AtDtDA(28): A Heavenwide Blast of Light

[kelber at mindspring.com]

-----Original Message-----
>From: robinlandseadel at comcast.net

>
>          He had entered a state of total attention to no object he 
>          could see or sense, or eventually even imagine in any 
>          interior way, while Prance was all but hysterical.
>          AtD, 782
>
>
>Lord of Light. Look up the references to Avalokiteshvara, the very soul 
>of compassion. And, as furthur events in the novel transpire, 
>compassion as a force, as a different path, emerges as a major 
>theme. Did you think that all this Buddhism landed in the novel by 
>accident?  And here, as elsewhere, Pynchon underlines the paradox 
>of revelation/illumination---the representation of Kit's illumination [he 
>was in Shambhala, the Lord (over lunch) proves it to Kit by showing him 
>the postage stamps he's collected from Shambhala. Of course they exist, 
>the Lord showed them to Kit, didn't he?]


Kit seems to be in the same sort of "state of grace" that Lew was in, back on p. 42:

"He understood that things were exactly what they were.  It seemed more than he could bear."

Lew had been unaccountably separated from his past, which he no longer remembered.  In ATD, Padzhitnoff (or is it Bezumyoff?) wonders if the Tunguska event is some sort of extemporal event:  "'This was an artifact of repeated visits from the future.'" (p. 782)

In both cases, some sort of disruption of the time dimension allowed objects to be observed as they really are or in some mystical way.  Kind of the spiritual equivalent of pinning down a butterfly for observation.  Robin, or anyone:  is there a Buddhist concept of time freezing or being distorted as a means to illumination?

Laura