VLVL2 "...like a porno star" ? (237)

[Bandwraith at aol.com]

In a message dated 2/9/04 12:11:56 PM, ottosell at yahoo.de writes:

<< This is highly ironical because it is the original purpose of the Bardo

Thödol to learn how to overcome the karmic stuff from the second section and

these distractions from the third, this afterlife peep-show, the purpose is

to be *not* being born again in one of the six worlds waiting for the soul

according to Tibetan Buddhism. In avoiding the next very likely

reincarnation Weed's soul has a good chance to leave the eternal Tibetan

wheel forever.


Weed could've been born again as Frenesi's child because the fact that she

has betrayed him and is responsible for his death is a very strong karmic

bond between them, but the sex between them has bound them karmatically

already.>>


[This post is meant only as one of many possible buddhist inspired approaches 
to the text.]

I agree about the ironical inversion of appropriate behavior for Weed
in Thanatoid-land, but from a buddhist perspective, Frenesi has not 
betrayed Weed, and I think it is Weed's task to understand how he 
caused his own downfall, and to stop being angry with Frenesi who may 
have delayed her own passage to nirvana to give him the opportunity to 
avoid reincarnation. I know this argument takes a little getting used 
to, but Frenesi, from early on, has been introduced as transcendent- 
capable of seeing the hacker god. She knows she is a fictional character 
in a fictional world [the hacker god may or may not know], yet she admits 
her shortcomings, and even toys with the idea that maybe she set up 
Weed- so great is her compassion for the fictional. But from a buddhist 
perspective, compassion is not enough. It too is a vanity, like knowledge, 
or being *right*. Fiction must needs be transcended, lest one be suckered
into having pity for the hacker god, or its creation, which are also both
fictional.

And while her transcendence occurred as a flash-forward- before
Weed's death in linear narrative-time, yet after his death, in the 
pseudo-chronology of plot-time- for fictional characters (as opposed to 
real readers) there is only linear plot time. However, this is balanced by 
the fact that there is no difference between the past and the future for 
fictional characters. They commute, to use a term Weed would know.

In order to help the others, in a karmic buddhist sense, she must help 
them to transcend- to accept what she already "knows"- that they, too, 
are fictional. For Weed, this means excluding himself from the middle of 
the dialectic that appears to be propelling him on his journey- vectoring 
him- as it were. That might take awhile but he's got all the time in the 
world. 

respectfully