the sword of damocles

whereas a more direct and educated buddhist coding applied to the bachelor route of pchd would have been a completely different story. like obviously if you think about it for even a second utopia (or "simonhood" in p3) is not nirvana or even a meaningful buddhahood, which is what the drawn parallels innately suggest. as everyone is always telling you, utopia is/will be a Real Place where Things Exist-- in fact, where things Exist more Meaningfully than they do in the present world-- and theyre going to go there (the conflation of this with nirvana is a result of culturally christian thought being applied to buddhism, which causes nirvana to be read as Heaven); it does not take any individual practice to go there as a layperson once it has been made to exist; and utopia is a place that exists to foster enlightenment. this is obviously a Pure Land.

Pure Lands in buddhism are sort of like planes of existence emanated by buddhas upon attainment of buddhahood, in which suffering is often believed to be eliminated, but most importantly where most barriers to enlightenment have been reduced or eliminated and you can receive teachings directly from said buddha. the idea behind Pure Land Buddhism (as i understand it; i attend some jodo shinshu services but do not follow jodo shinshu myself) is that rather than attempt to use countless miserable lives on earth to attain enlightenment / reach nirvana, the pro strat is to focus this current life on being reborn in a buddha's (partiuclarly amida's) Pure Land next time, where enlightenment is eminently attainable. this makes it very attractive to people with bad karma or other barriers in their practice. in that way Pure Lands are realms of endless spiritual potential, where "everything that can be discovered will be discovered; everyone who takes to the road is free" (and all that stuff maria says about the fragments of light cast by the polyhedron). in the case of amida's pure land it is a completely separate metaphysical realm from our world, but some buddhas (kannon and benzaiten in particular, coincidentally both female) are said to have Pure Lands that are physical places on earth like really cool mountains or lakes.

CLARA: …Filin, oh Filin, I know of you this: you knew ahead of time about the disaster that was to strike the town. […] GRIEF: …Sure, kiddo, ask away… Where did you get my name, anyway? Did Saburov whisper it to you, the scum? CLARA: You’re… not asleep?

when clara first tries to hypnotize grief, there’s no effect. this is supposedly due to an amulet he has, “a Steppe talisman… against maras like you!“ instead of being forced to speak, grief makes you do a little quest for him in exchange for information. just a fun little delivery errand. when you get back, he says the following:

Sure, go on. Whaddya wanna know? Just do me a favour and skip the mumbo jumbo part.

now, here you have the option to just ask him directly about the black twyrine trade. should be fine, since you already established he can’t be hypnotized. you already know bad grief from the other routes, right? that fun-loving, mostly harmless weapons dealer? you humor him, he deflects the question and tells you nothing, and you fail the quest. whoops!

but if you press on and use the words anyway, the prompt is a little different:

…Filin, oh Filin, I know of you this: you are the real ringleader of the killers!

The river has provided quite a few unpleasant surprises recently. Could this indicate a mass dying off of fish? Hundreds of dead fish have washed up during the past week, the banks are covered in scales. This has made the people wary of eating fresh fish and they now prefer preserved fish like this one.

a little tea party