Posts tagged: philosophizing the apocalypse
Before his final ride in Striker Eureka, Chuck Hanson asks Stacker Pentecost how the two of them, who do not share an emotional bond will be able to drift. Stacker replies, “I bring nothing to the drift, no rank, no ego,“ as though this will explain how Stacker is able to initiate a neural handshake with someone that he has not gone through compatibility training with. From the perspective of Zen Buddhist philosophy of mind, this makes perfect sense: a person who can literally leave behind their self, their ego, their rank, and and all of the nonsense that leads to harmful attachment will be more able to drift with anyone, regardless of their prior compatibility.
Normally, when we speak of no-mind, we talk about the concept of non-attachment: the stilling of the mind in such a way that thoughts arise without the mind clinging to them. For the Japanese Buddhists, clinging to attachments (thoughts included) is the source of delusion: when we hold onto our thoughts, we attempt to make them permanent. This is contrary to the nature of a world predicated upon impermanence, and ultimately leads to suffering. The state of “abiding without mind,” or “mushin" is taken to be one of the necessary conditions for perceiving the conditioned nature of the phenomenal world and thus releasing one’s attachment to it.
One way of achieving this “no-mind" state is through shikantaza, the “just sitting" meditation conceived by Dogen Kigen. In shikantaza, the goal is to meditate without attaching a particular goal to that mediation: to impart a goal would be to become attached to the goal and sort-circuit the attempt to release one’s attachments. Further, one of the goalless goals of shikantaza is to become aware of the way in which our attachment to things that condition our “selves" provides the source of delusion. Once this realization is made manifest, then shinjindatsuraku (body/mind dropping away) occurs where the individual realizes their conditioned nature, their “non-self.“
Dogen Kigen, in his Shobogenzo, presented a conception of shikantaza that included all activities if these activities are performed to bring an awareness of the interdependent nature of the world. Earlier I made the observation that the physical compatibility testing was intended to generate an awareness of the bodies of two pilots and prefigure the degree to which their minds could interface by demonstrating how quickly they could adapt to one another. In this mode, the martial arts can serve the purpose of shikantaza by cultivating an awareness of an entire individual as a collection of interdependent relations within an overall network of relations: getting stuck on a single arising moment leads to death in the martial arts.
Takuan Soho fully explains this concept in his text on Zen Buddhism and martial arts, The Unfettered Mind. In it, he paints a picture of the nest martial artist as one whose mind does not abide in his opponent, or his sword, or his technique, or his understanding of himself as “the best.” Rather, the mind does not abide anywhere: it moves through the fight allowing the martial artist (a swordsman, in this case) to respond appropriately. No-mind, or non-attachment, becomes fundamental to the cultivation of the supremely skilled warrior, particularly in his ability to read and respond to an opponent without becoming “stuck.“
To this end, the martial arts training that the Jaeger pilots engage in serves a double purpose: it allows them to read their partners, AND it cultivates in them a mind that does not attach itself. That is, the martial arts training that the Jaeger pilots engage in introduces them to the state of no-mind, of non-abiding, that is necessary for the initiation of the neural handshake. Put another way, in order to engage in the neural handshake, one must be willing and able to release one’s attachment to an egoistic self.
Now, why is releasing our attachments to things, like rank and ego, which constitute the illusion of the “self,” important for the Drift? Well, if we think about this in terms of the neural handshake, clinging onto one’s ego and one’s rank while attempting to initiate a mental connection prefigures an unwillingness to enter into a cooperative, interdependent relationship with another mind. In short, the mind that clings to ego would be “stuck" on their own ego and would resist the union necessary to pilot the Jaeger. To this end, the extremely egotistical person would be unable to initiate the drift because they would be too attached to their subjective self.
Further, it is not merely rank and ego that would deny one the ability to enter into the neural handshake: extreme emotion would also damage the ability to join minds. Here, we can look at Stacker’s statement to Mako Mori, “You cannot carry that level of emotion into the drift.“ An easy assumption would be to presume that Mako’s emotion introduces an instability that prevents two minds from blending as it keeps one pilot from being calm. I, however, disagree: I believe that what Stacker is pointing to is the fact that Mako’s mind still abides at the moment when the Kaiju killed her parents.
To this end, Mako’s emotion is a result of her attachment to the loss of her parents: she has accepted their loss and Stacker as her father/sensei/commander, however, she is still attached to the fact that the Kaiju took her parents, and the life she could have had, from her. This attachment conditions the arising of the extreme emotion that Stacker cautions her against and, further, intensifies the RABIT (the memory) that caused her to destabilize her link with Raleigh and Gipsy Danger. In contrast, shikantaza and, more specifically shinjindatsuraku are places where we are aware of the conditions that cause the arising of ego and emotion, the attachments that cause suffering, and we allow them to pass.
Even Raleigh has an understanding of the concept of releasing one’s attachment so that emotions cannot arise and color the drift. When he gives advice to Mako during their neural compatibility test, he says “the drift is Silence.” Silence is a good metaphor for the mental state of no-mind, but stillness is actually the terminology used by Dogen Kigen and other schools of Japanese Buddhism that forefront meditation. Silence/Stillness does not imply that there are no thoughts within the mind, merely that the mind does not attach to them: the arising thoughts are tuned into background noise by not attaching to them, thus allowing the mind to become still or silent.
Returning to Stacker, because he brings nothing to the drift, i.e. he has released his attachment to his rank and his ego (probably due to an implicit understanding of the impermanence of these things and his impending end), he can engage in a neural handshake with anyone. For Stacker, there is nothing in the drift, no place for his mind to abide in: his drift is literally silence. More specifically, I would hazard that Stacker’s mind fully abides in the interdependent relation of the drift: more than any other of the Jaeger pilots, Stacker likely allows his “self" to completely fall away when he engages in the neural handshake.