Mostly Space

“All phenomena orginate in the mind.”

You often find this in Buddhist teachings. For the longest time, I wasn't sure how to approach it. Like that tree in my yard. I'm pretty sure I'm not projecting it with my mind. Other people see it, and can touch it. So how does it originate in my mind?

Sometimes it's easy to get bogged down in syntax where the teachings are concerned. We can tend to apply very literal interpretations, which is what I believe I'm doing here. I had a moment of insight as I ran at North Ponds yesterday, with an icy wind blowing off the lake to spur me on. I noticed a fallen leaf on the asphalt path as I came up to the front of the park. It was multi-colored, with brown and orange and some green mixed in. The edges of the leaf were curled over, so that it appeared to be a pile of something, rather than a dead leaf. From the odd assortment of colors, I assumed it was a pile of dog shit. At first glance, my brain registered this, and I almost immediately felt a slight wave of nausea. A few seconds later though, I realized it was a leaf, and the nausea instantly disappeared.

This proves that our senses aren't very reliable, or “deceivers”, as the Buddha called them. But it also effectively demonstrates the point above. Other matter does exist around us, and we're not beaming it into existence with mind rays. What originates in the mind is our tendency to label, to ascribe characteristics, to jump to conclusions and place objects and experiences into categories. All of this conceptual thinking leads us very far away from an open and natural way of living. We use our brains to build boxes...and endlessly compartmentalize. As the sages teach, it's not long before we're stuck in attachment and aversion (for example, “what a beautiful leaf!” and “ugh, dog crap”). My example is rather trivial. We engage in this type of behavior every day on much weightier issues.

It isn't a great leap to apply this to trees or other simple physical objects. We see a tree, but the building blocks of this tree and everything else are atoms. If we could see at that level, we'd notice that atoms are mostly space. Mostly...emptiness. What we call a “tree” is really our conception of a huge number of atoms arranged in a specific fashion. We sense only through a thin slice of the possible spectrum.

Off to get groceries, where I'll once again try to convince myself that those cookies are mostly made of space.

A Hard Boiled Shaman

Muktuk Wolfsbreath: Hard Boiled Shaman is an online comic I started following a couple of years ago. I can't recall how I found it. Probably linked through some comic news site I visit. I read a couple of the daily strips and found it entertaining. I wasn't very good at keeping up with a daily strip though. I didn't visit the site for months, and by the time I did, the strips were no longer available there.

I was happy to learn, however, that the author, Terry LaBan, published his strip in book form. Wanting to support the author, I ordered a copy through Amazon. I recently read the entire story and enjoyed it in its entirety.

It's titled “The Spirit of Boo”, and it involves our eponymous Siberian shaman and his efforts to save a young boy who's fallen desperately ill. In his otherworldly travels, Muktuk discovers that a rival shaman is attempting to claim the boy's soul due to a debt owed by his clan.

As the title suggests, the story mashes up shamanism with a story right out of your average noir detective film. There's a femme fatale, the initial mystery of the boy's illness, and the mistrust Muktuk encounters despite his good intentions. I'm not normally a fan of this stunt, and the world of comics is unfortunately enamored of it all too often. Think of the movie Cowboys and Aliens, based off of a graphic novel. The very idea conjured by the title just doesn't appeal to me.

LaBan's story succeeds though. Although a case could be made that there's a noir overlay to the proceedings, I could believe Siberian natives acting in the way that they did, even without that conceit. Muktuk has to make tough choices, one of which results in the death of a close animal friend. The dialogue is suitably sparse, and in spite of the presence of talking animals, there's no Disney effect. A boy's life hangs in the balance, and the story never forgets it.

The art is somewhat cartoony, but not so much that it detracts from the subject matter. The one weakness I found was LaBan's depiction of the demons. It's extremely rudimentary, a style which I feel I could copy almost exactly, and I'm no great artist by any means. It's a minor flaw, in the end.

As a bonus, the author includes older stories that were serialized in DC's Vertigo imprint back in the mid-90s. The stories are fairly short and lightweight, and the art is more detailed, very reminiscent, in fact, of R Crumb. They show how far LaBan has brought the character in nearly 20 years.

He hints at possibly more Muktuk stories to come. If you're looking for a graphic novel that isn't superheroes, and which boasts a very unusual setting with good writing, this is definitely worth a look.