Buddhist images and ideas are a strong influence on the cosmology and story arc of Titans of Brahma. On the one hand this influence is unavoidable, because I have been a practicing Buddhist for thirty years and it is baked into my experience, and how I see the world. On the other hand I enjoy exploring these influences. This project can be an experiment, a tiny part in the development of a meme that is many centuries old and has evolved through different cultures, finding different expressions, until arriving here in “The West” around the middle of the last century.
In every new country where Buddhist ideas have evolved, they have cross-pollinated with ideas that were already there, giving rise to new forms, and new cultural expressions. For example, early Buddhist forms and ideas were carried from northern India to Tibet. According to legend this was done by a great yogi named Padmasambhava, but it is possible that this colorful character represents an organic cultural exchange involving many people over time. As these ideas became part of the Tibetan landscape, they merged with the indigenous Bon practices of the Tibetan people and gave rise to what we know today as Tibetan Buddhism, with its unique qualities. Similarly, there is the legend of Bodhidharma who is said to have “transmitted” the "Buddha Way of Enlightenment" to China, where again it cross-pollinated with indigenous Chinese ideas and sensibilities, particularly what today we call Taoist thought. The resulting cultural and spiritual expressions were again unique to that time and place. The most well known form, Chan, could not be more outwardly different than Tibetan forms, even as they share ideas and values. This process of spreading and mixing went outward in every direction from India and beyond that there were secondary branchings. Chinese Buddhism found a new expression in Japan, most famously in Japanese Zen , which has gone on to influence our own culture on many levels, as a unique expression of Japanese culture.
Then comes the latest turn of the wheel here in “The West”. Buddhism in various forms has been practiced here now by three generations, and there are people like me for whom it is very ordinary. However, there are many people who see Buddhism as an “Eastern Religion”, sometimes in a negative way, and sometimes in an unrealistically positive way. Buddhist teachers, especially Zen and Tibetan teachers, are subject to a lot of projection from westerners who idealize Buddhism, and have ideas of meeting an "Enlightened Master". Something like this alien view was probably true in every place where Buddhism took root, but with successive generations the ideas were absorbed and the myths were adapted by artists and craftspeople who produced new, indigenous, visions. Here in “The West” that absorbing and mixing is complicated by the inheritance of a colonial past, and post-colonial thinking. It is not hard to find people with an ethnocentric view of Buddhism, maybe seeing it as “other” or foreign, or claiming it as a cultural property and raising the charge of cultural appropriation against anyone taking it up outside a particular circle of identity. Both extremes are not sustainable given the Buddhist view of identity as relative and fluid, and with the viral nature of ideas.
This brings me to the part that gives me a lot of joy. Having internalized these ideas long ago, and having found a certain fearlessness by sitting through the thick and thin of life on the meditation cushion, I can enjoy riffing on Buddhist themes, and expressing them freely though my own quirky imagination. It is an imagination rooted in my own time, and place, and culture. The Titans of Brahma is a mash-up, but it is also an attempt at expressing insights that mean a lot to me. Having said this, I could care less (in a positive way) whether someone identifies with the Buddhist elements of the story or not. It is just part of what it is, and like any story that touches on universal themes of life, death, exile, and journey, it is not bound by any particular tradition.