Re: Balthazar's Magic
Feb. 10th, 2021 03:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rynlingWhen Balthazar was afraid, as a little kid, that he would be kidnapped and tortured because of his magic, he wasn't wrong. He doesn't learn this until he's much older, but he would almost certainly have been taken from his family and swiftly put to death if the nature of his magic had become known.
Buddhist metaphysics has a concept of something that might be roughly translated as "karma demon," and it's difficult to explain what this is without getting super esoteric. You could say that Calamity Ganon is a "karma demon," but this is also what Madoka becomes at the end of Madoka Magica.
This idea comes from an understanding of an individual as a stream of energy that constantly dissipates and is regenerated through its actions and attachments. Because no stream of energy exists independently, the regeneration of any given stream is also dependent on the actions and attachments of the streams it's connected to. If a stream of energy (or "karma") comes to have such an enormous effect on others that it creates a feedback loop of energy that regenerates faster than it can dissipate, this has the potential to create a serious disruption (or "demon") that can affect all of time and space and generate unimaginable suffering.
Regardless of how it happens, becoming a karma demon is considered to be a fate worse than nonexistence, which is why the ultimate goal of Buddhism is to remove yourself from the multiverse altogether.
(This is one of the many reasons why I think Buddhist-style meditation practice doesn't make much sense if it's divorced from Buddhist religious traditions and a Buddhist worldview. Like, when people talk about how the goal of meditation is to become "nothing," they mean something really specific but also really difficult to explain without drawing on the work of almost two millennia of people trying to explain it.)
Anyway, because of the nature of his magic, Balthazar is in constant danger of losing himself and becoming an actual "demon," and this is in fact what happens to him late in the story. So far I've managed to set up some vague foreshadowing, but I haven't actually explained what's going on in any detail.
I'm borrowing this idea from (mostly Japanese) pop culture coming out of a Buddhist tradition, but I need to figure out how to explain it within the world of the story without using Buddhist terminology. Karma demons are a well-hidden secret in Balthazar's world, so he doesn't really know what they are until he starts to encounter them after the apocalypse. The process of figuring out what a karma demon is and how the possibility of this happening to people has affected the culture and society of this world is one of the major mysteries of the story, and I have to admit that I haven't solved it yet.
Buddhist metaphysics has a concept of something that might be roughly translated as "karma demon," and it's difficult to explain what this is without getting super esoteric. You could say that Calamity Ganon is a "karma demon," but this is also what Madoka becomes at the end of Madoka Magica.
This idea comes from an understanding of an individual as a stream of energy that constantly dissipates and is regenerated through its actions and attachments. Because no stream of energy exists independently, the regeneration of any given stream is also dependent on the actions and attachments of the streams it's connected to. If a stream of energy (or "karma") comes to have such an enormous effect on others that it creates a feedback loop of energy that regenerates faster than it can dissipate, this has the potential to create a serious disruption (or "demon") that can affect all of time and space and generate unimaginable suffering.
Regardless of how it happens, becoming a karma demon is considered to be a fate worse than nonexistence, which is why the ultimate goal of Buddhism is to remove yourself from the multiverse altogether.
(This is one of the many reasons why I think Buddhist-style meditation practice doesn't make much sense if it's divorced from Buddhist religious traditions and a Buddhist worldview. Like, when people talk about how the goal of meditation is to become "nothing," they mean something really specific but also really difficult to explain without drawing on the work of almost two millennia of people trying to explain it.)
Anyway, because of the nature of his magic, Balthazar is in constant danger of losing himself and becoming an actual "demon," and this is in fact what happens to him late in the story. So far I've managed to set up some vague foreshadowing, but I haven't actually explained what's going on in any detail.
I'm borrowing this idea from (mostly Japanese) pop culture coming out of a Buddhist tradition, but I need to figure out how to explain it within the world of the story without using Buddhist terminology. Karma demons are a well-hidden secret in Balthazar's world, so he doesn't really know what they are until he starts to encounter them after the apocalypse. The process of figuring out what a karma demon is and how the possibility of this happening to people has affected the culture and society of this world is one of the major mysteries of the story, and I have to admit that I haven't solved it yet.
