Imaginary Worlds - The Zen of Sci-Fi

Episode Date: April 29, 2021

Illusions that mask the true nature of reality. Meditating to gain control over your mind and body. Sending your consciousness to other bodies. These are both tenants of Buddhism and science fiction. Professor Jim Clarke says the overlap is no accident, Buddhism has been influencing sci-fi fantasy creators for over a century. Novelists Ramez Naam and Yudhanjaya Wijeratne talk about how they incorporate Buddhism into their sci-fi stories and personal practices. Also, Reverend Landon Yamaoka discusses why his sect of Buddhism is in line with the troubled journey of Anakin Skywalker.  Today's episode is brought to you by Realm and BetterHelp. Want to advertise/sponsor our show? We have partnered with AdvertiseCast to handle our advertising/sponsorship requests. They’re great to work with and will help you advertise on our show. Please email [e-mail] or click the link below to get started. Imaginary Worlds AdvertiseCast Listing Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Shop Old Spice Total Body Deodorant now. You're listening to Imaginary Worlds, a show about how we create them and why we suspend our disbelief. I'm Eric Malinsky. I got a message from a listener recently asking if I'd ever thought about doing an episode about how often Buddhism is used as the basis for an alien religion or a philosophical system in a fantasy movie. I never thought about that before, but once I started looking into it,

I couldn't believe how often that was the case. And later in the episode, I will delve into the specific movies and TV shows that I'm thinking of and how they reflect Buddhism. But first, we need to look at why this happened. Jim Clark is a professor at Coventry University in the UK, and he's writing a book about Buddhism and science fiction. He says it really began when Buddhism came to the West over 200 years ago. Now, that's pretty recent for a religion that's over 2,500 years old. But Jim says in most Asian countries that Westerners had traveled to, Buddhism was not the main form of belief.

The places where you kind of had predominantly Buddhism, places like Indochina or the Himalayan Plateau or Sri Lanka, they were kind of remote outposts. They're kind of difficult places to get to. And they were kind of late on the list for Western imperialism, I guess. Speaking of Western imperialism, some of the earliest writings from Westerners about Buddhism came from British officers that were stationed in India. They kind of got a misperception of Buddhism as this kind of textual entity that didn't apparently have to

have gods and was possibly in keeping or at least could dovetail with enlightenment ideals in the scientific method. And this weird amalgam runs all the way through ever since, all the way into the science fiction. It runs into Western philosophy. Schopenhauer's writing about this. Nietzsche is writing about this. They all seem to think that Buddhism is kind of like a kind of a lost Eastern mystical variant of science. And that's one of the reasons

why science fiction writers have been interested in Buddhism. There's a kind of a well-developed literature where people kind of map Buddhist ideas across to Western science in often kind of parallelist rather than convincing ways, you know. And the Dalai Lama is as guilty of this as anybody, you know, kind of saying, oh, yeah, we had this way of thinking in the 15th century.

It's basically neuroscience. And you're like, no, it's basically 15th century Tibetan philosophy. It's not neuroscience. Although Ramasnam disagrees. He's the author of the Nexus Trilogy, which incorporates Buddhist ideas into science fiction. He is Egyptian-American, raised as a Coptic Christian, but he's taken on Buddhist meditation in his personal practice. The moment that he began to see a connection between science fiction and Buddhism happened when a few friends of his, who are neuroscientists, met the Dalai Lama at a conference. Somebody asked the Dalai Lama in that meeting, or so I'm told, Your Holiness, what if, as we do this collaboration, because they were putting

Buddhist monks in fMRI machines and so on, so they didn't have them meditate. What if we find out that something in Buddhist teachings is wrong? And the Dalai Lama said reportedly, well, then we have to change Buddhism. And that was just amazing. I was like, that's not what I would expect any religious leader to say ever. And I do notice that among people who are in neuroscience, meditation practices are not uncommon. And so it became part of my life, and it made sense for me when I was writing a science fiction novel about neuroscience to integrate that as well. Also, Buddhism has always been adaptable. That's how it spread throughout Asia, by adjusting to fit whatever culture it found itself in. And so the flexibility of Buddhism makes it good source material for fiction writers like Ramesh.

