VLVL2 Buddhism (was: "...like a porno star" ? (237))

[Otto]

----- Original Message -----
From: <Bandwraith at aol.com>
To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Tuesday, February 10, 2004 1:18 PM
Subject: Re: VLVL2 "...like a porno star" ? (237)
>
> 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.]
>

Very much appreciated, thanks.

> 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.

The whole concept of guilt is affected by this. I think this could be a
possible answer to the question how anyone still can like Frenesi.

>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.
>

I have no problem getting used to that reading, I pretty much agree.

"'Little Doony,' she said dreamily, and kissed me: 'pretend this whole
situation is the plot of a story we're reading, and you and I and Daddy and
the King are all fictional characters." (John Barth, "Chimera," 1972, p.
15-16)

> 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

Reading (well, re-reading) parts of Govinda's book now I get the impression
that "Vineland" includes more Buddhist ideas than we have realized yet.
Samsara is the opposition of Nirvana. Samsara is a world of eternal
antagonism and dichotomy, a world of irreconcilable oppositions, a duality
fallen out of the equilibrium, in fact six worlds in which the souls are
falling from on extreme into the other, reincarnation after reincarnation.

OM -- realm of pleasure; the God's world; colour: white; cause of suffering:
nescience
MA -- realm of fight; the titan's world; colour: red; cause of suffering:
envy
NI -- realm of action; the human world; colour: blue; cause of suffering:
pride
PA -- realm of fear; the animal's world; colour: green; cause of suffering:
nescience
DME -- realm of the unsatisfied desires; colour: yellow; cause of suffering:
passion
HUM -- purgatorium; colour: smoke; cause of suffering: hate


The Thanatoid state seems to be a Preta-like state. The Preta ghost-world is
the fifth world of the Tibetan six worlds. It is the realm of the
unsatisfied desires. It is opposed to the human world of action.

Weed, successful in avoiding being reborn as Frenesi's child (in the human
world) has only been able to do so because he still had "too much" on his
mind (from the human world he had just left) which has sent him to the
half-world of the Thanatoids instead of avoiding reincarnation at all.
Insofar he has been unable to take Frenesi's gift. But as long as he's
unable to forgive instead of only to forget his soul will not be free. I
can't help but I think as a mathematician he should be able thinking in
equations.

I think I' beginning to get an idea about the computerized 'karmic
adjustment' business. In fact the whole Tibetan Buddhist idea of the six
worlds of Samsara can be imagined as a giant supercomputer trying to adjust
the equations that have gone out of the equilibrium (through passion and
demand) by sending the souls like variables through an endless chain of
reincarnations.

Otto