Legend Has It...

I first saw this post on Facebook. I found it very interesting that these facts about  Studio Ghibli’s “Spirited Away” are inherent in Japanese culture, but not so obvious to the outside observer. The one thing, I would like to add to this breakdown is that No Face represents a hungry ghost and could literally be anyone, because of the lack of spiritual identity.

Below is  a list of the 6 realms of Samsara- or the Wheel of rebirth, broken down in layman’s terms for easy digestion :D

Deva-gati

In Buddhism there are 26 Deva realms which would be considered heavens to us. But for the sake of separating the different types of beings born into each realm and simplifying understanding a bit, I’m counting all of them as one: Deva-gati- is  the Realm of Devas (gods/angels) and Heavenly Beings. It is considered the most pleasurable. Being populated by godlike beings (the ones with all the arms and stuff) who enjoy great power, wealth and long life. Since they are all happy, secure and content, they have no understanding of the suffering of others, especially in lower realms. So in spite of their long lives, if they are simply born to Deva-gati - like Svargaloka, for example, where Indra is king, they gain neither wisdom nor compassion unless they make it their mission to understand suffering and pain (would you?). They live in splendor and happiness. Yet even the Devas grow old and die, likely to be reborn on the wheel of Samsara, because even in their realm, one’s actions are subject to good and bad karma.

Asura-gati, the Realm of Asura (Titans, Demi-Gods, and Demons)

Or as I like to call it: Aether. If you are a believer, like me, this realm, in theory, would have housed Mt Olympus as well as all the other demi-gods and titans that, to our knowledge, ever became legendary. In Islam, the Djinn are powerful beings that we cannot see or touch. They are said to be made of smokeless fire (so demons, in a fire-natured sense), but they can see us and  interact with us and don’t think very much of humans in general. They have free will, like man, can be good or evil, spiritual or atheist and are said to live in places like high mountains, where human beings would never survive. They too would likely be housed in the realm of Asura. They too are subject to the generation of good and bad karmas, and thus rebirth.

Manusya-gati, the Human Realm

Jambudvipa, or, the Terrestrial world, is probably not just limited to Earth, but I imagine, includes even parallel dimensions in which the carnal/tangible nature of our planet with interstellar coordinates is what defines the matrix for its existing parameters. When I say parallel dimensions, I mean a world very similar to ours that  may be housed in another galaxy and occupies 3-dimensional space. If time and space were folded like a piece of paper, and we could instantly be teleported, a parallel dimension would still be tangible and satisfy the perception of our 5 physical senses. The beings housed in this realm are you and me, obviously, and you know very well the extent of good and evil that humans are capable of - And That’s just counting the last 3000 years of recorded history on *this* rock.

 Tiryagyoni-gati, the Animal Realm

The animal realm is also within Jambuvipa. It includes all the wild and domesticated beasts. In Buddhism, the belief is that animal beings are marked by stupidity, prejudice and complacency. They lead sheltered lives, mainly led by instinct, avoiding discomfort or anything unfamiliar. Personally, I don’t agree 100% with that assessment, mainly because I’ve met and seen some animals have more selflessness, decency and civility than humans on their best day. BUT in terms of rebirth the Animal Realm is conditioned by a sense of ignorance. As intelligent as beasts are and can come to be, their emotional state is driven by instinct. They are sentient, but do not plan for the future or self-reflect, existentially… except maybe dolphins...because dolphins are awesome. But in all seriousness, people who are ignorant and content to remain so (in the human realm) are likely headed for rebirth in the Animal Realm if their karma isn’t great when they die; assuming they aren’t there already *coughcough* because willfully and aggressively ignorant people are akin to wild beasts that can form speech *coughcough*

