MoB, Naoe, and Alternatives to Buddhism
Jun. 13th, 2009 01:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
labingiSPOILERS for the end of MoB...
I am a little brain-addled from movie-making logistics, but that's not going to stop me from trying to articulate some Mirage of Blaze thoughts inspired by the fascinating commentary on Buddhism that has been going on here. We've had lots of discussion of whether MoB is, in fact, anti-Buddhist. I don't think it is; however, it may be antithetical to Buddhism. As![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
skinintheway has observed, Naoe's avowal that he'll remain alive forever to celebrate his love for Takaya almost reads like a parody of a Bhodisattva's vow to remain in the mundane world to ease the suffering of others. The former vow is personal, the latter impersonal. The former is connected to a particular love, the latter to universal compassion. The former rejects enlightenment (rejecting reincarnation and clinging to attachment); the latter is based on having achieved enlightenment. Put simply, Buddhism is based on rejecting attachment; Mirage of Blaze is, perhaps, the ultimate celebration of attachment.
So why is this not anti-Buddhist? I'd say it's hard to be anti-Buddhist (i.e. really opposed to it), much harder than it is to be, say, "anti-Christian." Christianity (traditionally, not necessarily today) is a religion based on promulgating a single truth and casting those who don't accept it as sinful, damned, evil, or at best, primitive heathens who have never heard the Word. It is very easy to say, "I'm opposed to a belief that says my morality is immoral and my conscientious objection punishable by eternal torment." Buddhism (as I slenderly know it) is also a religion based on promulgating a single truth (a single way to ending suffering), but if you don't want to follow that path, there isn't much of a consequence: you'll keep on suffering. If you ever decide you've had enough suffering and/or your ways of overcoming it aren't working, the path will still be there for you. Buddhism is a religion with which it's very easy to agree to disagree. To be really "anti-Buddhist" would entail an argument that the Buddhist path to enlightenment isn't worthwhile for anyone, which, minimally, takes a lot of sticking your nose in other people's business.
I don't think MoB argues this. It has many examples of monks, priests, and ordinary people who seem to live well in a Buddhist paradigm. Indeed, the end of the story (so I'm told) sees Irobe deciding to pass on and be reincarnated. This certainly seems an appropriate choice for him, and he is certainly an admirable character. (Then again, I still don't know what's up with that Miroku stuff.)
But I do think MoB argues that Buddhism is not "The Path" for everyone. Naoe is always our centerpiece for Buddhist commentary. Naoe is a bad Buddhist. This doesn't mean that he's a bad man; it just means that he has ended up being an expert practitioner of what, for him, is the wrong religion. He's not a bad monk insofar as he uses his considerable power and knowledge very ably and usually appropriately to help other people. But that's his job; in his personal life, none of it helps him. Naoe often speaks of his ongoing conflict with Kagetora as their perfect way. This obviously doesn't mean a way devoid of suffering. Rather, he chooses the suffering over the steps he would have to take to end it. Again and again, he explicitly chooses his love over contentment. He refuses enlightenment in the name of attachment. Doing this causes him a lot of angst because he has been taught that the Buddhist path is "correct"; he believes, as a monk, that he "should" strive to overcome attachment, and it distresses him that he so profoundly doesn't want to.
I've often noted that Naoe reminds me of Ivan Karamazov. Both are exceptionally deep and philosophical thinkers with an absolute inability to switch their brains off. Both are bothered by the streak of coldness in themselves that makes them unable to "love their neighbor," despite spending lots of time thinking about their moral duties to humanity. Yet both are capable of great personal passion. Both view themselves as base yet remain excessively proud. And both have a deep-seated, personal (and even moral) aversion to the religion they were born into and have been taught to regard as "right." Because Ivan's Christianity keeps its practitioners on a tighter leash than Naoe's Buddhism, Ivan is more actively a rebel. Naoe, I think, has great regard for Buddhism sometimes (though, like Ivan, he also has random moments of professing an atheism he clearly doesn't really believe in). Yet both ultimately refuse inclusion in their religion, without denouncing the religion itself. Both "hand back their ticket." Ivan doesn't want to go to heaven on terms he finds morally indefensible. Naoe doesn't want to be enlightened at the cost of losing his love for Kagetora.
