The Lama and the Game Designer
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Transcript of The Lama and the Game Designer
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HipBone Project background docs
The Lama and the Game Designer
All materials Charles Cameron 1995-2006
Charles Cameron3059 East Ave R-4
Palmdale, CA 93550
Phone 661 575-9930
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The Lama and the Game Designer
Tibetan Buddhism offers its advanced practitioners an extended training in
visualization, comparable in intensity to a western PhD program.
*
In this article, I propose that a Tibetan Buddhist meditation is homologous with,
and thus perhaps surprisingly close kin to, a first person shooter video game(FPS).
Trivially, it follows that an FPS game / mod could be built incorporatingTibetan graphics (architecture, demons, weaponry).
More interestingly, it suggests that such a game played in slomo, designedin cooperation with a team of lamas, including a mandalaform structure,embedded Tibetan ritual directions, a soundtrack of appropriate Tibetan
chants etc., might serve as a Tibetan virtual training and ritual device,
while the same game played fastforward might keep the kids happy forhours.
And itmakes a structural connection between warfare and meditation an anthropological linkage of considerable theoretical interest suggestingto us the concept of a weaponry of compassion, which stands in the same
relation to the weaponry of war as blessings stand in relation to curses.
And more
*
Motto: Opposition is true friendship
William Blake
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The mindfield:
Many people are aware of Tibetanmandalas as designs for focused meditation,
but not so many realize that these beautiful and highly symmetrical diagrams arein fact ground plans or blueprints for imaginary three-dimensional spaces.
The idea is that with meditative practice, you will eventually be able to hold in themind's eye a complex three dimensional architectural structure --
This one based on the mandala shown above -- so that you can pass through thevirtual space in imagination, visiting now this "room", now the next, encountering
a preset variety of, well, "demons", "wrathful" and "peaceful deities".
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Flowers and weaponry:
There are all sorts of objects decorating the rooms you visit: plates and goblets,
food and drink, bells, flags, flowers, jewels,phurba daggers,damaru drums
Just take a look at that trumpet it was hollowed out of a human femur. That
drum was made of a couple of human skulls joined back to back. Look again: the
phurba with its three-angled blade -- that's a curious piece of weaponry.
In all this, I'm describing advanced mandala-based meditation as practiced inTibetan Buddhism here, but I could almost be describing a game design.
Tibetan Buddhists are not exactly shy about the gruesome details of human life
and death. One celebrated meditation sequence invites those who wish to
transcend their normal human impulses in the interest of ascetic detachment tovisualize the body of a loved one, first as wishful fantasy might present it, naked,
then without skin, and so on inwards, stripping away layer upon layer until only
the skeleton is left.
Lamas wear saffron and burgundy robes rather than black trench coats, but their
cultural sensibility surely has something of what we term the goth and thevampiric to it
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The Demons
Tibetan graphics are stunningly designed, and the wrathful deities are not pretty.
Here, for instance, is an important deity namedMahavajrabhairava.
This worthy, according to the scriptures which lay down the graphical canons
observed by Tibetanthangka painters,
must have a body of very deep blue colour, nine faces, thirty-four arms
and sixteen feet. The legs on the left side are advanced and those on the
right drawn back. He is able to swallow the three worlds. He sneers androars. His tongue is arched. He gnashes his teeth and his eyebrows are
wrinkled. His eyes and his eyebrows flame like the cosmic fire at the time
of the destruction of the universe. His hair is yellow and stands on end. Hemenaces the Gods of the material and the non-material spheres. He
frightens even the terrifying deities. He roars out the wordp'ain with a
voice like the rumble of thunder. He devours flesh, marrow and human fat
and drinks blood. He is crowned with five awe-inspiring skulls and isadorned with a garland made of fifteen freshly severed heads. His
sacrificial cord is a black serpent. The ornaments in his ears etc. are of
human bones. His belly is huge, his body is naked and his penis erect. Hiseyebrows, eyelids, beard and body hair flame like the cosmic fire at the
end of the ages. His middle face is that of a buffalo. It is horned and
expresses violent anger. Above it, and between the horns, projects ayellow face.
I'm inclined to think a Tibetan meditator accustomed to facing Mahavajrabhairavain all his full and terrible splendor might find some of our game demons a little
tame...
