THE ARCANE ARCHIVE
	a cache of usenet and other text files pertaining to occult, mystical, and spiritual subjects.

To: alt.magick.tyagi,alt.religion.buddhism,alt.zen,talk.religion.buddhism,alt.consciousness.mysticism
From: i@no.self (!)
Subject: celluloid cyberbuddhism
Date: 24 Jul 1999 02:45:13 -0700

[spoiler: this post delves into the plot and ending of films like
 The Matrix and Lawnmower Man]
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a correspondent wrote:
| Movie review: "The Matrix"...
 
| Sooner or later, it had to happen; what is, is outpictured in a
| near-literal/metaphorical way, in 'The Matrix'.

it's been done many times before (Outer Limits, Night Gallery,
 Twilight Zone, many sci-fi novels and novellas and even a few films)
 
| ...this movie an outpicturing of the SYSTEM which underlies 
| our perceived reality.

exploration of brahman beyond maya
 
| ..."We are attempting to ascertain your location". This is
| mightily similar to the process which is carried out here, 
| in the NDS. It is common for one to be puzzled as to the 
| stated assumptions of others, that one is are not where they 
| are, that one will awaken, to their true nature, to freedom. 

Chuangtse, dreaming/waking: butterfly <==> man 
Carroll, dreaming/waking: White King
Indian, dreaming/waking/creation: Visnu
Solipsism, fabrication: self
Buddhism, ignorance/attachment: buddha-nature vs sunyata

| Leaving the cocoon/simulated reality of the Martix, is 
| similar to leaving the paradise of Eden... independence 
| requires work, and wits, to survive....

except that Eden is the Real, not a perceptual fiction

| Our own 'Matrix' is the world-dream, the 
| concensus/social/tribal/familial 'reality' which has 
| given us our languages, our values, and our illusion 
| of separateness. We suffer in the dream, and apply 
| dream-remedies to relieve our dream-sufferings.

language: arises out of desire to communicate; it is not a fiction
 in that it implies intended meaning and succeeds in this 
 implication (thus directed language like 'stop' and 'paint this')
values: these underly and precede language
separateness: an "illusion" or not? this precedes values
 
| The 'nondual perspective' says that

there is no 'nondual perspective', since perspective requires duality
 between subject and object; a perspective doesn't say anything

| all of the sufferings and pleasures of the world-dream become 
| irrelevant upon awakening; that for all ills of the dream, there 
| is only one remedy, which is to awaken from the dream. 

why does waking from the dream solve everything?

| While this is technically true, 

it is?  how did you determine this?

| and is a convenience of expression, an attempt to explain 
| something, the reality of the situation is similar to the 
| reality expressed in The Matrix; one must actually have 
| the experience of Being in one, and then the other, to 
| realize the nature of either.

why not like butterfly and Chuangtse? both butterflies and
 men suffer and are pleased according to their individual
 experiences, but both may dream that they are the other 

the reality expressed in the Matrix would have been more
 convincing to me if there was ANOTHER, more fundamental
 and ineffable (i.e. unshowable on film), reality 'behind'
 the secondary ("real") world of the pods and grit-rebellion
 
| ...after the confrontation with the 'Oracle' in her funky 
| kitchen (I loved that scene), Neo goes up against the 
| 'agents'.

why does Neo eat the cookie? he is still rejecting the Real,
 wants to be stupified, like drinking that intoxicant from the
 traitor-rebel. he wants to be back in the Matrix but he can't
 deny the Real nonetheless. it is like becoming aware of
 the depth of the Real and never being able to go back even if
 one wishes to. perhaps this is why "masters" sometimes become
 drug-addled (escapism)
 
| ...his realization is such, that he becomes the essence of life 
| itself; 

does he, or does he merely learn how to manipulate the program
 in its binary code and therefore shift position and form? let
 us not over-emphasize his role. if the Oracle was correct,
 he may be the one who sets the STAGE for the One

| he enters/invades an 'agent', as Shakti enters a
| person... and in effect, demolishes that agent, 
| remaining only as himself, The One, now fully powerful 
| and realized.

wishful thinking. compare "Tron". Neo dives into the agent
 and possesses him, assimilating his program and therefore
 transcending him and his mechanical overlords; but is this
 a 'victory'? at the end of the film he communicates to the
 rest of the world via computer, wears "agent" glasses, and
 sets off on his own rather than becoming a more central
 operative for "the resistance". he has fused Machine and
 Human, becoming something more than either
 
| What can I say about the 'agents'? They were the 'masters 
| of stop'. The only thing they did was to stop; they were 
| stoppers.

they also steered (individuals). they cajoled and elicited 
 (information). they operated on behalf of the Machine so as
 to maintain control of their power-source (human batteries).
 putting the battery out of commission harms machines, stopping
 the surge is as antithetical to the function of the agent
 (unless it is terminally malfunctional) as would be destroying
 a malfunctioning machine part rather than cordoning and 
 repairing it
  
| Agents of life, on the other hand, are 'goers'; they are on 
| the go, they know that they are life itself, and they promote 
| life and protect life.

until it serves their purpose to sacrifice it for the Greater Good

| Life demands expression in all of its varities; life demand 
| evolution, the inevitable migration from cocoon to realization, 
| with all of the mind-exploding and world-dream exposing and 
| pains and ecstasies which are part of the process.

but what does a permanently Matrixed 'Prophet' really 'do'?
 is it merely the 'grounding' of the Real into the Unreal,
 inspiring a movement of rebels?  why not wake everyone in
 their coccoons up at the same time, a 'wake up call' in the
 same manner as the world-telephone-ring of "Lawnmower Man"
 (with which this film *ought* to be compared)?
 
