...while epic fantasy is based on the fairy tale of the just war, that’s not one you’ll find in Grimm or Disney, and most will never recognize the shape of it. I think the fantasy genre pitches its tent in the medieval campground for the very reason that we even bother to write stories about things that never happened in the first place: because it says something subtle and true about our own world, something it is difficult to say straight out, with a straight face. Something you need tools to say, you need cheat codes for the human brain--a candy princess or a sugar-coated unicorn to wash down the sour taste of how bad things can really get.See, I think our culture has a slash running through the middle of it, too. Past/Future, Conservative/Liberal, Online/Offline. Virgin/Whore. And yes: Classical/Medieval. I think we’re torn between the Classical Narrative of Self and the Medieval Narrative of Self, between the choice of Achilles and Keep Calm and Carry On.The Classical internal monologue goes like this: do anything, anything, only don’t be forgotten. Yes, this one sacrificed his daughter on a slab at Aulis, that one married his mother and tore out his eyes, and oh that guy ate his kids in a pie. But you remember their names, don’t you? So it’s all good in the end. Give a Greek soul a choice between a short life full of glory and a name echoing down the halls of time and a long, gentle life full of children and a quiet sort of virtue, and he’ll always go down in flames. That’s what the Iliad is all about, and the Odyssey too. When you get to Hades, you gotta have a story to tell, because the rest of eternity is just forgetting and hoping some mortal shows up on a quest and lets you drink blood from a bowl so you can remember who you were for one hour.And every bit of cultural narrative in America says that we are all Odysseus, we are all Agamemnon, all Atreus, all Achilles. That we as a nation made that choice and chose glory and personal valor, and woe betide any inconvenient “other people” who get in our way. We tell the tales around the campfire of men who came from nothing to run dotcom empires, of a million dollars made overnight, of an actress marrying a prince from Monaco, of athletes and stars and artists and cowboys and gangsters and bootleggers and talk show hosts who hitched up their bootstraps and bent the world to their will. Whose names you all know. And we say: that can be each and every one of us and if it isn’t, it’s your fault. You didn’t have the excellence for it. You didn’t work hard enough. The story wasn’t about you, and the only good stories are the kind that have big, unignorable, undeniable heroes.
You may have read or heard about the so-called positive thinkers of the West. They sayjust the opposite -- they don't know what they are saying. They say, "When you breatheout, throw out all your misery and negativity; and when you breathe in, breathe in joy,positivity, happiness, cheerfulness."Atisha's method is just the opposite: when you breathe in, breathe in all the misery andsuffering of all the beings of the world -- past, present and future. And when you breatheout, breathe out all the joy that you have, all the blissfulness that you have, all thebenediction that you have. Breathe out, pour yourself into existence. This is the methodof compassion: drink in all the suffering and pour out all the blessings.And you will be surprised if you do it. The moment you take all the sufferings of theworld inside you, they are no longer sufferings. The heart immediately transforms theenergy. The heart is a transforming force: drink in misery, and it is transformed intoblissfulness... then pour it out.Once you have learned that your heart can do this magic, this miracle, you would like todo it again and again. Try it. It is one of the most practical methods -- simple, and itbrings immediate results. Do it today, and see.That is one of the approaches of Buddha and all his disciples. Atisha is one of hisdisciples, in the same tradition, in the same line. Buddha says again and again to hisdisciples, "IHI PASSIKO: come and see!" They are very scientific people. Buddhism isthe most scientific religion on the earth; hence, Buddhism is gaining more and moreground in the world every day. As the world becomes more intelligent, Buddha willbecome more and more important. It is bound to be so. As more and more people come toknow about science, Buddha will have great appeal, because he will convince thescientific mind -- because he says, "Whatsoever I am saying can be practiced." And Idon't say to you, "Believe it," I say, "Experiment with it, experience it, and only then ifyou feel it yourself, trust it. Otherwise there is no need to believe.