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Doom:
Lets bring the interior worldof Tibetan Buddhist meditation and the virtual
worldof a first person shooter video game together, and then return to the issue of
demons.
The brilliant cyber-journalist Erik Davis once interviewed an eccentric Buddhist
technophile, a fellow who was among other things translating a "Bonpo" text
about the Chodrite, which happens to be another of my interests: it's a Tibetan
shamanic ritual for compassionately feeding the demons called "hungry ghosts"one's own flesh -- to make them full, so they can go back to sleep...
It turned out that the Buddhist technophile played computer games a lot, and
Doom in particular.
When Erik asked him why, he said:
Doom is a digital hell-realm, enlivened with violence and fear and
excitement...
You know, the Bon text I'm translating is all about Chod, a
shamanic practice that was incorporated into the Kagyupa sect of
Tibetan Buddhism. The aim of Chod is to cut away the ego byexposing yourself to demonic entities. Typically, a Chod
practitioner goes to the charnel grounds at night. You invoke
demons, offering up your body and mind as a tasty feast. But onceyou've generated these horrors, you are meant to perceive their
ultimate emptiness, that the demons are without substance or self,
that they are projections of your own unconscious processes.
Okay, so this is what happens when a Tibetan Buddhist gets his hands on Doom...
There's an instant recognition -- but also a deeper purpose at work or play.
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The hungry ghosts
Then there are the hungry ghosts themselves -- the "pretas", to give them theirofficial title. Fortunately, the Buddhist scholar William LaFleur has made a list of
them for our convenience:
ones with bodies like cauldrons, those with needle-thin throats,
vomit-eaters, excrement-eaters, nothing-eaters, eaters of vapors in
the air, eaters of the Buddhist dharma, water-drinkers, hopeful and
ambitious ones, saliva-eaters, wig-eaters, blood-drinkers, meat-eaters, consumers of incense smoke, disease-dabblers, defecation-
watchers, ones that live under the ground, possessors of miraculous
powers, intensely burning ones, ones fascinated with colors,inhabitants of the beach, ones with walking-canes, infant-eaters,
semen-eaters, demonic ones, fire-eaters, those on filthy streets,
wind-eaters, burning coal consumers, poison-eaters, inhabitants of
open fields, those living among tombs (and eating ashes), thosethat live in trees, ones that stay at crossroads, and those that kill
themselves.
These people have given a lot of thought to their demonology...
Or their western equivalents:
Not, mark you, that Im claiming a superiority for Buddhist tantric art over itsWestern equivalents we have the incomparable Hieronynmous Bosch to draw
on for monsters and demons, for instance:
Okay, so where am I going with all this?
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Integrating shadow energies
Among the most powerful transformations envisioned in the worlds religions is
the power to transform negative into positive energy, and by extension, negativeentities into positive ones, enemies into allies.
The process by which compassion brings shadow forces into consciousness and
thus liberates them, transforming them into their positive counterparts, isanalogous to that process by which pagans are transformed into Christians when a
Bible fired from a cannon hits them in the Simpsons mini-game,Billy Grahams
Bible Blaster:
Theres really very little difference between this game, and one in which playersuse a cartoon image of Saddam Hussein or Osama bin Laden for target practice
or for that matter Barney the purple dinosaur, the target in one popular internet
game.
And yet the munitions inBible Blaster are positive in effect, dealing life
(everlasting) rather than death, transforming sinner into saint and darkness intolight
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The breastplate of righteousness
Many religions and myths include metaphorical descriptions of what we might
callpositive weaponry from Cupids arrows in western myth and Kamas bowin Indian legend, to the armor of light (Romans 13), breastplate of righteousness,
shield of faith, helmet of salvation, and sword of the Spirit which is the word ofGod (Ephesians 6) in Christianity.
Weapons manufacturers, on the other hand, are not in the business of selling non-
destructive weaponry.
*
It is intriguing and a little disturbing to realize that in game design terms, magic is
essentially the same as weaponry, that at the level of coding and damage, there islittle difference between cursing ones adversaries and shooting them. But just as
spells can be used to debilitate, so can they be used to heal which implies in turn
that video games (and pen and paper role playing games before them) in whichpositive spells can be cast are games which effectively offer their playerspositive
weapons.
