All Souls' Night

Okay! i haven't yet posted today, so here we go:

Buddhism is one of those religions that groups people. That is, they usually belong to a temple that belongs to a sect, etc, etc, just like Christians usually belong to a church that belongs to a Church (the difference is in the capitals), etc, etc. That said, there is the occasional rogue. Usually we know of them throughout history because they started their own sect, or Church, and therefore are noteworthy. Still, not everyone can do that, and not everyone wants to.

See, I'm a Buddhist because I read the Prajnaparamita (Perfection of Wisdom) in 8,000 Lines, supposedly one of the most difficult and confusing sutras out there, and said, 'hey, this makes sense!' Everyone else in the class was going on and on about what did they mean and how did it work like that, and I was like, dude, it's obvious, you can't tell?

So I decided, why not accept the world view and the god system and the types of rebirth (which also made sense in the same way the Prajnaparamita did, and gets reflected all across various early religions / animistic belief systems (BTW, screw you 美術史の先生, for insisting on that distinction, like it really makes much of a difference) all over the place) and really become a Buddhist? And I did.

But I don't belong to a sect, much less a temple, so I'm a rogue Buddhist.

And there we have the promised explanation.

Not actually a meme, but yoinked from hime1999 anyway.

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( on creation )

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( on religion )

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( on existance )

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Most everyone is gone, so I don't have much off-hand to give thanks for. It's mostly people, anyway: Kiriko, Miyake-sensei, Pronko-sensei and his wondeful productions, the opportunities I've had, Yamashita-sensei and his amazing classes with their excruciating tests, my parents who almost always understand and make it all better...

So many other people that i'm not going to list because that would take up way too much space and time...

Tchaikovsky...

I love you all, people.

It's one of the very few original religions to survive. And when I say original religion, I'm talking about the way all cultures start off, before we start wondering what happens after we die. Pixies, sprites, fairies, elves, gremlins, munchkins, brownies - whatever you want to call them, they're what's left over from the original European religions. The Fae, kelpies, the Loch Ness monster (not the dinosaur theory), yadda yadda, are all part of the religions that were there before Christianity and/or the Romans and/or the Greeks, etc, came in and said that no, the people were wrong, it's really like this.
I call it 'unorganized religion,' because it has no texts, no real specifics. It's a part of the culture, shaped by and shaping the culture, something that is just accepted as is without argument because everyone knows that there really are [insert creature].

We all start off with such simple ideas: I got lost becaue I was tricked by a magical creature, the crops are growing well because the earth/sun is happy with us, people who have become nasty or perverted (or something else) are possessed or transformed (or something else) and aren't really human any more, etcetera...

You (the imaginary critic) scoff. No, it's real, and it's everywhere. Whatever you chose to call them, it's the reason why you can't find your pen and you know that you put it right there. It's the reason why the door opens for no reason. It's why, even in the middle of a grey and rainy day, you suddenly feel cheerful. It's why lightening struck your tree and not your neighbor's.

Shinto, quite frankly, doesn't give much of a damn about what happens to you after you die, unless your ghost sticks around to bother people, or you turn into a snake from jealousy or something like that. In the end, it's a very simple thing.

In ElfQuest, Wendy Pini wrote: "Death, when it comes, is neither good nor bad. It merely IS."

Well, these things that happen are somtimes frustrating, sometimes amusing, sometimes annoying, sometimes wonderful, sometimes deadly, sometimes lucky, and so on, but they are ultimately neither good not bad. They merely ARE.

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Now that I've caught my breath...

As far as I can tell, the reason why Japan can have so many religions all peacefully coexisting without much conflict at all, is because none of them are particularly agressive. None of them say anything like 'This is how it is, and if you don't believe what we tell you to you're going to suffer eternal torment.' It's not like monotheistic religions, which tend to take an offensive stance and start wars and things like that. That's what I mean by an agressive religion.

Buddhism looks at the big picture, at the abstract ideas behind what we percieve as the world and life and things like that. However, unlike Judaism and its offspring, one of the most important points is that enlightenment must be found by oneself. Nobody can really tell you that that's how things are and you can just accept it and believe in it without question. You find out the truth for yourself. And if you happen to disagree with someone, well, one of you is probably deluded, and you can debate about it, but you won't really find out who was right until, several lifetimes down the road, you become enlightened to the point where you (1) know the truth - at least partially - and (2) remember your past lives.

Shinto I've already talked about, and I'm not going to say anythig more except that it deals with everyday life and is commonly accepted. Doesn't really overlap with Buddhism at all.

Confuscianism is what I know the least about, so I'm feeling my way here, but I think it's primarily philosophy and politics. In other words, you think and postulate and hypothesize and other pleasant stuff like that - again, mostly about life rather than the abstract ideas beyond it, but on a larger scale than Shinto, and it helps you run the country so the monks can go about trying to figure out their own, personal truths.

It works.

I just finished reading the last chapter of When the Emperor was Divine. It's about a family sent off to concentration camps during WWII. It's about the way, for the sake of pa-something the American populace turned against members of itself who just happened to look a little different and fucked up their lives. Because they were scared. Because they were angry. Because they wanted to feel superior. It makes me want to be an obviously caucasian sensible person at the time. Just to tell them what assholes they are and to spit in their faces. "But they're Japs! They worship the emperor! They deserve whatever they get!" NOT the children, hello. Not the people who are third generation. Not the people who have been a good and supporting member of society for who knows how long. Not anyone, in fact. No one deserves that kind of shit. You feel vengeful. Screw you. I'm taking vengeance for them -- on you.
This gets me riled more than slavery, actually. When they had slaves it was okay with the government, with their mode of life. They never welcomed people to them and then knocked them down and tied them up and carted off their husbands and took their belongings and tried to brainwash them and deported anyone who resisted such treatment. They never made rules in the very basework of the government - I'm talking about the Constitution here - and then said, 'I'm feeling paranoid, so I'm going to ignore what we're so proud of -- just for the people who look like this.' Slavers were wrong and nasty people, but they were never hypocrites on the same order that we were when we decided to move everyone of Japanese descent into confinement and confiscate their stuff.

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I feel much better now. Thank you for being patient with me. *bow*