The lack of honking automobiles, busy bodies and cigarette fumes during the Holy Week has brought about a dangerous period of recollection. This means my thoughts are free to run amok while crossing the street without care for passing taxis until one hits me. To remedy this, I stay at home so there are no moving objects or people to halt my inner dialogue. Yet, the problem still remains that my thoughts are hazardous in themselves.
Moving on, I found deeper meaning in my Catholicism in the least likely place, a Japanese comic book about the Buddha by the god of manga Osamu Tezuka, creator of nostalgia famed anime such as Astro Boy and Kimba the White Lion. My sudden interest in the Buddha is actually based on the Wikipedia trivia that Tezuka made an anime series on the Bible called In The Beginning. This was based on the Vatican’s request to see the Old Testament rendered from a non-Catholic perspective. Few scratchy clips are on YouTube but not enough to make a good comparative bout against The Flying House and Superbook.
So, I turned to Tezuka’s earlier work on the Buddha. His work on the sacred text is Siddhartha Gautama’s eight-volume journey to enlightenment. The manga, for lack of a better word, is best described as graphic. The storytelling can switch from drippingly dramatic to crass Mad magazine humor between panels but never obviously preachy. The events are told with such supernatural hyperrealism that the alien E.T. and the author make gag appearances. Yet this is the least of what will make an old monk scratch his bald head and pause a few minutes from levitation. Osamu Tezuka’s rich mastery of Buddha’s Middle Way is in how he convincingly integrates invented characters into religious history. His new interpretation does not contradict or simplify the tenets of Buddhism but rather weaves an enriched account of its teachings. He does it so well that it will take a scholar to properly separate fact from fiction. This is an extraordinary feat for a non-Buddhist writer.
You Give What You Get
As a Catholic-raised reader, I amazingly saw the similarities rather than the differences between beliefs. Whether borrowed or not, Osamu Tezuka’s first volume can be likened to the Nativity story as Buddha’s birth is prophesied and connected to certain mystical events such as migration of animals to his crib. Like the Jewish messiah, Buddha’s adult life is met with opposition from kings fearing the prophecy of robbing their kingdom. There is even a Judas figure in the form of the disciple Devatta who proclaims that their group should be run like a business and attempts to assassinate his master by rolling a boulder over him. The main difference is Jesus Christ is profoundly resolute in his teachings and Buddha wavers on occasion from the disloyalty of his disciples.
The manga didn’t convince me enough to shave my head and run to the nearest temple. Yet it did make me believe that having a religion is indeed crucial to one’s happiness on earth and not just after the last slumber. It is because faith can help a person have a healthy response to suffering, or as atheist Friedrich Nietzsche put it: “He who has a why can endure any how.”
As a consequence, I was deeply enlightened on how Buddhist and Catholic belief can make the repugnance of life turn into something ennobling, and even attractive to many followers. They share the belief that life is joyous if we understand that it is not what you get but what you give. This principle is where Osamu Tezuka creates miracles graphically with Buddhist doctrine notably with the fictional character Tatta who acts as a herald to Buddha like John the Baptist to Christ. In the beginning, Tatta belongs to the slave class but has the power to inhabit the bodies of animals. His closeness to nature makes him an enlightened child and, in an eerie scene, happily allows himself to be eaten by a snake to spare his companions. Luckily, he survives as the snake is hit by an arrow after he is eaten whole. Later on, as the first disciple of Buddha, he dies in a war that he himself has ignited. His death affects Buddha so much that Tatta can be seen as a second Judas for betraying his master’s belief in non-violence. It is in this character that Tezuka fascinatingly illustrates karma both in giving yourself and seeking yourself completely.
The Afterthought
Buddha’s final epiphany is “It’s in the heart of man that God exists!” as he shouts to the heavens that “every being is holy, not just ascetics, not just saints!” He is awakened to this reality after seeing “god in the smile” of a bratty king with a tumor that he heals. It is a stirring reality that reminds us of the Catholic message of St. Josemaria Escriva: that everyone is called to be saint by finding God in daily life.
With such a moving message, I am definitely a believer because this means we don’t need to see God as the light at the end of our journey but in the smile of every buck-toothed neighbor. It is so wonderfully profound that I hope to see that divine smile one day and I hope you do, too.
Nevertheless, the most amazing thing from this spiritual literary journey is that all of these ideas came from a Japanese comic book by an author who is neither Catholic nor Buddhist. It may sound absurd, but you better believe it.
* * *
I will bless your e-mails at readnow@supreme.ph.
* * *
Osamu Tezuka’s website: http://www.tezuka.co.jp/ Buddha Volumes 1-8 available at the book shrine called Powerbooks