ATDTDA: 749/750 "The Compassionate"

[Michael Bailey]

Is it true that nobody has ever killed anybody in the name of Buddha?
(except themselves)

seems like it could be...

just ignorantly musing

On 3/3/08, Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:
> heartily seconded.......
>
> whenever Buddhism kicked into TRPs vision, AtD is THE BOOK which holds his
> deepest
> beliefs about it for our--anyone's; certain archetypal character's lives
> (Like Cyprian)---
>
> I remember bits in GR and, yes, a deep use of many concepts in Vineland...
>
> mark
>
> robinlandseadel at comcast.net wrote:
> This all involves backtracking a smidgen. Lots of folks follow
> the scientific/technological forking roads in Pynchon,
> considering those to be the signs and symptoms of our
> redoubtable author's inspirations, his primary concerns.
> I think this skew has to do with the idea that scientific
> concepts are intellectually more 'real' than intellectual notions
> around the occult. In any case. I seem to be using some sort
> of metaphysical philter whilst reading OBA's stuff, finding all
> paths pointing to the one, true. . . .
>
> There is this search in Theosophy for the place where Christ
> can be found along with Avalokiteshvara, that place you're
> supposed to find in your journey to the east. A meeting place
> for all these paths, a shared holiness, a shared radiance, a
> shared space for Illumination, Compassion & Grace.
>
> In any case, I got to thinking about Cyprian and "the
> Compassionate" that Yashmeen cites on page 749 and 750.
>
> Buddhist aesthetics, very much like its literature, brings
> home spiritual truths in the simplest manner graspable
> by all. The various bodhisattvas too dominate the
> spectrum of Buddhist art, illustrating this abstract
> conceptualization in as hard hitting a manner as do the
> various myths surrounding them. The most prominent
> bodhisattva in this regard is Avalokiteshvara.
>
> http://www.exoticindiaart.com/article/bodhisattva/
>
> The store where I'm now working [The Brass Unicorn*] has a
> statue of Avalokiteshvara. It's in the Northeast corner of a room
> that is used for a variety of things, Pranic healing and meditation
> included. Avalokiteshvara starts as near gender netural/fey while
> male but develops and mutates over time to near gender netural
> but female, in the forms of Quan Yin and Buddhist adaptations
> of Tara, an elder Hindu female deity transformed into aspects of
> the Buddah.
>
> The word 'Avalokiteshvara' is derived from the Pali verb
> oloketi which means "to look at, to look down or over, to
> examine or inspect." The word avalokita has an active
> signification, and the name means, "the lord who sees
> (the world with pity)." The Tibetan equivalent is spyanras-
> gzigs (the lord, who looks with eyes). The text known as
> Karanda-vyuha (8th century AD) explains that he is so
> called because he views with compassion all beings
> suffering from the evils of existence. It is interesting to
> note here that a dominant feature in the description of
> Avalokiteshvara is his capacity to "see" the suffering of
> others. No wonder then that he is often represented with
> a thousand eyes symbolizing his all encompassing ability
> to view with compassion the suffering of others, thus
> sharing in their sorrows, a first step towards their ultimate
> alleviation. Not only that, he further has a thousand hands
> too which help in the mammoth task of delivering
> innumerable beings to their ultimate spiritual fulfillment.
>
> http://www.exoticindiaart.com/article/bodhisattva/
>
> "The Tibetan equivalent is spyanrasgzigs (the lord, who looks
> with eyes)"---That notion of spycraft and the omniscience of the
> celestial view of things brings us back to the P.O.V. of the C.o.C.
>
> The house where I live has many representations of Quan Yin:
>
> http://www.livingsacred.com/quan-yin.shtml
>
> My wife has been aquiring them, with a lot of help from her friends.
> There's three in the office where I'm writing, four or five in the
> bedroom, two/three in the living room, a couple in the kitchen. . . .
>
> I usually work from the notion that the general motion of dieties over
> time is to move from the positive feminine principle [Lucina, Morning
> Star, Venus] to the pejorative male principle [Lucifer, Falling Angel,
> Whore of Babylon]. So I'm suprised when a very good Goddess
> like Quan Yin http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guan_Yin or the
> Various
> Taras http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tara_(Buddhism) turn out
> to be
> aspects of an even better sorta-male diety, the Lord of Compassion,
> Avalokiteshvara.
> http://meditationincolorado.org/avalokiteshvara.htm
>
> I can't help but think of Cyprian as the Compassionate One in our story.
>
> As we are headed for [and/or, possibly, have already left] Shambhala,
> It behooves us to dig into the infrastructure of Buddhism. I'm
> not at all sure when Buddhism really kicked in as a theme or thread
> in Pynchon's work. There is the self-immolation sequence in CoL49,
> where the recently fired accountant plans on going out in the manner
> of protesting monks in Vietnam. There's that first gleam of the
> Japanese Insurance adjustor in Gravity's Rainbow, followed up
> by the big-time role for the aforementioned Takeshi Fumimota that
> drives Vineland, a thoroughly underated saga of karma and retribution.
> I suppose I'll have to re-scrye Mason & Dixon for whatever Buddhist
> references are incryped within, meanwhile wondering if dog has a
> Buddah nature. [MU!!!]
>
> As regards "Against the Day", Buddhism gets bigger play than in
> any other work by Pynchon, and somehow Pynchon manages to
> tie together Shambahala and philately with a pretty pink bow at
> the end of AtD. Therefore, it behooves us to pay attention to the
> earliest myths and legends of Buddhism and to pay attention to
> Compassion in the latter half of our story just as much as Iceland
> Spar, Odin's Gnosis and the "Hanging Man" card guided us in the
> first half of our story thus far. There is a shared religious/scientific
> metaphor here [as per usual in Pynchon], the alchemical drivers
> of his "infernal machines" hidden by the scientific explanations
> placed before us, usually explored further, in that game of
> misdirection and religious/scientific/metaphysical
> three-card-monte
> that OBA endlessly plays.
>
> * Our store's name is an alchemical allusion, and though
> I cannot recall its description, I'll bet I'll find it in:
> http://www.scribd.com/doc/14847/The-Alchemy-Key
>
>
>
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