Where Naoe contradicts Buddhism is not in refusing enlightenment. Buddhism typically doesn't express much problem with that. It is in contending that the refusal of enlightenment is just as good as (or maybe even better than) attaining it. By Brothers Karamazov analogy, the typically "unenlightened" is Dmitri, the simple, sinful man enmeshed in life's pettiness, looking with reverence on those holy people he recognizes as his moral betters. But Naoe, again, is not Dmitri; he's Ivan. He can't stop at saying, "I'm a poor, weak man, trapped in sin/illusion, etc." (though he sometimes feels this way). He goes further, all the way to: "I am right to regard your teaching as inadequate to my reality."
quaint_twilight (I think it was) commented a while ago that MoB seemed to her not a Buddhist but a Shinto epic, with its emphasis on purifying the spirit. I think I'm increasingly coming around to this point of view. I know little about Shintoism, so my thoughts are superficial. But as far as I understand, Shintoism is fundamentally animistic: it is based on the belief that the physical world has spirit(s) naturally enmeshed in it. Trees, mountains, rocks, shrines, waterfalls, the homes of the ancestors: all of these are enspirited. And these spirits are not "ghosts," as we in the West tend to identify spirits that have not appropriately "passed on." On the contrary, they are integral to the nature of the world. Body and spirit are meant to exist together. Concern with the physical is not an "illusion" from which to awake. Rather it is a precondition of normal existence.
This seems the view Mirage of Blaze most closely espouses in the Naoe-Kagetora discourse. We have, for example, the extensive symbology of their physical sexual relationship as a reproductive union of spirit (in fact, this is more literal than symbolic within the text). We have Takaya's special affection for Naoe's Yoshiaki body; though he clearly loves Naoe beyond that body, it has a special significance for him. We have Naoe's avowals that he will inhabit any number of bodies in order to remain with Kagetora--but he never imagines this existence outside a body (except as a very temporary necessity).
Finally, I find myself reminded of Taoist discourse. The ideal of life that seems to emerge is not based on "transcending" or "destroying" illusion/suffering/worldly ties. Rather it is based on finding one's own right way of living within the world. (And, thus, seems very ecological, but that's another essay.)
I am a little brain-addled from movie-making logistics, but that's not going to stop me from trying to articulate some Mirage of Blaze thoughts inspired by the fascinating commentary on Buddhism that has been going on here. We've had lots of discussion of whether MoB is, in fact, anti-Buddhist. I don't think it is; however, it may be antithetical to Buddhism. As
skinintheway has observed, Naoe's avowal that he'll remain alive forever to celebrate his love for Takaya almost reads like a parody of a Bhodisattva's vow to remain in the mundane world to ease the suffering of others. The former vow is personal, the latter impersonal. The former is connected to a particular love, the latter to universal compassion. The former rejects enlightenment (rejecting reincarnation and clinging to attachment); the latter is based on having achieved enlightenment. Put simply, Buddhism is based on rejecting attachment; Mirage of Blaze is, perhaps, the ultimate celebration of attachment.So why is this not anti-Buddhist? I'd say it's hard to be anti-Buddhist (i.e. really opposed to it), much harder than it is to be, say, "anti-Christian." Christianity (traditionally, not necessarily today) is a religion based on promulgating a single truth and casting those who don't accept it as sinful, damned, evil, or at best, primitive heathens who have never heard the Word. It is very easy to say, "I'm opposed to a belief that says my morality is immoral and my conscientious objection punishable by eternal torment." Buddhism (as I slenderly know it) is also a religion based on promulgating a single truth (a single way to ending suffering), but if you don't want to follow that path, there isn't much of a consequence: you'll keep on suffering. If you ever decide you've had enough suffering and/or your ways of overcoming it aren't working, the path will still be there for you. Buddhism is a religion with which it's very easy to agree to disagree. To be really "anti-Buddhist" would entail an argument that the Buddhist path to enlightenment isn't worthwhile for anyone, which, minimally, takes a lot of sticking your nose in other people's business.
I don't think MoB argues this. It has many examples of monks, priests, and ordinary people who seem to live well in a Buddhist paradigm. Indeed, the end of the story (so I'm told) sees Irobe deciding to pass on and be reincarnated. This certainly seems an appropriate choice for him, and he is certainly an admirable character. (Then again, I still don't know what's up with that Miroku stuff.)
