Dressing up and Ukoku's brain

[louiselux]

puddingcat came to Reading yesterday to get fitted for her coat of many buttons, so in the afternoon I met up with her and her dressmaker friend Claire and landlady Laura. We hit up the John Lewis haberdashery and Fabricland and a couple of shoe shops and now I feel so enthused about dresses and fabric and shoes. I can't wait to see puddingcat's coat - she showed me the pattern and it's a sort of pirate frock coat with panels and huge cuffs.

I'm thinking of commissioning a dress from Claire too. I just have to decide on what I want: either something 60s style in a simple A-line/shift dress style, or a full skirted 50s style dress.

Also, when we were randomly chatting about stuff, puddingcat made a really interesting point about Nii - he's a sanzo monk, so can he really be so evil? Is he really going to suck Sanzo into his black hole of doom and destroy him, or is he just teaching Sanzo something, but doing it in a particularly nasty way? Maybe he is working to the greater good. Innnnnteresting.

puddingcat compared him to Kanzeon Bosatsu, who isn't exactly pleasant in the way she goes about things. She didn't have to let Goku be imprisoned in a cave for 500 years after all.

I like this idea, because it balances Ukoku's character somewhat. Also, I don't know if Koumyou was actually such a nice person. Discuss.

Comments

[lady-ganesh.livejournal.com]

As others have said, good and evil aren't quite the same things in Buddhist thought.

And remember, Kanzeon wasn't in charge in Heaven-- the Emperor was. She may have intervened, but exactly how or why we don't know.

Koumyou wasn't nice. He wasn't nasty, either, but he wasn't nice.

[louiselux.livejournal.com]

Hmmm, yeah, good points - I wonder how much power the Emporer had/has, and what role Kanzeon actually plays in Heaven? She's more like an interested observer... literally.

Koumyou just baffles me the more I think and read other people's thoughts about him.

[lady-ganesh.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the Emperor seems more like a figurehead, though an influential one.

I think the first step with Koumyou-- and maybe the hardest-- is to stop seeing him through the Western, good-n-evil, Judeo-Christian eyes those of us born in our respective cultures first see everything with. He's much more like a Zen master, and those have always been hard for Westerners to grasp, even without having the extra 'but what's Minekura up to?' matter to solve.

[louiselux.livejournal.com]

Yes, this is the hard part, and when I try I always feel how much I am a product of Western culture.

[andmydog.livejournal.com]

One of the best examples of Zen masters I've found (by way of explaining the kinds of bastards they could be) is the story One-Finger Zen. I don't have my book here (they're all in storage) so here's Wiki's summary:

Juzhi Yizhi, a 9th century Chinese Zen master, raised his finger whenever he was asked a question about Zen. A boy attendant began to imitate him in this way. When anyone asked the boy what his master had preached about, the boy would raise his finger.

Juzhi heard about the boy's mischief. He seized him and cut off his finger. The boy cried and ran away. Juzhi called and stopped him. When the boy turned his head to Juzhi, Juzhi raised up his own finger. In that instant the boy was enlightened.

There's also these! (http://www.101zenstories.com/) "Incense Burner" is my favourite, and this one (http://www.101zenstories.com/index.php?story=29) is required reading for this (http://community.livejournal.com/lol_buddha/824.html#cutid1) macro.

[lady-ganesh.livejournal.com]

Years and years and years of studying and reading about Buddhism hasn't brought me that much closer, honestly. Have you ever read anything by Mishima?