About immortal leaders… Well, what about the idea that Dalai Lama is a reincarnation of previous Dalai Lama? This role gives a lot of glorification and doesn’t give enough power to remove challenge, and also you cannot be stuck with dilemma of whether to abandon retired president character.
Sorry, no. You raise a good point, but I see two clear counterpoints.
In-universe: there are distinct paths in Buddhism. Following eightfold path can make you mostly free of suffering already in this world; but some of the enlightened are supposed to show the path to people who haven’t found it yet on their own. Remember, Siddhartha Gautama Buddha, the most famous (in the eyes of us outsiders), but far from the only enlightened turned back and didn’t choose paranirvana after achieving enlightenment; instead, he started to teach.
By the way, if winning were considered equal to not coming for Dalai Lama, why would this faction in Buddhism look for his reincarnations?
Out-of-the-universe: what is player’s winning and how we know it? Is winning equal to fun (if we go to pure entertainment side)? As we know, “Losing Is Fun (either way, it keeps you busy)”.
He has some pretext to come back, and in the changed setting. Why not play some more? Why not hit this continue button, even if it halves the old accumulated score (real game mechanics in some shoot-em-ups)?
Edited: fixed my stupid mistake about nirvana and paranirvana; thanks to muflax for pointing it out
Remember, Siddhartha Gautama Buddha, the most famous (in the eyes of us outsiders), but far from the only enlightened turned back and didn’t enter nirvana before he started to teach.
Huh? The Buddha reached full enlightenment before forming the sangha, according to tradition. You can make an argument that he spent many years afterwards developing the path (in Theravada terms, that he reached stream-entry but not arhatship before teaching, for example), but this has nothing to do with his teaching itself. Or maybe you mean parinirvana, but this is necessarily the last thing anyone does.
(You are of course right that bodhisattvas have a surface similarity to immortal player characters.)
About immortal leaders… Well, what about the idea that Dalai Lama is a reincarnation of previous Dalai Lama? This role gives a lot of glorification and doesn’t give enough power to remove challenge, and also you cannot be stuck with dilemma of whether to abandon retired president character.
If the Dalai Lama were the player, he would win by quitting the game.
Sorry, no. You raise a good point, but I see two clear counterpoints.
In-universe: there are distinct paths in Buddhism. Following eightfold path can make you mostly free of suffering already in this world; but some of the enlightened are supposed to show the path to people who haven’t found it yet on their own. Remember, Siddhartha Gautama Buddha, the most famous (in the eyes of us outsiders), but far from the only enlightened turned back and didn’t choose paranirvana after achieving enlightenment; instead, he started to teach.
By the way, if winning were considered equal to not coming for Dalai Lama, why would this faction in Buddhism look for his reincarnations?
Out-of-the-universe: what is player’s winning and how we know it? Is winning equal to fun (if we go to pure entertainment side)? As we know, “Losing Is Fun (either way, it keeps you busy)”.
He has some pretext to come back, and in the changed setting. Why not play some more? Why not hit this continue button, even if it halves the old accumulated score (real game mechanics in some shoot-em-ups)?
Edited: fixed my stupid mistake about nirvana and paranirvana; thanks to muflax for pointing it out
Huh? The Buddha reached full enlightenment before forming the sangha, according to tradition. You can make an argument that he spent many years afterwards developing the path (in Theravada terms, that he reached stream-entry but not arhatship before teaching, for example), but this has nothing to do with his teaching itself. Or maybe you mean parinirvana, but this is necessarily the last thing anyone does.
(You are of course right that bodhisattvas have a surface similarity to immortal player characters.)
Yes, thanks for correction, I had an illusion that words nirvana and paranirvana mean the same pair of notions but in the reverse order.
vi21maobk9vp, YOU HAVE REACHED ENLIGHTENMENT!
(H)igh scores
(N)ew game
(Q)uit
(A)bout Earth