Name of God

I was not sure what to make of Alberto Manguel’s reference (in “Wordplay,” No. 63) to Arthur C. Clarke’s short story “The Nine Billion Names of God,” in which Tibetans in a lamasery search for the name of God. One must assume the Tibetans at the lamasery are either Buddhist or Bon practitioners, both of which are monistic and both of which deny the existence of one God. Manguel’s point in relation to language is undermined by his (and Geist’s) apparent unawareness that in this science fiction piece, Clarke loosely refers to God; a better title might be “The Nine Billion Names of Nirvana (God-consciousness).” No one expects writers to travel to countries for accurate first-hand research, but computers are sure useful for such purposes, including an acknowledgement by Manguel of the radical difference between divine rule and natural law.