Zen

WARNING: This thread is all but spoiler-free

I have opened a thread in the VU yesterday with a rather strange theory of mine how the storyline of Final Fantasy X is a metaphor for what happened in Japan prior to and during WWII. Of course this is by no means true, if you want to read about it I recommend you click here and see or yourself.

In that topic there were complaints and inquiries. Some complained I was looking to deep into this thing, others complained I kept it too short and others wanted to know a little bit more about Zen. I'll redo some parts of the thread here.

In relation to the videogame one must know that Zen hasn't always been bad. In fact, it came to Japan as an offshoot of a Chinese equivalent, but as with most things that emerge in the fairly isolated Japanese group of islands, it soon became something that became intertwined with the peculiar nature of its folk.

Zen, just as normal Buddhism doesn't have anything to do with politics. The Buddha is above these things. Also it has some very basic principles. No killing, no stealing, no intoxication and more of that jazz. So Zen is like Buddhism, it only claims that all is one and has a little bit of Buddha inside it. To realize is to become enlightened, and then things return to normal again. Nothing changes. No reflection, no desire, no nothing.

So what made Zen into a vehicle of imperial power? Well, as you might remember from history class the Mongols were quite the hotshots in the 13th century. Part of their plan to conquer the world was the acquisition of Japan. Of course the Japanese didn't want that, but they were fairly backward compared to the military and tactical might of the Mongols. So a guy, known as Nichiren, tells the Japanese to not worry. He, as a Zen Buddhist will pray for the country's sake.

So the Mongols came and Nichiren prayed. What happened then might be called sheer luck or divine intervention, but a typhoon came and blew the Mongols away. The Mongols said it was luck, the Japanese praised it as the 'kamikaze', or the Wind of God. Zen had saved Japan. But it gets more crazy than this. A few decades later the Mongols return. Rinse and repeat, another typhoon came and yet again the Mongol army got shattered.

So this is when the typical Japanese offshoot of Buddhism, Zen, became protector of the country.

Flash forward to the 'modern times' in Japan. As I mentioned in the thread, something without a deity is fairly open to interpretation. As the Japanese military slowly marched toward the gates of hell with the country, supportive of these atrocious deeds in their footsteps the Zen sect failed the most important of the Buddhist principles. They killed.

The Zen sect, knowing that selflessness was the power of the Japanese soldier made the emperor into a deity, spread the word across the conquered nations and thrived. A religion gone corrupt.

Now where is the exact relation to FFX? It's the similarity between Zen Buddhism in its nature and practice and the teachings of Yevon in the game. While Dkittels rightfully mentioned in the thread that Hemingway said that everything is meant the way it has been written, there's no denial that people are being influenced by everything that happens around them. To me it is striking that something as Japanese as Zen Buddhism, which is unprecedented (there are not many similarities to Christianity in the game, apart from martyrdom) and the way it is being portrayed is also very like the way Zen Buddhism acted.

Also the time in which the game's development started falls into the period when the book 'Zen at War' literally shocked the world. Its writer had come across documents stating that a few official Zen sects were actively supporting the massive slaughter of Chinese and the Japanese war efforts. This was a huge issue in Japan. Just as a lot of writers might not use such shocking events as paraboles, often they do derive inspiration from them.

I've never claimed it's been the developer's intention to confront the world with a similar corruption as Zen Buddhism, which basically caused the Pacific War (I can elaborate on this if you'd like), but I do think these events might have been a source of inspiration.

I'll leave it at this for now. Feel free to ask questions.