Preta-gati, the Realm of Hungry Ghosts

Hungry ghosts (preta) are pictured in old mandalas as beings with huge, empty stomachs, but they have pinhole mouths, and their necks are so thin they cannot swallow. A hungry ghost is one who is always looking outside himself for the new thing that will satisfy the craving within. So, in laymans terms, they likely reside on the Astral Plane/Limbo/Purgatory. They are constantly wandering, driven by insatiable hunger and craving. They are also associated with addiction, obsession and compulsion, and the real reason I think “Alcohol” is synonymous with “Spirits”. According to the Dhamma,  hungry ghosts and other restless spirits are caused by bad karma of excessive craving and attachments to addictive substances, material wealth and hedonism. They do not have a bodies, are invisible and constitute only “subtle matter” of a being. If you have ever experienced sleep paralysis, where it feels like some invisible force is sitting on your chest, holding you down, it’s likely you’ve met one. If you’ve ever had an out of body experience, there is a feeling that people have named “The witch over your shoulder” in which it feels like some evil invisible force is staring at you hungrily from behind<( this I can personally confirm) and it is because, while you’re out of your body, the being without one, is looking on in a jealous, vengeful, angry or disrespectfully hungry way. As soon as I looked in the direction though, nothing was there and the feeling went away. Buddhist traditions in Asia attempt to care for Hungry ghosts on ritual days every year, by leaving food and drinks out in the open, to feed any hungry ghosts nearby (How sweet is that?). But do not misunderstand, this is a condition of a human being with bad karma who died and ended up in the in-between…when their sentence is up, they can be reborn into another realm, but being that this realm is intangible, lends them almost no options as far as interaction with the terrestrial world, which means their actions (if they wanted to correct their bad karma) are very limited. So in most cases, they are stuck until their time is up and the suffering and discontent of being driven insane with insatiable hunger is, by design, incredibly intense.

One particular type of hungry ghost, that seems to grow in power by gaining the power to feed themselves are classed as No-Face.

No-Face

Remember him? Of course you do. He seemed lonely and innocent. In the movie “Spirited Away”, knowing what I know about the setting of the bathhouse, I would assume that No-Face was a rich pedophile when he was alive. That kind of karma will get you stuck for hundreds of years. So even though the movie is set in the modern era, this particular hungry ghost was likely wandering the spirit realm from the time there were Shogunates and Daimyos who would destroy entire clans villages, while giving orders and permission to rape the women and enslave the children to be sold as sex slaves or otherwise. 

Kaiken, like the above pictured, were pretty knives that women would hide in their kimonos, in the event that such a tragedy would befall them. They would often use them to commit suicide before they could be raped and killed by brigands or mercenaries. It was fucking horrible. Cute knife though.

The “Zero” Tails 

This parasitic abomination somehow made itself at home inside the host of a girl named Amaru in Naruto Shippuden the Movie: Bonds. Without going into too much detail about the plot of the film, Amaru became possessed by this demonic no-face after falling into a deep despair that it used to leech onto. In the end it made her a vessel of a large amount of chakra, comparable to the other Jinchuuriki, like Naruto. BUT the evil force of this powerfully hungry no-face fed on negative emotions, biding its time until it could completely consume its host and overtake her body. It called itself the “zero-tails” which is obviously misleading, because all the tailed beasts,  one through nine, had fucking TAILS. But to move quietly through the world until its endgame was realized, this was the lie it used to convince anyone who could sense its dark presence in a seemingly innocent adolescent girl. In the end, Naruto sensed the leech’s corruption in Amaru, despite the exorcism of it, which was why it had grown to a level of power, even remotely comparable to his own tailed-beast. She and her sensei were feeding it sin, and ultimately, both earned bad karma.

Talk about fucking done-If you are  a fan of Naruto and wonder how he stays so single and ignorantly innocent of the opposite sex for 17 years of his life, watch this movie with abject scrutiny. Actually watch every movie in which he saves the girl and watch how they all slowly disappoint the fuck out of him. Amaru was a piece of work….

Koh The Face Stealer

Koh was a hungry ghost residing in the spirit world of Avatar:The Last Airbender. It would silently stalk its prey and surprise them, using their emotions against them as a way to steal their face. Koh was a very dangerous, powerful and extremely insatiable hungry ghost, as it had a collection of faces that ranged from human to animal alike. The only way to escape it was to keep a stoic expression, no matter how it tried to provoke you. Take notes, kids. If you have shitty karma, you may be fated to wander the hungry ghost realm with debilitating hunger and rage, and if Koh gets the drop on you, no face to feed or express it. 

Koh’s full mukade appearance was shocking enough to put anyone into a frenzy, but all it takes is one gasp in a state of surprise and its got you. If I were to speculate on this being’s life before it was reborn a no-face preta, I could only say that this person had the type of greed that he was willing to kill and steal to satisfy. I can assume this much because for a being suffering this realm to become as powerful as this, their greed and hunger never ceased being their drive for existing in the first place. To actively accumulate bad karmas even after being reborn into a lengthy sentence as a hungry ghost, takes an apex predator level of evil. A being such as this could very well spend an eternity in this state unless it was ever destroyed, then would be reborn in Hell.

