it could be easy

Before I can talk about Geto and JJK, I’m going to have to yap a bit about the Buddhist attitude towards birth and gestation in general. Birth in Buddhism is actually defined as a kind of dukkha (suffering). It is, after all, only a precursor to old age, sickness, and death– a prerequisite for suffering. The First Noble Truth states:

"Now this, monks, is the noble truth of dukkha: birth is dukkha, aging is dukkha, death is dukkha." 

In fact, birth is sometimes used as a metaphor for cyclical existence itself and all of the suffering it produces. 

For this post, I'll mostly be drawing from the book “Birth and Buddhism - The Suffering Fetus and Female Freedom” by Amy Paris Lagenberg, which looks into The Garbhavakranti-sutra, or Descent of the Embryo Scripture, an Indian Buddhist embryological text that details the gestation and birthing process while containing especially stomach-churning descriptions of the maternal body. It is an elaboration on the common Buddhist topic of birth, with such themes as: suffering is birth, a sense of disgust towards the birthing process, or the indelible impurity of the female (maternal) body. 

So, what’s with Buddhism and birth?

As mentioned, birth is generally understood as suffering. However, it is not simply an example of it. In Garbhavakranti-sutra (among many other Buddhist texts) birth is used as a metaphor for the overall suffering of existence. The experience of birth is used to comprehend the experience of living.  

Here, the fetus is thought of as a “barb [lodged] in the womb, dwelling within a filthy, putrid, blazing bog, its entire bodily sense organ suffering, having become greatly pained, oppressed, and terrified, having a consciousness with the sole flavor of suffering”. It is subjected to all sorts of painful sensations, many of which are inflicted upon it by an unknowing mother. It is cold when the mother is cold, hot when she is hot, shaken, thrashed around by whatever action, no matter how innocuous, she decides to do. The mother, then, is like a torturer, and her womb is a prison. 

As such, the maternal body is necessarily conceptualized in the Sutra as especially horrid. The womb is like a cesspool, full of all kinds of filth and parasites, and the vagina is like a wound dripping with blood, pus, and semen. Basically, the portrayal of female bodies as inherently loathsome drives home the Buddhist conceptualization of birth as a linchpin in the cycle of death and rebirth, and as, metaphorically, the suffering of existence itself. 

This, then, would serve to highlight the “purity” of Buddhas - by definition are beings not touched by the filth of the womb.

Okay but, what does this have to do with Geto Suguru?

Cursed Spirit Manipulation allows the user to absorb cursed spirits and submit them to their own will. Since all curse techniques use curse energy, it’s as if a CSM user is feeding the cursed spirits energy, nourishing them while housing them inside their body (stomach), in exchange for their obedience. It’s very reminiscent of pregnancy. 

This connection between CSM and pregnancy becomes even stronger when we consider that Tengen, having been absorbed by Kenjaku, became a fetus inside of their (Geto’s) body. 

Cursed spirits are described as tasting like “rags used to wipe up vomit and excrements”, and they are indeed the filth of the world, being condensed negative emotions leaking out from non-sorcerers. Even the way they appear, that is through a slit in space, accompanied by dark fluids bursting forth reminds me of Buddhist descriptions of the womb and the maternal body as dripping with filth and crawling with disgusting parasites.  

The body of a CSM user such as Geto, then, is all at once capable of “pregnancy”, and a container of filth. In fact, it is because of this capability for “pregnancy” that his body is made filthy. This fits the way Buddhism conceptualizes the maternal body as especially repulsive and abject, precisely due to its ability to gestate and give birth. 

It's also fitting that such imagery and associations would be given to Geto, a character who, in my opinion, is so defined by attachments and suffering. He suffers because he cares too much. Him dressing up as a monk is ironic not only due to his villainy (the irony of a monk who routinely commits murder, for example), but also due to him being so deeply attached to (and polluted by) this world and its people.

With that said, there’s another way to make sense of this parallel, that is to put it in context of Gojo and Geto’s relationship. So,…

What does this mean for Gojo and Geto?

Gojo, in contrast to Geto, is incredibly detached. He actually holds a somewhat buddha-like attitude towards others, in my opinion. As Gojo said in chapter 236, even though he loves the people around him, to him they are like flowers, whom he doesn’t expect to be able to connect with on a personal level. Gojo sees himself as being in a completely different realm compared to everyone else, regardless of the love and care he may have for them. 

And of course, Gojo is the honored one. He quoted the Buddha in his fight with Toji: “Throughout Heaven and Earth, I am the honored one.” The narrative consistently associates him with enlightenment. 

Even so, I’ve always read this quote as a bit ironic, because despite everything Gojo was never truly enlightened. 

His domain expansion hand sign points to this: it belongs to the Hindu deity Indra, the Vedic God of weather, King of the devas. Adapted to Buddhist narratives, he became somewhat of an ironic figure: he is the King of the Heaven realm, the highest of the Six realms of samsara, meaning he’s still subjected to suffering– a god who still suffers rebirth. I think this parallels Gojo quite nicely. He is someone who holds a great amount of power in the Jujutsu system, being the head of one of the three great clans, yet he still suffers in it. 

(Image is from tempenensis)

More importantly, he is Indra because he couldn’t move on from Geto, just like how Indra despite all his power still remains forever in samsara. The narrative beats us over the head with how disastrously attached to Geto Gojo is. He was sealed into the Prison Realm because of his grief for Geto; the moment he was unsealed, Gojo immediately went to where Geto’s body is before saying even a single word to the people that unsealed him; the first person he sees when he died was Geto; he would only be satisfied if Geto was there to cheer him on before his final fight; Geto was his blue spring, his moral compass, his one and only. The list truly goes on and on and on. 

(Look at how he looks at Geto here. If this isn’t dukkha I don’t know what is.)

So, Gojo is enlightened, detached, and holds a buddha-like attitude towards other people, all except for Geto Suguru. Geto Suguru, then, can be viewed as the final barrier between Gojo and true enlightenment. For me, this dynamic fits perfectly with the birth symbolism surrounding Geto. Here’s why: 

As I have said earlier, in Buddhism, birth is often conceptualized as a linchpin in the cycle of death and rebirth and, sometimes, a microcosm of the suffering of existence in its entirety. To escape from birth, then, is to escape from suffering and ignorance, to be enlightened. 

“Kristeva further indicates the ways in which contempt for organic fertility is coded female and aligns symbolically with the figure of the abject mother. To reject, therefore, the abject mother, whose repulsive genitals suppurate with life, is to become “one’s own and clean self,” to elevate oneself above inchoate, regressive, and dangerous longings.

[…]

In this Buddhist context, however, the abject maternal body marks not what is inhuman, uncivilized, or infantile, but what is unawakened, ignorant, desirous. To truly reject the abject womb is to elevate oneself into an awakened state. A Buddha is, after all, by definition someone not touched by the filth of the womb.”

A Buddha is someone not touched by the filth of the womb. Gautama himself is described to have emerged painlessly from his mother’s side, not having gone through the painful, filthy birthing process. 

Gojo could not become a Buddha, having been touched by Geto, an abject mother figure, and infected with dangerous longings. 

This is backed up, I think, by how Geto treats Gojo, that is to say how he dotes on Gojo (complimenting him, telling Haibara to get him something sweet because he might share it with Gojo, checking up on Gojo regularly), teaches Gojo manners (telling him to change his pronouns from “ore” to “boku”, which is more polite), does for him the emotional labor (being Gojo’s moral compass, always telling him to go easy on Riko). It’s all very “motherly”. And it’s exactly this affection, this comfort which Gojo received from Geto that made him unable to let go, to be truly “enlightened”.