest.

It had ended in the rarest victory of all:

THE GREATNESS OF GOD.