But I do think MoB argues that Buddhism is not "The Path" for everyone. Naoe is always our centerpiece for Buddhist commentary. Naoe is a bad Buddhist. This doesn't mean that he's a bad man; it just means that he has ended up being an expert practitioner of what, for him, is the wrong religion. He's not a bad monk insofar as he uses his considerable power and knowledge very ably and usually appropriately to help other people. But that's his job; in his personal life, none of it helps him. Naoe often speaks of his ongoing conflict with Kagetora as their perfect way. This obviously doesn't mean a way devoid of suffering. Rather, he chooses the suffering over the steps he would have to take to end it. Again and again, he explicitly chooses his love over contentment. He refuses enlightenment in the name of attachment. Doing this causes him a lot of angst because he has been taught that the Buddhist path is "correct"; he believes, as a monk, that he "should" strive to overcome attachment, and it distresses him that he so profoundly doesn't want to.
I've often noted that Naoe reminds me of Ivan Karamazov. Both are exceptionally deep and philosophical thinkers with an absolute inability to switch their brains off. Both are bothered by the streak of coldness in themselves that makes them unable to "love their neighbor," despite spending lots of time thinking about their moral duties to humanity. Yet both are capable of great personal passion. Both view themselves as base yet remain excessively proud. And both have a deep-seated, personal (and even moral) aversion to the religion they were born into and have been taught to regard as "right." Because Ivan's Christianity keeps its practitioners on a tighter leash than Naoe's Buddhism, Ivan is more actively a rebel. Naoe, I think, has great regard for Buddhism sometimes (though, like Ivan, he also has random moments of professing an atheism he clearly doesn't really believe in). Yet both ultimately refuse inclusion in their religion, without denouncing the religion itself. Both "hand back their ticket." Ivan doesn't want to go to heaven on terms he finds morally indefensible. Naoe doesn't want to be enlightened at the cost of losing his love for Kagetora.
Where Naoe contradicts Buddhism is not in refusing enlightenment. Buddhism typically doesn't express much problem with that. It is in contending that the refusal of enlightenment is just as good as (or maybe even better than) attaining it. By Brothers Karamazov analogy, the typically "unenlightened" is Dmitri, the simple, sinful man enmeshed in life's pettiness, looking with reverence on those holy people he recognizes as his moral betters. But Naoe, again, is not Dmitri; he's Ivan. He can't stop at saying, "I'm a poor, weak man, trapped in sin/illusion, etc." (though he sometimes feels this way). He goes further, all the way to: "I am right to regard your teaching as inadequate to my reality."
quaint_twilight (I think it was) commented a while ago that MoB seemed to her not a Buddhist but a Shinto epic, with its emphasis on purifying the spirit. I think I'm increasingly coming around to this point of view. I know little about Shintoism, so my thoughts are superficial. But as far as I understand, Shintoism is fundamentally animistic: it is based on the belief that the physical world has spirit(s) naturally enmeshed in it. Trees, mountains, rocks, shrines, waterfalls, the homes of the ancestors: all of these are enspirited. And these spirits are not "ghosts," as we in the West tend to identify spirits that have not appropriately "passed on." On the contrary, they are integral to the nature of the world. Body and spirit are meant to exist together. Concern with the physical is not an "illusion" from which to awake. Rather it is a precondition of normal existence.This seems the view Mirage of Blaze most closely espouses in the Naoe-Kagetora discourse. We have, for example, the extensive symbology of their physical sexual relationship as a reproductive union of spirit (in fact, this is more literal than symbolic within the text). We have Takaya's special affection for Naoe's Yoshiaki body; though he clearly loves Naoe beyond that body, it has a special significance for him. We have Naoe's avowals that he will inhabit any number of bodies in order to remain with Kagetora--but he never imagines this existence outside a body (except as a very temporary necessity).
Finally, I find myself reminded of Taoist discourse. The ideal of life that seems to emerge is not based on "transcending" or "destroying" illusion/suffering/worldly ties. Rather it is based on finding one's own right way of living within the world. (And, thus, seems very ecological, but that's another essay.)
