Sunday 3 October 2021

Kyra And Zen

Poul Anderson, Harvest Of Stars (London, 1994), PART ONE, kyra, 1.

"For a moment Kyra frowned. Why these mood swings? She'd been at risk before and stayed zen." (p.5)

As I understand Zen, mood swings happen but we practice seeing them as they are and letting them pass. Although practicing does not mean always succeeding, regular practice makes some difference or no one would stay with it.

Rereading Harvest Of Stars,  we are between the two periods covered in the prequel/sequel, The Stars Are Also Fire. Proserpina was discovered in the prequel but is kept secret until the sequel and is about to be colonized at the end of the sequel. In Volume III, Harvest The Fire, we know that there is a Lunarian/Selenarchic colony on Proserpina and we finally see its spacious and colorful artificial environment in Volume IV, The Fleet Of Stars. Meanwhile, right now, we are with Kyra Davis in Erie-Ontario Integrate on Earth.

6 comments:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

I think what Kyra meant by "zen" was being calm and alert but not tensed up.

Ad astra! Sean

S.M. Stirling said...

Emotion as a physical phenomenon and emotion as something you pay attention to/allow to affect you are two different things.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Mr. Stirling!

I agree, and I think I remember reading somewhere of how Flandry was trained in how not to let emotions get in the way of what he needed to in moments of danger.

Ad astra! Sean

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

I forgot to add that here we see Anderson using "Integrate" for a futuristic political/administrative unit: the Erie-Ontario Integrate.

Ad astra! Sean

S.M. Stirling said...

Note that an emotion may be -caused- by an exterior event -- fear by a threat, for example.

But it is the interior mechanisms of feedback that -escalate- the emotion and cause it to endure.

You can't stop a), but you can regulate b).

Frank Herbert in DUNE really did get it right about fear, for example. With some practice, you can let the sensation run through you without stopping it and amplifying it.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Mr. Stirling!

Of course I have read DUNE, as all SF fans should, and I think I remember the process as described by you in that book. But I would really like to find out more about how Flandry was trained to handle such extremes of emotion in moments of danger.

Ad astra! Sean