Wu-Bai

Art By: Alexis Heikkinen

I'm back with another concept, this one a little short and sweet.

One of my favorite video games is Total Wars Shogun: 2. One of my favorite parts of that game is the little text spinets you get when you select new units and buildings. I won't pretend to be an expert on Feudal Japan, or on Shinto Buddhism. But, I always appreciate that window into another time and place. I shall always be on the outside looking in, but I think the game developers did a fair attempt to keep it authentic. But, again I don't really know how is really was.

One thing I am more confident about, regarding Buddhism, is the idea of impermanence. Indeed as part of the Bushido code, death, or more appropriately endings, is a core essence to why the Samurai act as they do.

This got my thinking of the recognition of endings in a place you might not expect, say an Elf. The immortality of elves, is super common in most fiction. So is an Elf's long view point of the world. If your existence continues ever and ever,  it might be hard to think of the void, or a state of non-being.

I'd love to delve more into this, but again I am only the outsider looking in. For now I offer up Wu-Bai. Who, while immortal, recognizes that his eventual death is part of the wider natural world. This is what led him to train as a warrior.