| Life is good, and The Matrix is a true 'Millenial Movie'. 
| It is a harbinger of the harmony which is the underlying 
| SYSTEM which we are. 

the Matrix is not destroyed or seriously debilitated in any
 way that we can discern by the end of the film. it is a
 typical film about some guy developing super powers in a
 world that few understand (compare Dr. Strange or any
 number of comic book superheroes whose efforts enable them
 to transcend the common paradigms -- Gautama Buddha is a
 very good example, another reason that I have called these
 films 'cyberbuddhist' as they combine Buddhist cosmology
 and metaphysics with cyberspace themes after Gibson and
 others; Keanu Reeves appears to enjoy these films as star)

| I salute the makers of this movie, who apparently are 
| planning a sequel, and maybe even a trilogy.

not surprising. this is very like religion, which seeks to
 keep the viewer hooked to a continuing story rather than
 to expose hir to a real 'waking up' on a mass scale.
 also compare this film with "City of Darkness", in which
 the protagonist doesn't believe in a dual-system wherein
 there is one reality which is false and another which is
 true so much as that the Sleepers are ignorant of the
 underlying system which coincides and creates their world
 (that they are zoo-animals and lab rats in a world that
 transcends their wildest imagination)
-----------------------------------------
-- 
emailed replies may be posted; cc replies if response desired

Path: ultra.sonic.net!news
From: i@no.self (!)
Newsgroups: alt.magick.tyagi,alt.zen,alt.philosophy.zen,alt.solipsism,alt.consciousness.mysticism,talk.religion.buddhism,talk.religion.misc
Subject: celluloid cyberbuddhism (2)
Date: 24 Jul 1999 02:56:17 -0700
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i@no.self (!):
|# the Matrix is not destroyed or seriously debilitated in any
|#  way that we can discern by the end of the film. it is a
|#  typical film about some guy developing super powers in a
|#  world that few understand (compare Dr. Strange or any
|#  number of comic book superheroes whose efforts enable them
|#  to transcend the common paradigms -- Gautama Buddha is a
|#  very good example, another reason that I have called these
|#  films 'cyberbuddhist' as they combine Buddhist cosmology
|#  and metaphysics with cyberspace themes after Gibson and
|#  others; Keanu Reeves appears to enjoy these films as star)
 
a correspondent replied:
| But like Buddha, Neo may have the ability to communicate or 
| transmit the same awakening to others. Not everyone perhaps, 
| but a few here and there, maybe more later on. This may or 
| may not confer the same degree of "power" over the Matrix 
| that Neo has (since he is the One.)   

is he the One? is there only One? have we established the truth
 of the Oracle? even the main characters in the story hadn't
 done so

| I don't see the average superhero (even Dr. Strange) as 
| "awake" at all to the real nature of their world, only 
| playing dramas *within* the world.

countless stories have Strange battling interlopers to the
 dimension of which he is the 'Sorceror Supreme'. little do
 the sleeping normals know what kind of cosmic threat they
 are defended against in the 'spiritual' or 'astral' world,
 and it is the duty of Dr. Strange to protect them in just
 this fashion. this is more like "City of Darkness" than it
 is "The Matrix"

| It is an interesting thought -- can one wake up to the nature 
| of the Matrix, yet remain powerless to actually do anything 
| about it? 

this was the initial condition of Neo

| To remain within the drama of the cocoon, while knowing 
| somehow that it is phony? 

depends on what 'within the drama' includes. if the drama is
 the emotional investment and belief in its reality, then it
 would seem not. if one could understand that one was actually
 interacting with real humans through a FILTER of a constructed
 artificial reality, then the drama remains, even if its exact
 nature is disputed

| It seems that in the real world (!), enlightened beings (sic) 
| generally live out the same lives as everyone else and are 
| not able to overcome the basic physical laws of our reality, 
| despite seeing its relativity.

by 'real world' I gather you mean nonmovie dimension; by
 'enlightened beings' I'm not sure what you mean. how can we
 tell if someone is 'enlightened' unless they are somehow
 different from the run-of-the-mill norm? aren't there special
 characteristics of these folks and wouldn't these profoundly
 affect the kind of lives such people live out?
 
|#> I salute the makers of this movie, who apparently are 
|#> planning a sequel, and maybe even a trilogy.
|# 
|# not surprising. this is very like religion, which seeks to
|#  keep the viewer hooked to a continuing story rather than
|#  to expose hir to a real 'waking up' on a mass scale.
| 
| Then again, What do you do once you wake up?  

why is there a presumption that life changes at this juncture?
 'first there is a mountain, then there is no mountain, then
 there is'? 'nothing special'? 'practice is enlightenment'?

waking up seems to me to be a greater cognizance surrounding
 intentional choice. such a wake-up should lead to greater
 concern about the totality of one's impact upon others,
 a refinement of lifestyle and deathstyle to a beauteous
 repercussion, and the promotion of vitality and peace,
 whether in one's own back yard or throughout the cosmos

| Become a "master idler" (Ramana Maharshi) is only one option; 

in one's own back yard

| jumping back into the game is another.

one's back yard is not 'the game'? is travelling and sporting
 the necessary means of promulgating the Dharma? must one
 venture outward to mature inwardly and transmit this Dharma?
 or is there no real difference between 'here' and 'there'?

| You play life *as* a game, recognizing it is only virtual reality.

cf. "Liber MUD: MUDs and Western Mysticism", by Haramullah,
 http://www.luckymojo.com/avidyana/gnostik/psycmud.html which 
 explains how "virtual reality" is an oxymoron

| The Gita speaks of this "problem of action."

not duty vs compassion?
-- 
emailed replies may be posted; cc replies if response desired