And many would say that's a problem, or either complain about appropriation, or say you're not doing it right. I don't see that as a problem. I think, you know, my fiction is also about freedom of ideas and the spread of ideas and the value of connecting people and connecting our thoughts to each other to have new thoughts come up. So I think the hybridization of Buddhist ideas with other ideas, which Buddhism has proven itself so adept at, is a wonderful thing. Although Jim Clark says when Buddhism first took hold in American pop culture in the early 20th century, it was appropriated in all the worst kind of ways.

It starts off with yellow peril narratives entirely. The terrifying Fu Manchu type evil Asians are going to come and nefariously be wily and do terrible things to our lantern jawed blonde heroes. In case you missed that, he said lantern jawed blonde heroes, which is a great expression. these kind of Buddhist narratives where it's, you know, Lamton Jodhury plus Buddhist Lama sidekick saves the world or, you know, defeats the aliens or defeats the nefarious Chinese Fu Manchu figure. And then in 1933, the novel Lost Horizon came out, which is about white people who travel to Tibet

and find a mystical place called Shangri-La. And that just leads to an explosion of these kind of, wow, Buddhism, cool. The Green Llama, who's a kind of by day, suave detective, by night, mystical llama with superheroes who solves the crimes. John Amman, the amazing man, who's kind of like, I forget the guy from the Fantastic Four who can kind of extend his. Oh, yeah. Mr. Fantastic. Mr. Fantastic. He's basically Mr. Fantastic, but he does it through meditation. He's John Amman, the amazing man who learned in Tibet how to meditate himself into Mr. Fantastic. That's this guy. The comics are brilliant. They're brilliant to read.

That's amazing. I wish there was like a radio drama of the Green Llama, like, by day he's a detective and by radio drama of the Green Llama. Like, by day, he's a detective. And by night, he becomes the Green Llama. I have some wonderful news for you. There was. Really? There was for about maybe three seasons. This was a radio serial, The Green Llama. And it is exactly as you described.

And as cringeworthy as I feared. Om Mani Padme Hum. The Green Llama strikes for justice. And now we bring you another exciting adventure taken directly from the files of Jethro Dumont, the wealthy young American who, after 10 years in Tibet, returned as the Green Llama. In the mid-20th century, science fiction got more serious, the literature became more highbrow,

and Buddhism found a way to adapt. For instance, take Arthur C. Clarke. His science fiction was always very scientifically accurate. But he also moved in midlife to Sri Lanka, where you have a very austere form of Buddhism, possibly the only form of Buddhism that Arthur would have liked, the Theravadan form of Buddhism that is very austere, very shorn of kind of mythology, very meditative. You can see that influence in novels like Childhood's End. The aliens come along, take all our children, make them into a galactic overlord. We all die and all religions are proved false by a guy who kind of looks like Satan. But the one religion that isn't proven false is Buddhism, because Arthur C.

Clarke's understanding of Buddhism was a very kind of austere science friendly or as he saw it, science friendly version of Buddhism. I mean, I don't think we can be in any doubt he was a quite hardened atheist, but he does have this soft spot for Buddhism and he exempts it throughout his career from childhood and childhood's end onwards. And then in the 1960s, Buddhism took hold with a counterculture on the West Coast. Frank Herbert, the author of Dune, was a practicing Buddhist. Now, I did a whole episode about the Islamic influences in Dune, but you can see the influence of Buddhism as well.

Like early in the first book, the hero, Paul Atreides, goes through a rite of passage where he has to endure extreme pain. In order to deal with the pain, he recites what is basically a Buddhist mantra, but it's a mantra of Herbert's own invention. And, you know, it's possibly the single, it's got to be one of the top three science fiction tattoos that's out there. You know, fear is the mind killer. I will not fear, you know, I will let it pass through me, only I will remain, et cetera, et cetera. And he recites this and he manages to deal with the pain. Only I will remain, et cetera, et cetera.

And he recites this and he manages to deal with the pain. And that is very definitely rooted in Herbert's own Zen practice. But it's all throughout, you know, Lady Jessica is teaching people this Pranubindu technique, which is obviously meditative in order to develop your muscles and develop your... That's derivative of a particular Zen practice where you carry a bowl of water down the mountain, but you're not allowed to think about the water because if you think about it, you'll spill it. There's also the 1967 novel, Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny. It's about Indian space travelers that end up on a distant planet where they use technology to become futuristic versions of Hindu gods, and one of them becomes the Buddha. Ramasnam loved that book when he was a teenager. I mean, Siddhartha is the protagonist, and various Hindu gods appear throughout the book. And with science fiction, there's technology involved, and it all just really worked.

