A Hero's Essential Unity with Us

"Not alone food but every object is to be used with due regard for its proper function and not wasted or needlessly destroyed…. The reasons are more spiritual than economic. To squander is to destroy. To treat things with reverence and gratitude, according to their nature and purpose, is to affirm their value and life, a life in which we are all equally rooted. Wastefulness is a measure of our egocentricity and hence of our alienation from things…from their essential unity with us.... it is an act of indifference to the…worth of the wasted object, however humble." From The Three Pillars of Zen.

This was quoted this morning at my breakfast writers meeting with Kathryn Hinds. Along with discussing the importance the quote has for me on a personal level--It inspired a rather interesting discussion about Heroes and Villains, and which were more fun to write. Which characters were more constrained against the freedom to be themselves?

Part of the reason the quote had impact is that I've long felt a pendulum swing between what looked like asceticism and an indulgence in the joys of life. The quote offered a heady realization that I could respectfully enjoy the world around me. That it offered more freedom than the rigidity I feared might be necessary. But being a writer, that juicy thought fell to the wayside when I thought, Hmm. What does that mean to my characters?

It was interesting to note that in writing villains we might sometimes give them more freedom. In giving villains the chance to do what they wished, we constrain them from their unity to their world and make them suffer the pain of indifference (and yes, I do consider that real pain, even if they don't see it themselves). At the same time, we sometimes give the heroes a more ascetic lives with the false idea that to be good they must be constrained, instead of, as the charm of Philip Kapleau's words, a connection, a bond, an essential unity to all the world. That if the hero is constrained, he might be forced to be indifferent. Which, in some ways, is the villain's job.

Of course, if they're human characters, and living and breathing, are not saints, have not found Nirvana or attained Buddha-hood, then their indifference and unity is probably still remarkably grey on either side of this idea. (And yes, I know in the US it's supposed to be gray, but that still remains to me markedly *wrong* to my eyes). And their lives being grey and swinging from the pendulum struggle of their conflicts makes both quite a lot of fun to write!

Maybe this is all obvious. Maybe I'm looking at it from a different perspective. I'm sure it isn't a new concept. The villain has a real purpose and point in offering conflict to his enemy. The hero's opinion is equally valid, he's only a hero because the story is being told from his point of view. The best stories the villain believes his cause is just and right. It is often reasonable. If the story is good. That is unless he's a serial killer or something bad like that.

But I'm not just a writer, I'm also a mythologist. I happiest writing fantasy, because I get to dive into archetypal issues about our relationship to magic and God(s--and that includes the female ones when I write about them). So there's not just the villain against the hero: There is also a spiritual point of view: are they removed from the divine, do they remove themselves from the divine, or are they continually searching for ways to connect to the divine, to the good, to what is good, and to all the divine touches and loves with respect and care?

There's not just a conflict between the hero and a villain, but the character's conflict about the wasteful measure of his egocentricity and his alienation from other men as well as the divine.