Or to put that another way, that in the game world, love and compassion can beas efficacious as hate and violence.
And if that insight translates into real world terms, iflove and compassioncan beas efficacious in life as they are portrayed to be in games of this sort, it follows
that idealism is no pipedream, -- and that generosity of spirit is the cure for what
ails the world.
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Love and compassion
Which may be why the great religions encourage and train us in compassion and
love.
*
The Tibetan lamas who designed mandala-based meditations such as the Chodrite have motives beyond simply providing an engaging landscape through which
their disciples can travel in the minds eye, compassionately blasting demons
along the way and racking up Buddha points.
For a start, they are interested in what we might call heaven realms as well ashell
realms, and they lead the "player" ("meditator") in a very structured way intostates of consciousness that most shrink-wrapped games don't attempt. What is
significant here is that they achieve this by transformingnegative intopositive
energies, and that making this transformation in the imaginative, virtual zone ofmeditation transforms both the meditator and his or her relationship with energies
of the same type in real life.
As Machik Labdron, the Tibetan yogini who created the Chod rite, tells us:
With the hook of compassion I catch those evil spirits. Offering them my
warm flesh and warm blood as food, through the kindness and compassion
of bodhichitta, I transform the way they see everything, and make them my
disciples
Again, the imagery isdeliriously goth, the objective unabashedly transcendent.
I suspect thats an unbeatable combination. In line with such mythic examples as
the Harrowing of Hell and Dantes Divine Comedy, and following shamanictradition, I hold that a clear facing of the dark corners of human motivation is
prerequisite for higher order quests (the grail, true artistry, the communion of
saints, wisdom) in other words, that without facing ones own demons in someway, one is ill equipped to navigate celestial realms.
Among which I would count the attainment ofenlightenment, represented in theclassic Tibetan iconography by the eight auspicious treasure-symbols:
the Umbrella, Fish, Vase, Lotus, Conch, Knot, Banner and Wheel.
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Envoi: Life and Games
Think about it:a life is structured pretty much the same way a game is.
By which I mean, life works like a game: it offers us a dazzling array of choices,which could in fact be represented by a logic tree -- but making those choicesdefines a singular path through life which thus becomes our story. So that in
retrospect, "looking back from the high hill of my old age" as Black Elk says,
narrative is what makes sense of the whole thing, while in prospect, lookingforward from the almost infinite potentialities of youth, making choices is the
thing to understand.
Life is a matter of reconciling multiple choices with eventual plot.
Shamans, visionaries, poets, and philosophers have thought about this issue a
great deal, but not in these terms: their insights and proposals are worth looking atbecause they have dealt with, recorded or invented dozens of realms or kingdoms
adjacent to our own "waking" reality, peopled with angels and demons and whoknows what else -- and a whole slew of ways of getting "from here to there".
They have been designinggame-like models of reality since the dawn of time...
Game designers have been thinking about these things, too -- in a technically
appropriate language, with the appropriate concepts in place. Game designers
insights and proposals are worth exploring as cosmological propositions, I'dsuggest, because we have living experience of what makes for rich (fascinating,
absorbing) game experiences -- in terms of both choice and story. We are the ones
whose work demands that we think through this business of making good storyout of a multiplicity of possible choices within a constrained system...
Speaking as a game designer, then, I suspect the world's religions and visionaries from Buddhism to Blake -- have much to teach us about the "depth psychology"
of games: the power of symbols and images to engage both the known and the
suppressed energies of the psyche. And speaking as a theologian BA, ChristChurch, Oxford -- I think those who are looking for a viablestory of human
existence should chat up some game designers: designers with a bent for seeing
the bigger picture and spinning visionary games out of practical experience.
Becausegame design is the only field I know where the contrasting emphases ofchoice and story mix and match.
*
Motto:To consider adversity as a friend is the instruction of Chod
Tibetan yogini Machig Labdron, 11th
-12th
century
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The Lama and the Game Designer is a repurposed, extensively rewritten and freshly
illustrated version of a web-piece titled Games Lamas Play, which is itself the uncutversion of an article I wrote for The Cursor: Game Developers Life, journal of theInternational Game Developers Network, of which I was Editor-at-Large, which appeared
in our first issue, April 1997, under the titleDoom Goes to Church.
-- Charles Cameron