Zelazny's amazing, and Lord of Light might be my very favorite Zelazny book, and it influenced me deeply. So that's how Buddhism took hold in sci-fi literature. But then once science fiction became mainstream with movies and TV shows, these ideas became tenants of the genre, to the point where a lot of people don't realize there are Buddhist roots to some of the most popular characters or sci-fi tropes. We'll get to that far, far away galaxy just after the break. How do stop losses work on Kraken? Let's say I have a birthday party on Wednesday night, but an important meeting Thursday morning.

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see the true nature of reality behind the veil. That's another reason why people thought that Buddhism was a scientific religion. Because you can map those ideas onto infrared light or quantum physics, which show that the world isn't exactly what we see. Or, as a small child dressed as a Buddhist monk once said in a movie, Do not try and bend theoon. That's impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth. What truth? There is no spoon.

Of course, that is the Matrix. Landon Yamaoka is a Buddhist reverend in the Bay Area, and he's given lectures about the Buddhist roots of science fiction movies. One of the scenes in The Matrix that resonates with him is when Morpheus gives Neo the opportunity of taking the red pill or the blue pill. In Buddhism, there's this idea of like the dharma or the truth, and a Buddhist practitioner is supposed to understand what the truth is. So if you take the red pill, there's this idea of the truth becoming known to you. Buddhism's pushing to understand the truth or the reality.

You take the blue pill, the story ends. You wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill, you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes. But I would argue that a lot of people were probably happy being in the Matrix with not having the choice to take the blue pill. But I think a lot of people would technically want the blue pill from a societal standpoint. And that plays out with the character of Cipher, who betrays our heroes because he can't stand the truth anymore. I know this steak doesn't exist.

I know that when I put it in my mouth, the Matrix is telling my brain that it is juicy and delicious. After nine years, you know what I realize? Ignorance is bliss. Again, Ramaznam. Yeah, the character that betrays Neo, who likes the steak even though he knows it's fake. I sympathize.

I have those days. Most of my days are more like that than like being the Buddha. So that's what it is to be human. And Landon says Buddhism doesn't just have layers of reality on top of each other. It also embraces the idea of a multiverse, which is popular in sci-fi now, and even among a few physicists in the real world. There's different Buddha worlds. So like, there's the earth, and Siddhartha Gautama was a Buddha on this earth. But there's an idea in the cosmology that there's other Buddha lands, and there can only be one Buddha in one Buddha land. And so these Buddhas have the ability to,

they live in their land, but Buddhas can jump to other Buddhas lands. If that kind of makes sense. Like, I don't know how they do it. They transport. Oh, they're actually kind of like in Magic the Gathering, the card game, they have planeswalkers

who can go from one plane to another. Yes, I actually know that. Yes. Another Buddhist idea that often gets the sci-fi treatment is reincarnation. Now, of course, other religions believe in reincarnation, but it's often used in a Buddhist way in science fiction, like in the novel Years of Rice and Salt by Kim Stanley Robinson, where Buddhist characters

are reincarnated through the ages, and they meet up in the bardo, which is like a Buddhist interworld. And usually in these stories, the many lifetimes of the characters allow them to grow, like in the Tom Cruise movie Edge of Tomorrow, which is based on a Japanese novel called All You Need is Kill. The story is about a soldier who keeps dying and coming back to life until he becomes a better person. Again, here's Landon. In Buddhism, there's an idea of shift in perspective. Like instead of like me blaming all of you out there for all of my problems, there's also the idea of self-reflection. And you start to see him save other people because he's been through it so many times. Like, well, i could save that guy who's in my squad or i could help push someone out of

the way i volunteered i'm not walking away you die here right here i didn't know you, but I do. And so there's this idea of karmic merit. If you can build your karmic merit, that also helps you gain enlightenment. The idea of reincarnation also plays into another sci-fi trope, that you can upload your consciousness to artificial bodies and keep on living indefinitely. Yudha Wijeratna is a Sri Lankan sci-fi novelist who was raised in a Buddhist tradition. His new book, The Salvage Crew, is about a Buddhist who uploads his mind to a machine. And he says these types of stories, whether it's Battlestar Galactica or Westworld or Altered Carbon, always felt Buddhist