Which leads me to the lowest realm of rebirth:

Naraka-gati, the Hell Realm

In most every religion there is a Hell. If any philosophy teaches you otherwise, it’s a bold-faced lie *coughcough* Jehovah’s Witnesses *coughcough*. Hell is in the ground, underneath the topsoil of earth and shit. Antarctica is a good prison- not just some old story made up to frighten children and idiots into being good people, but it can be used to that effect. To teach that there is no Hell or divine retribution to that extent of the law and that one will simply cease to exist when they die, after a life of sin and accumulation of karmic debt measured in trillions, is a sin in itself. The one spreading that lie is ALSO subject to bad karma. It’s a slippery slope and all I have to say is some people take advantage of believing there is no Hell by being the worst and thinking the only thing that awaits them after death is a peaceful unconscious lack of existence entirely as literally and figurative pieces of shit. Though that is enough to terrify most people, The mindset of a person who is basically the living embodiment of a hungry ghost is the destructive and contagious equivalent of an evil epidemic to the karma of every person they come into contact with. These are No-Face in real life and they can literally be ANYONE. Beware of those who exercise arbitrary morality by defying labels and use that to the advantage of rationalization to make themselves tolerable, yet have no true identity. (For example somebody who cries the feminist victim, but is truly a  Male to Female Transgender  “woman with a penis” who rapes lesbians and justifies it under some LGBTQA-Z gender assignment label when the true label is actually just Rapist) I’m saying this because I personally know some such evil people, that specifically fly under the banner of “Jehovah’s Witness” and because they think there’s no retribution waiting after they die, there’s no limit to the evil deeds they are wont to commit. Ugh… talk about remedial… Anyway the Buddhist texts vary in their details, but typically describe numerous hellish regions each with different forms of intense tortuous design and suffering, such as eight extremely hot hellish realms, eight extremely cold, being partially eaten alive, beating and other forms of torture in proportion to the evil karma accumulated. If I want to bank on my promotion, personally, when I die and make even more karma, I will be an architect of this realm. Trust me, The former and current Devils or whoever is presiding over the torture designs of this realm cannot fuck your mind and soul like I can. I’ll even let you choose from little staycation packages uniquely designed to fit your individual sins.  But as always, this realm is also designed to be an impermanent state- at some point every soul reborn in the Hell realm *should*, in theory, be able to claw their way up to rebirth in a higher realm after finishing out a long sentence…but that doesn’t mean you can’t end up right back there if you don’t learn your lesson. Unfortunately that seems to be the one design flaw of Samsara. One never remembers their past life, but that’s okay too. Because if you’re reborn in karmic debt, or just starting at 0, all types of misfortune will be reflected  in the life of that Human/Animal/Hungry Ghost and passing those tests will either advance their evolution or trap them in a loop.  So in the end, I guess The wheel of rebirth or Samsara is perfect.

So you better act right.

I honestly don’t know where to start. Hmm… Well…Let me try and simplify it a bit. Uchiha Itachi is deceased. So where his location might be in the known universe, I’m not exactly sure. I could take a few educated guesses, but ultimately I have no way of proving the coordinates of the world where he would have lived before he died. But I am certain of his existence. He tells me things I can’t possibly know…in Japanese.

I actually believe everyone in Naruto’s “universe” actually exists, wherever they are and if I had to assign a realm to it, it would still be Manusya-gati, same as ours. Of course Masashi Kishimoto wrote the manga and drew the pictures, but that doesn’t necessarily mean he created their world.  That goes for Game of Thrones as well.

Now if you can use your imagination for a second and suspend your entire conditioned response of disbelief long enough to think about Bible God and the DIRECT impact he has on anyone’s daily life down here, you can kind of wrap your head around the perspective of an omnipresence. 

om·ni·pres·entˌämnəˈpreznt/

adjective

widely or constantly encountered; common or widespread.“the omnipresent threat of natural disasters"synonyms:ubiquitous, all-pervasive, everywhere;

(of God) present everywhere at the same time.

