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To Be a Jedi

© Paul F. McDonald

Let us begin this four part essay with an old Zen story that is still good.

There was once a renowned master, and as he walked among his students who were scattered about him, all seated in deep contemplation, he called out one particular student's name. The student immediately responded to it, and the master himself responded by instantly walking over to him and administering a swift kick. A few moments passed, and the master again called out his name. The student likewise responded to it, and the master likewise gave him another kick. This went on for the entire session. At the end, the master came over to the student and said, "I apologize for kicking you, but it should be you who apologizes to me."

This is as good a way as any to bring to the forefront the central question of this piece, which revolves around a certain crisis of identity. It was wonderfully played out in Attack of the Clones, and so the question can be framed in that particular context. How should a Jedi identify their self - by their own name, ego, or even status as a padawan or master, or solely by their immersion into the impersonal ground of being that is the Force?

The Jedi themselves seem to have various answers to this dilemma, but in the prequels, most of this conflict centers around Anakin Skywalker. In The Phantom Menace, we see that he comes from outside the Order, and therefore has a very strong personality, as well as attachment to his name. Even as he dreams of being a Jedi. And in Attack of the Clones, the main driving tension of the story is between Anakin's higher duties as a Jedi and his personal attachment to Padme Amidala.

Life can been seen as almost two different stories, albeit two different stories that play out simultaneously. The Japanese Zen philosopher D.T. Suzuki exported much Eastern wisdom to the West, and he once commented that in a very general way, the latter was more focused on an "elaboration of particulars," whereas the former came at the world from an "intuitive grasp of the whole." These two modes of valid experience also invoked the interest of the renowned mythologist Joseph Campbell. In one of his own marvelous essays on "Zen," he took the Japanese terms for them, defining "ji hokkai" as the particular "universe of things," and "ri hokkai" as the "absolute universe," each of which describe the two stories simultaneously unfolding.

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