/lit/ - Literature

>>19624895

unironically read Osamu Tezuka's Buddha

What do the Buddhist and Buddhism-readers-scholars-practitioners in /lit/ think about the Buddha manga, by Osamu Tezuka?

Despite all the liberties took with the original life of the Buddha, despite all the deviations and artistic inventions, I myself have a great respect for this work.

What I like in it above all else is this:

>The portrait of Buddha as having doubts and insecurities even AFTER the enlightenment. The constant demonstration of Buddha as a human being, susceptive – of course, much less susceptive than other people - to the temptations and dangers of bad emotions and feelings, even after he had achieve great degrees of wisdom. (This doesn’t seem to be all invention, for I read in one book that there is an description of Buddha needing to leave his community for a while to cool off his head, alone*)

>The demonstration of how wild, unjust, cruel and violent was the time and the place where the Buddha lived, how unequal was society in his time and how strong one should be to make his/her peace with such a world. It helps those of us who cannot ignore the harsh realities that still boil in every corner of the planet.

>The emphasis on Buddha trying his best to make the politicians of the time (kings and princes) act with reason, compassion and kindness. In other words: the portrayal of Buddha as someone actually engaged in social and political matters of the day, and not simply a wise recluse (and here one should note that Tezuka was not being unfaithful to the real man, for the Buddha actually had discussions and debates with the monarchs of his time and tried his best to make them act properly, although he failed many times in those endeavors).

*I read this in Stephen Bachelor’s “Confessions of a Buddhist Atheist”, where he writes:

“I am living hemmed in by monks and nuns,” thought Siddhattha Gotama to himself one day in the Ghosita Monastery near Kosambi, “by kings and ministers, by sectarian teachers and their followers, and I live in discomfort and not at ease. Suppose I were to live alone, secluded from the crowd?” So after returning from his alms-round, he tidied his hut, took his bowl and robe, and, without informing anyone, set off unaccompanied for Parileyyaka, where he stayed alone in a forest beneath a sal tree. Even the Buddha, it would appear, was oppressed by the organization he had created to uphold and spread his teaching.

The Buddha’s words come from the Naga Sutta: The Bull Elephant

I've been trying my hand at writing short stories since I have trouble sticking with something longer and I'm finding that the medium has real some really huge flaws.

There isn't enough time to get the reader attached to the characters, and the plot is too short to develop into something complex. You basically have to boil a story down to one or the other and even then it's really difficult to do that in the given length.

Any tips /lit/?