to him. It seemed quite natural to me, like when I first heard of this and when I first saw it in science fiction, it seemed a very natural fit because the whole idea is that there is a part of you that carries on through bodies. The literature is a little bit cagey about what precisely is carried on, but there's almost, if you look at it in terms of data, it's almost like there's a unique ID, a marker that is carried on. And to it is assigned your karmic value, an act of almost cosmic accountancy. This idea first occurred to him when he was watching a rerun of a 1993 movie called Cyborg 2, which starred a young Angelina Jolie.

And there was a line of graffiti on a wall. And like, you know, this movie is not introspective in any sense of the word. However, there is a line of graffiti in a very particular frame in that movie that said the soul is in the software. Now, of course, some set decorator would have put it there as a nice tag to have, but those lines actually resonated quite well with my notion already of how this whole superstructure may exist. So I just went, okay, this seems to fit here, and this seems to fit here. What if we play with these concepts a little? here and this seems to fit here. What if we play with these concepts a little? Ramasnam has also played with these concepts in his Nexus trilogy, where a group of meditators use neurotechnology to literally get in sync with each other.

If you're writing a translation about the mind, well, Buddhism, you can't unweave Buddhism from meditation. The scenes where there's a group of people meditating all their minds hinted by nexus and they go through a process of almost emerging for some period of time or when they're at a dance club all on nexus and the dj is feeding back their thoughts to them and again they go through this process of blurring the lines between them, becoming something larger. Those moments where you transcend the human, I find fascinating.

And that's what moves me in a book often. And that's what I want to convey as well. Science fiction has also incorporated a lot of visual ideas from Buddhism, like having characters that wear robes and meditate in monasteries in ways that give them special abilities. Whether it's Doctor Strange studying with the Ancient One, or the Vulcans in Star Trek, like in this scene from the series Enterprise. They don't even know we're coming. It wasn't possible to hail them. The monks consider technology a distraction from their spiritual pursuits.

I don't like dropping in on people unannounced. It won't be a problem as long as we observe the proper protocols. When we arrive, we'll be greeted by a Vulcan elder. You should not speak to him or any member of the order unless spoken to first. If they appear to be meditating, do not approach them or attempt to make conversation. Although Jim Clark says there is a fine line between paying homage and stereotyping. And Star Trek kind of walked that line when it began in the 60s. that line when it began in the 60s. It's clearly a kind of, you know, Spock, the hyper-rational,

unfeeling, cold, he's the wily oriental gentleman of space. You know, I love Leonard Nimoy, I love Spock, but, you know, we can't ignore that that's kind of what was influencing the creation of the character. Now, Star Wars has had its own issues with stereotyping, although the Jedi can be any race of aliens that dress like monks and meditate. Either way, Yudha never had a problem with Star Wars or Star Trek playing with these ideas because he thinks the role of meditation in these stories still feels accurate to him. A significant portion of Buddhism is about being able to control yourself, being able to control your mind and your reaction to the world outside of it. And it is that calm, collected rationale that eventually wins through.

Although I was thinking it's still kind of ironic that the Jedi use meditation to become calm and rational and to be able to flip backwards with a lightsaber and kick ass in really cool ways. But Yuda says Buddhism and fighting are not mutually exclusive. There's a long history of warrior monks, and he pointed me towards a 16th century Chinese novel called Journey to the West, which is about a Buddhist monk. The depictions there are less about peace and tranquility, I suppose, and more about fighting, actually. A significant portion of that story, through its 70-odd volumes, are these two people fighting bandits, demons, tigers, dragons, whatnot. And it matches that philosophy of martial arts

as a demonstration of how much fine control you have over your body. And Jim Clark says the way Yoda trains the Jedi, it's similar to a Zen master. Yoda talks in riddles, basically. But they're not the riddles that Smaug the Dragon sets for Frodo or for Bilbo, sorry. They're not kind of Anglo-Saxon kennings. They're riddles that are not really necessarily solvable. You're not meant to solve them.