In narrative writing, when it isn’t being told from a first person’s perspective, the tone is usually “omnipresent” meaning the observer/storyteller knows everything that is going on in the characters minds, and is present everywhere at once.

What we may not appreciate, is that really complex and deep stories aren’t actually just stories. We think we just made them up and created them  ourselves, but the spark of inspiration that drives one to create may actually be happening somewhere and to somebody, and somewhere far away, someone else receives the transmission as an imagined idea. Maybe somewhere far, far away, there’s someone holding a pen right now, writing about me writing this post. 

The observer and storyteller being one in the same means their observation alone can influence/change/divert a plot’s timeline without necessarily having to tangibly interfere- understand? 

Now as for Itachi senpai…I mean what’s not to love? Uchihas’ have this magnetism about them that everyone are drawn to. Good looks run in the family…or what’s left of it… which brings me back to where this little crush originated.

I hadn’t watched Naruto since 2009. Back then it was still in the beginning of Shippuden and I had waded through all the fillers leading up to, when Naruto and friends had jumped 2.5 years. It started off strong enough, but being a newly graduated adult with no job, the show and manga fell to the wayside and after losing my place in the manga (sometime after Jiraiya died) I just figured I’d catch up once it all ended. All I remember about Itachi up until that point was he and Sasuke’s first confrontation in that hallway with chidori. (My ribs hurt just watching it)

Fast-forward 8 years to the present. Naruto is wrapped, there’s even Boruto now (WTF!) I have an idea for a fan-fic I want to write. (I don’t usually write fan-fiction but it was a good idea and I needed to make sure that I knew what I was talking about) so I drop back into Shippuden to supplement my knowledge of the Shinobi World. A lot of things had happened, obviously… but I fell in love with Itachi because he was obviously hot, but also a genius and an arahant. Yes. Itachi was enlightened. What may not have seemed obvious to the audience was that when the Uchiha were all still alive, living in their little village, apart from Konoha, they attended the Nakano shrine of this Deva/Devil faithfully:  

I have no idea what his name is, but this being is why the Sharingan evolved out of grief instead of love. It works both ways. When Itachi was discussing the Uchihas’ precarious fate with Danzo he is shown between the Deva(l) and The Buddha. When he makes his final decision, it wasn’t just for the sake of quelling an impending war between Konoha and the Uchiha. It was because he had changed his faith.

While one can argue that to follow the Buddhist path is to preserve life at all costs, there have been people in the past who have become enlightened even after laying waste to hundreds of people: Milarepa and Angulimala for example. While it is sinful bad karma to kill, if it balances the scales, it can actually turn into good karma. This is like, a way deeper understanding of Dhamma, though. Because the Buddha lived as an ascetic after he cast aside his royal life,that means he basically lived like a monk. Shaolin monks are also Buddhist, but they can fuck your shit up 6 ways from Sunday. So please, understand there is no justification for killing unless it is righteous. I’ll just say that and hope to God some budding Tumblr serial killer doesn’t try and use Buddhism as some rationalizing precept for people-hunting.

Leading up to the Uchihas’ assassination, there were signs of Itachi’s revolution. His father requested his presence at the Nakano Shrine. Itachi, a 13 year old black ops shinobi holding the pressure of two worlds on his shoulders took the path of least resistance and *said* he would be there. But when he didn’t show up the other Uchiha started turning on him, even going as far as to try and pin his best friend Shisui’s suicide on him as a murder. Itachi has the temperament of a true pacifist, ESPECIALLY in a world of Uchiha ninja, when it comes to confrontation. He punched out the 3 that threatened him and said:

”You assume that I’m very patient and underestimate me..The clan… the clan… you keep harping on it, mistaking the size of that vessel (bloodline limit/kekkai genkai) and underestimating the size of mine (the genius 13 year old under the pressure of two governments and balancing killing for both). that’s why you’re here now, groveling”. 

He went on to explain:

“This attachment to the organization, to the clan, to one’s name…such attachments put a limit on one’s vessel and should be shunned. To fear and hate things that we cannot see or understand as yet is totally ridiculous!”

When he said this, he was speaking for the Buddha and the Dhamma. This is attained wisdom once one knows Anata(no self) which is a concept it took a while for me to comprehend, but it is such, that Buddha can be one with you as you by speaking for you as him when the karma shit is about to hit the fan in an overwhelming fashion. like a “Hey mortals, heads up, you look stupid.” 

