The Lama and the Game Designer

8/4/2019 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

[email protected]


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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

The Lama and the Game Designer

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