#this is based off my knowledge of Chan Buddhism

[theawesometrinculo]

Significance of The Heart Sutra in Blue Eye Samurai

The Heart of Prajna Paramita Sutra is a very popular sutra in Buddhism. Even today, millions of people recite and copy this sutra. The text might be short, but it's quite dense. While I don't really understand this sutra myself, I'll try my best to get across the main idea of this text.

"The body is emptiness and emptiness body. All things are only empty. Nothing is born. Nothing broken."

While this line is not exactly what the sutra says, it does a good job of getting the episode's message across, in that Mizu realizes that the things she thought held her back were actually what made her whole.

The Heart Sutra is an exhortation towards Bodhi, Enlightenment, Perfection. Mahayana Buddhists believe that everyone has an innate buddha-nature, which points to our potentiality of becoming buddhas. This buddha-nature is said to be be pure, whole, and complete, yet it is also empty, meaning that it doesn't have a substantiated self or ego. To make this easier to understand, this would be opposed to Christianity where everyone is born with sin and guilt and strives to be morally pure. Because the buddha-nature is empty, the dichotomy of good and bad isn't a "thing", so to say. That doesn't mean that they don't exist or that we shouldn't continue helping others, but instead the idea of them are just notions we attach to and what we use to judge ourselves and others.

The Sixth Patriarch of Zen Buddhism said, "Affliction is Bodhi." They are two sides of the same coin. I think this quote encapsulates Mizu in this episode. Mizu might not find peace through revenge, but she definitely found some semblance of it reforging her sword.

When making swords, Eiji emphasized that while you have to hammer out the impurities, the impurities are actually what makes the blade strong. If the metal is too pure, it will become brittle and break. However, just because it broke, doesn't mean it can't be meld again. "Affliction is Bodhi" points to the ability to transform what causes pain into clarity and peace. A common analogy used is ice turning into water. Mizu held tightly to anger and hate, making her cold and distant. But with the help of Eiji and Ringo, she stopped running away from the things she hated about herself.

Finding peace requires courage and vulnerability. It requires us to confront the things that we are ashamed of and the things that we fear. After her talk with Eiji, Mizu starts a new fire, undoes her hair, and sheds her male attire. Throughout her whole life, Mizu felt inadequate and broken for being mixed and being born a girl. Now she sees things as they are, no longer rejecting that side of herself. She becomes more open, and even asks Ringo to help her finish writing the Heart Sutra on her body.

"There are some things I cannot do alone."

"The body is emptiness and emptiness body. All things are only empty. Nothing is born. Nothing broken."

Going back to this line, I need you to repeat after me: Emptiness is not the void! Emptiness holds all things, and all things are within emptiness, and therefore is the source of it all. It speaks to the interconnectedness of all things. Emptiness has always been there, whole and complete. Mizu realizes that she is whole and complete, because she is not alone. And so, nothing is born, nothing dies, nothing is broken.

[ashina-suns-penmanship]

The Turk Encampment

Changge arrives at Ashina Sun’s nomadic encampment and is shown to a tent.  One of the women sent to Ashina Sun by the Great Khan tries to escape and coincidentally runs into Changge’s tent, and the latter shields her from being recaptured.  Changge’s request to “keep” the woman is granted.

Changge lies unconscious in her ill, weakened state and dreams of a memory from her childhood life the palace, in which she offers herself as a bride to the Turks in order to please her father, an action that greatly displeases her uncle Li Shimin, who convinces Emperor Gaozu to turn down her proposition.

Heqin - 和親

Changge’s dream sequence depicting her offering herself in marriage to the Turks is a reference to the heqin policy, a form of marriage alliance practiced by the Chinese imperial court that married royal princesses to foreign powers, usually entities that posed a military threat—and in this case, the Turks.  Heqin was most often used to cement diplomatic relations and as an appeasement policy, but was not always successful.

