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

[devikun.livejournal.com]

Wow this is certainly a lot of food for thought! I'm totally on cicer tack re enlightenment et al. I'm not going to speculate on what anyone's true motivations are, but I feel quite strongly that Saiyuki is a vehicle through which Minekura is trying to explore the nature and necessity of attachment, in the Buhhdist sense of the word. Attachment, being possibly one of the strongest Buddhist tenants, is the source of all grief. Life is a struggle, then you die. It's not supposed to be some kind of Emo catch-phrase; it really means that all struggle is futile because the result is the same.

Coming from that direction, a lot of the broader themes throughout the story makes sense - particularly (at least to me) the Komyou/Ukoku debate. Komyou is the sleeper under the tree - he's reached Nirvana signified by being willing to give up his life, because he wasn't attached to it to start with. With that in mind, Ukoku is not so much an evil priest as a failed one, having entirely missed the point of why one would become a Buddhist in the first place. Which is why he has the power of a Sanzo and none of the sanction.

And if he's failed, then I think he's never going to beat Genjo no matter how good he is, because in a lot of ways Genjo is far more enlightened - he might seem like a cranky bitch, but he has a much firmer grasp on what non-attachment means. Of course, he's kind of made up his own rules, but he's actually a pretty good Buddhist - if you ignore the killing bad guys part.

Hey! Maybe the whole point is to make Ukoku a better Buddhist, thereby saving the world as an accidental byproduct! Yeah! That's my theory and I'm going with it! ;)

[puddingcat.livejournal.com]

Hee, the more I read this debate, the less I agree with myself!

Yes. Improving Ukoku *and* (our) Sanzo's lives, with saving the world as collateral fixage :) IAW your thoughts on attachement as well; I think Sanzo's got too attached to the idea of non-attachment, and he needs a kick in the pants (seemingly to come courtesy of Ukoku) to snap him out of it.

[devikun.livejournal.com]

Oh, but your thoughts inspired such a lively and interesting discussion!

And I think you're totally right about Sanzo getting too attached to non-attachment! I'm pretty sure there are like advanced user warnings in Buddhism about stuff like that...