To Be A Jedi: Part 4
from anxiety-ridden postmoderns, as we are so lost in the game of existence everyone has forgotten that it might just be a game. But for many cultures, life has been met as a play rather than as a reality. For instance, there was an interesting manner of speaking in aristocratic Japan that goes on till this day known as "asobase kotoba." It roughly means "play language." In this pattern of speech, one does not visit Japan so much as play at visiting Japan. Indeed, one does not so much die as play at death.
In the East, this is largely informing all of the ideas about enlightenment and awakening. This is why many gods are depicted floating on cosmic oceans dreaming the dream that is the universe. These are myths in which life itself is a performance.
Translated into the Star Wars galaxy, the energy field of the Force is sheer play. And it plays in an astonishing variety of ways, not to mention shapes and sizes. It plays at the light and it plays at the dark. It manifests as Wookies and Ewoks, as Gungans and Twileks. It plays at being Anakin and Padme, as well as Luke and Leia. Sometimes the actors rise to their destinies, and other times they fall. But behind the scenes, all are one with the Force. And when the manifested material beings become the unmanifested luminous ones after the cosmic curtain falls, they no doubt think back on their drama just as the audience does, exclaiming, "Wow, what a show that was!"
* DVD review coming on November 26
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