You're supposed to think about them and ponder them until you kind of have a personal breakthrough. And that's a Zen koan. You know, the famous one, imagine the sound of one hand clapping. If a tree falls in the wood and no one's there to hear it, does it make a sound? These are rhetorical questions. You're not meant to answer them. You're meant to think about them until you gain an additional understanding of the world. And that's what Luke's doing on Dagobah, basically. Then you must go.

What's in there? Only what you take with you. So if the Jedi are like warrior Buddhist monks, then the Sith could be seen as sort of anti-Buddhists because they use darker, wild, unpredictable emotions as a source of their power. But Landon Yamaoka has a different understanding of the Sith. Now again, he's a Buddhist reverend, and the sect of Buddhism that he belongs to

originally came from Japan, where it was controversial because his sect incorporates more earthly concerns into their practice, like their priests are allowed to get married. So Landon feels sympathy towards Anakin Skywalker, and he understands why Anakin broke with the Jedi over principles like having attachments. So if you've seen the Clone Wars, the animated series, not the actual movie, I watched that and I see Anakin as the real anti-hero, but the actual real hero through my lens of Buddhism.

Anakin, I understand to a degree what is going on. You've met Satine. You know I once harbored feelings for her. It's not that we're not allowed to have these feelings. It's natural. Senator Amidala and I are simply friends. And friends you must remain. As a Jedi, it is essential you make the right choice, Anakin, for the Order. We consider these people Bodhisattvas. They had to be these savior beings to have the story. So when we're here today, we can know about the teachings.

Like, as bad as Anakin is, and you see that shift, he's able, Darth Vader or Anakin at the end is able to save Luke. Everyone wants to be a Jedi. And I, of course, love the Jedi. But I think we're also technically the Sith. So I also see Anakin as being kind of like, at least my sex, like that's the hero. Like that's the Bodhisattva. Because we're Anakin.

We're not Obi-Wan Kenobi. We're not Yoda. They're good people. We're just not them. We're not Obi-Wan Kenobi. We're not Yoda. They're good people. We're just not them. Another reason Buddhism fits well with science fiction is because it's about a quest for personal growth.

And that lines up with the hero's journey. In fact, Joseph Campbell, the author of The Hero's Journey, was very interested in Buddhism. He actually studied with a Buddhist priest that was part of Landon's sect in Japan. Joseph Campbell and Lucas talk about that a lot too. Like we're trying to give you something to just inspire people or give people hope. And if there's a Buddhist message in it, and maybe this is secularizing it, and maybe I'm like

a bad Buddhist because of this, but if it helps Joe Smoe go when they're going through some, you know, some extremely hard trauma and it gives them hope whether it's Buddhist to them or not. Like as someone who's worked in mental health and stuff like that, like people need hope. So like, it's cool for me to be able to take that and be like, well, Hey, you know, you've seen Star Wars. So let's talk about this from our tradition. You're on a plane and someone asks you about Buddhism and you talk about it and they're like, Oh, I like Star Wars. I'm like, bro, I got you. You might not know anything about the sect of Buddhism, but like we could talk about

this on the plane. And I've had conversations on the plane with people. They're like, what are you doing? Like, I'm reading a religious book. And then like, you know, we start talking about it. Sometimes after five minutes, they're like, bro, that's enough. And, you know, sometimes you get that person that's just like, keep telling me, like, can we have a conversation?

I'm like, I would love to talk to you. And if that gives someone something in their lives to like have a better day or that shift in perspective, which is like what Buddhism is looking for. Like, even if they're not Buddhist, like, okay, that's fine. Like, I want you to feel better. And if this message gives you hope, then please, like, you know, have hope. Like, that's what we want. That is it for this week. Thank you for listening.

Special thanks to Jim Clark, Ramasnam, Yudha Wijeratna, and Landon Yamaoka. Also, thanks to Bob Smetana, who suggested this idea. By the way, enrollment is open for my summer classes at NYU. I teach beginning and advanced courses on creating your own podcast. It's still virtual, so you can take it from anywhere. And you can learn more at NYU's website. My assistant producer is Stephanie Billman. You can like the show on Facebook.

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from movies, books, and even anime, but I just couldn't fit it all in there. You can learn more at imaginaryworldspodcast.org.