Ineedahero
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Aug 8, 2016
This is fucking madness. You are just straight up making up bullshit so you can continue believing your fan theory.Salt was used as a preservative in ancient times, so to be the "Salt of the Earth" meant that you would preserve civilization, which Christian monks did during the Fall of Rome when they tried to copy down as much of Rome's written works as they could. In the same vein, the Jedi preserve civilization in the form of the Republic, fighting to keep it standing. Buddhism meanwhile would eschew such earthly attachments, seeing things like civilization as fleeting and focusing more on achieving Nirvana and breaking the reincarnation cycle they're trapped in.
Those democratic countries that are Buddhist aren't necessarily the most fervent in terms of religiosity. In fact, many of them see Buddhism now as more of a philosophy than a religion. And the Shinto Priests were considered by other Buddhists even in their time to be more nationalistic than religious, since those priests saw the Emperor as some kind of god. Those pilots aren't dying for Buddha, they're dying for the Emperor.
Lucas only took aesthetics from other religions, but try as he might, most of the Jedi faith would be laughed off by eastern religions as too western and too Christian. To look at the Jedi way from the perspective of a Buddhist or a Taoist would elicit the same reaction, especially since Buddhist monks had wives and kids. The Dalai Lama was a polygamist, too. Whereas the Jedi in Lucas' films were strictly celibate, similar to Templars and clergy in Medieval Catholicism. And again, there's no reincarnation in the Jedi faith, that's more along the lines of what Sith do when more powerful Sith leave their old bodies for newer, younger ones. In eastern faiths, reincarnation is normal. In the Jedi religion, reincarnation is of the Dark Side, something only the Sith do. In the Jedi way, light has to be encouraged and darkness forsaken, whereas in eastern faiths like Buddhism and Taoism, light and dark have to be balanced with each other and both have to be accepted as natural.
Buddhists have never eschewed civilization because of their religion. Zen buddhist priests (not Shinto, which is a different religion) were considered wrong by other buddhists for the same reason a catholic thinks a baptist is wrong. That doesn't make them not buddhist. They didn't worship the emperor instead of Buddha, they thought the emperor was an incarnation of Buddha. And their level of religiosity means nothing - the US is purportedly Christian but the president fucked a porn star. The point is that Buddhism is not incompatible with democracy or dying for your country as you suggest.
And the fact that buddhists might laugh off the jedi religion as too western and Christian means nothing - a Christian would consider it too Eastern to the same degree. Do you think if you sat a buddhist priest and a christian priest down and made them watch star wars the buddhist would come away laughing at the silly space myth and the christian would start annotating his bible?