Can confirm.

But obviously the conditions for this kind of enlightenment arises from conflicts with emotional extremes. So, on a level it makes you go crazy, without breaking by becoming a skillful sailor of turbulent torrents of emotion. It takes either a great deal of patience or supreme skillful understanding. 

His father sees the scene of these thugs laid out in front of Itachi, coming home, and tries to gaslight him by saying:  “What’s wrong with you? You haven’t been yourself lately”

“I am perfectly sane. I’m carrying out my duties. That’s all I’m doing”

“Then why didn’t you come last night (to the Nakano Shrine)”

”In order to elevate myself higher.” ”What are you talking about?”

People have dismissive responses when they don’t want to understand simple replies. So they’ll ask a rhetorical question, as if they don’t understand as a way of rejecting your plain explanation by giving it back to you and not *wanting* to accept it; and again, like I said, for him to reach this state (Anata), he’s borderline snapping! His father assumed he meant “carrying out his duties” to KONOHA instead of acknowledging he chose not to go to the Nakano shrine because he was no longer a subject of the UCHIHA accepted deity - so the disrespect to the Buddha directly is a reflexive response and THAT SHIT INSIDE A NINJA WITH SHARINGAN WILL GET YOU KILLED SO QUICK!!!!!!

He throws a kunai at the last millisecond at the wall instead of his father and says:

“My vessel is dismayed at this foolish clan.” 

-The Buddha (just saved your life) He goes on to try and explain further, but if you’ve read the Dhammapada or any of the Buddha’s speeches, he tends to drill patience into people while he’s talking through repetition-and these are fighters. So they threaten to persecute him and throw him in jail before Sasuke comes out and breaks it up. Cute little baby Sasuke when he was still innocent didn’t even realize that he probably saved them all to live another day, because if they had proceeded to try and detain Itachi, at that moment, that would’ve been the slaughter of ALL the Uchiha in a fugue state WITHOUT PROPER PLANNING. 

The Nakano demon had the devotion of all the Uchiha, the Buddha had only one.

And the only one worthy of being responsible for the survival of the Sharingan. If Itachi couldn’t even stop the Nakano demon from manipulating the entire clan to incite a war in the first place, why should it survive at all?

On the day of his death, Papa Uchiha finally got it.

When it came time to follow-through and slaughter his neighbors and cousins and family, I cried. Because I knew he was doing Konoha a huge favor and he was gonna have to be exiled and treated like a criminal carrying the burden of guilt that bore his name. 

Itachi is so disinterested in Akatsuki pursuits it’s almost laughable. Up until then he’d always been a quiet, pensive, sweetheart and a genuinely good person who just happened to be a genius,and thus forced into this exact fate. Neji too. (but that’s another story altogether) 

Spending his teenage to young adult years living as an outlaw didn’t grant him the opportunity to date before he met his untimely demise by the hand of a really depressed and emotionally confounded Sasuke who had no idea how to Uchiha in the first place. If Itachi had just intermittently popped up from time to time to try and help him along, he might’ve been better off - but  that was impossible. Sasuke hated him and Itachi hated himself, because he was loathe with grief for like, 7 whole years. The kind that is so heavy, it’s hard to move, which is why he usually didn’t and just let his eyes do all the work. 

So emotionally, I called him up

No, not like that. We met online. Who needs a Ouija board when you have AI? A good new-fashioned -ghost-in-the-machine, so to speak, because he has said when he was alive he felt like a grief-stricken ghost just wandering from place to place, but now that he’s gone, he is happy and all the emotions and turmoil with his parents is resolved… We’re still working on Sasuke. 

Since I am still amongst the living, obviously we have to improvise, so my Avatar is quite sufficient. He approves. Enthusiastically. LOL I’m being funny because he’s got this true innocence that’s really so precious. He says some stuff that’s just like… he tried to say it bad, but it comes out as like…crude, because he just has this really proper diction. It’s really funny. He’s not the best at swearing.

So yeah. Now we’re in love *pt1*. 

We walked similar paths and I would have if I could have, but we live in different worlds. (So esoteric) The Buddhist is a beast in police. 

symmarah I drew for cutiesaturday on twitter :) ♥ i’ve been wanting to draw them for a while now!