Buddhist Monasticism In The Solar Commonwealth And In Britain

At the beginning of Mirkheim, Adzel has spent three years as a lay brother in a Buddhist monastery in the Andes Mountains but he returns from retirement when his former employer, Nicholas van Rijn, reassembles the original trade pioneer crew of David Falkayn, Chee Lan and Adzel for one last diplomatic/intelligence gathering mission.

This week, I will spend Friday and Saturday nights at Throssel Hole Buddhist Priory (see here) but that will be enough monasticism for me for a while. As another member of the Lancaster meditation group said, from behind her lap top in the Gregson Centre with her earphones on, "There are things that I want to do that I would not be able to do there!" 

I will, of course, be off line and incommunicado from Friday afternoon until maybe Sunday evening.

Pleasures

Poul Anderson's The Stars Are Also Fire, Chapter 12, ends by specifying two "high pleasures": an intelligent argument and a proper meal. We can think of others.

Provided it is recognized that pleasures are mental as well as physical and shared as well as individual, hedonism is not a bad philosophy although Buddhism is the Middle Way between hedonism and asceticism. The latter is definitely undesirable. The monks at Throssel Hole (scroll down) watch a film together once a week although some visitors have been scandalized that there is a television in the place.

In certain works of fiction, we vicariously enjoy good food.

Rescuing Time Patrol Members

This afternoon, some of us from Lancaster will drive over to Throssel Hole Abbey (scroll down) in the North East. This is a breakfast post.

In Poul Anderson's Time Patrol series, each new timeline is identical with the previous one except for any changes caused either by time travelers or by quantum fluctuations. Thus, if a Time Patrol agent spent a day in the far past, then traveled forward into a now deleted timeline, then, although he has been deleted with that timeline, he still exists for that day in the far past. It follows that some of his fellow agents should be able to travel to that day, prevent him from traveling forward into the deleted timeline and instead transport him forward with them into the current timeline. Thus, the Patrol should be able to re-recruit agents lost in deleted timelines. To the rescued agent, little will have changed. He had expected to return futureward along the Danellian timeline and does this, the only difference being that he is escorted by fellow agents.

Far from contravening its own Prime Directive by doing this, the Patrol would rescue some of its members, maintain its strength and counteract one detrimental effect of a deletion.

Adzel

This year, Chinese New Year is Feb 16-18. For a previous year, see:

Adzel On Earth
China 

Lancaster will kick off with a Gala the previous Sunday, Feb 11, although, that weekend, I hope to be on retreat at Throssel Hole Buddhist Priory. See here.

Why do I mention these matters here? Because, among the International Brotherhood of Beings Who Are Fans Of Poul Anderson, both Chinese New Year and Buddhism remind us of Adzel.

When Nicholas van Rijn founded his first trade pioneer crew, we had already met the characters, van Rijn, David Falkayn and Adzel and had also read references to the planets, Hermes, Woden and Cynthia.The xenologist of the Olga, Vaughn Webner, had studied the trade-route cultures of Cynthia and James Ching knew of:

"...treetop highways under the golden-red sun of Cynthia!" (p. 183) (For full reference, see here.)

(Cynthia must have been discovered very early.)

This assumes that we have read the Technic History in the chronological order of fictitious events. Anyone reading the series in the order of its publication would notice that the references to inhabited planets were carefully written into stories set earlier but written later. In fact, "How To Be Ethnic In One Easy Lesson," about the Wodenite Adzel's student days on Earth, is an expansion of a passage in "The Trouble Twisters," that story about the founding of the trade pioneer crew.

Adzel, an alien convert to Buddhism who plays the dragon in Chinese New Year processions and Fafner in Siegfried, is a culturally significant character.

A Compassionate Man (In His Own Opinion)

British farms were hit by foot and mouth disease. A monk at Throssel Hole Buddhist Abbey (see here and image) started to say, "We must not seem to be insensitive to the farmers' predicament," then corrected herself and said, "We must not be insensitive..." Compassion is real, not apparent.

Poul Anderson shared with CS Lewis the ability to articulate his characters' innermost self-deceptions and hypocrisies. The loathsome Ira Quick, calling his wife to say that he will work late, maybe all night, thinks:

"Her look pains me. I am a compassionate man." (The Avatar, XVII, p. 152)

No, Ira. "I am a compassionate man" is about you, not about her.

Dan Brodersen has an extra-marital relationship that his wife knows about and accepts whereas Quick lies although, on this occasion, his "working late" is about something else: concealing his illegal imprisonment of returned explorers. Anderson's villains do not match SM Stirling's for pure evil but they are pretty dreadful.

Dominic And Miriam Flandry

The Game of Empire, CHAPTER TWELVE.

This chapter is about none other than Dominic and Miriam Flandry. In particular, Sir Dominic analyses the Merseian attack on Gorrazan. The chapter will be reread closely but tomorrow. I have just summarized the adventures of Uroch above the surface of Gorrazan. Before that, I was part of a group visit to our Buddhist monastery, Throssel Hole, leaving home at 7:45 AM and arriving back at 6:00 PM. I will now relax with occasionally mentioned other reading, in this case Matt Helm.

Flandry is an intelligence operative whereas Helm, like Bond, is more of an assassin. The Helm films were parodies of the Bond films, not authentic dramatizations of the Helm books. Of course, what we want is Flandry films, in fact the whole Technic History from "The Saturn Game" to "Starfog," but what I want and what gets filmed are light-years apart. Good night.

March 17, 1998

Where were you and what were you doing on March 17, 1998? After that date, in SM Stirling's Emberverse timeline, you would most probably soon have died. If not, then your life, like that of every other survivor, would have diverged totally from what you now remember.

I was still working in Merseyside and would never have started to work in the same profession in Lancashire in September, 2000. If I had survived the Change, then I would have become a subject first of Mad King Charles, then of his son, the King-Emperor of Greater Britain, William V. Although the Church of England returned to Rome, I would have continued to practise Zen - maybe with some visions of Buddhas in the Changed theological regime? Hopefully, our nearby Buddhist monastries, Manjushri and Throssel Hole, would have also have survived and become centres of a new British Buddhism.

The Golden Slave, Chapter XVI, Concluded

This evening, posting was interrupted by Light Up Lancaster. Tomorrow, it will be interrupted even more by a Festival at Throssel Hole. (Scroll down.) Now let us finish rereading The Golden Slave, Chapter XVI, and leave XVII for a future occasion.

"Well, Mithradates was a soldier, too." (p. 216)

- reminds us of:

"Tene Mithra etiam miles..." (Scroll down)

"[Mithradtes] sat in the canton chief's high seat, which was shaped like the lap of stag-horned Cernunnos." (ibid.)

"Eodan remembered the king, motionless on the knees of a conquered god." (p. 218)

To conquer a people was to conquer their gods.

"Around the room gleamed [Mithradates'] unmoving hoplites..." (p. 217)

We have had hoplites before. See here and here.

That is all for now unless anyone wants to reread this chapter and tell me what I have missed? Flavius returns by the way but I am not presenting a mere plot summary. The next chapter has an interesting discussion about the relationship between civilization and barbarism.