The fact that princesses were married off should be taken with a grain of salt; who the emperor truly sent out in marriage depended on how strong he perceived the foreign polity to be.  Real, legitimate princesses—sometimes even the emperor’s own daughters, but usually girls from minor branches of the royal family—were given as brides to the strongest powers, whereas weaker entities would be given noblewomen or concubines in the imperial harem whose ranks were hastily raised to “princess” before being married off.

The first recorded instance of heqin is from the Han Dynasty, in which Emperor Gaozu (note: of Han, not Tang) married a “princess” into the Xiongnu royal family.  Subsequent dynasties would adjust the heqin policy in accordance to their situations.  Daughters of the emperors of the Sixteen Kingdoms were married into the ruling families of the other kingdoms, rather than outside the Han ethnic group, in order to form alliances between the states.  The Sui Dynasty’s heqin practices extended primarily to the Turkic Khaganate and Tuyuhun; the Tang Dynasty married princesses not only to the Turks and Tuhuyun, but also the Khitan, Tibetans, and Uyghur.

Perhaps the most famous example of heqin is of Wang Zhaojun’s marriage to a Xiongnu chanyu during the Han Dynasty.  Wang Zhaojun was one of the Four Beauties of Ancient China (the others being Yang Guifei, Diao Chan, and Xi Shi).  From a young age, she was renowned for her intellect and beauty, and was chosen to become a member of the imperial harem.  When she arrived, tradition dictated that each woman in the harem’s portrait would be sent to the emperor; however, Wang Zhaojun refused the bribe the court painter to beautify her image as many others did, and in revenge, the artist painted her likeness in an undesirable manner, and the emperor never visited her.  Later, when a Xiongnu chanyu asked to marry a Han princess, the emperor was unwilling to send one of his daughters, instead intending to choose a volunteer from his harem to be given in matrimony.  Wang Zhaojun was the only one who offered herself and the emperor agreed, basing his decision off of the portraits by the court painter.  It was only when she was summoned to court to be married off that the emperor saw her amazing beauty and regretted his decision.  In the end, since he could not renege on his promise, he sent Wang Zhaojun to the chanyu.  Subsequent relations between the Han and Xiongnu improved greatly as she rose to the chanyu’s favor.  In the Chinese proverb about the Four Beauties, Wang Zhaojun is described as “felling geese”.  This nickname comes from a legend surrounding her departure from the Central Plains to Xiongnu territory; supposedly when she began to sorrowfully sing about her sadness at leaving her home, a flock of geese flying overhead heard and were so stunned by her beauty that they fell to the ground, having forgotten to flap their wings.

Another well-known example of the heqin policy in action took place hundreds of years later in the Tang Dynasty.  After being faced with the threat of the dynasty’s neighbors in Tibet, Emperor Taizong named a daughter of a minor branch of the Li family Princess Wencheng and sent her to become a wife of the Tibetan king Songtsen Gampo.  Princess Wencheng—sometimes called Gyasa, meaning “Chinese wife”—and Songtsen Gampo’s possibly non-existent Nepalese wife Bhrikuti are credited for introducing Buddhism to Tibet.  Together with their husband, they oversaw a blossoming of the Buddhist faith in the Tibetan kingdom and the building of the Jokhang, a structure widely revered as the most sacred temple in Lhasa and all of Tibet.  Furthermore, Princess Wencheng brought a great deal of important inventions, customs, and knowledge to her new country.  Besides her dowry of jewels, precious metals, silks, porcelain, and instruments, she provided the Tibetans with medical books, more agriculturally productive grains and seeds, and advanced farming tools.  Additionally, she helped develop the complexity of Tibetan society by introducing better weaving and metallurgy techniques and fostering the growth of Tibetan script and writing systems.

I’ve decided that I’m splitting these little analyses into smaller parts, because I have zero free time on my hands right now.  I’ll try my best to update quickly!!

Sidenote: I think I’ll stick to calling the nomadic dwellings tents, because I’ve heard that a lot of people get offended by “yurt” (which is a Russian word that was introduced to English) and “ger” is Mongolian.

Way back when, this anon was me.  I’m really thinking about writing a fic with this theory!!

Source | Raws