Categories > Anime/Manga > Saiyuki > Drabbles
in a name
Genjo Sanzo
Deep and vast, the Three Refuges: Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. The Buddha, his teachings, fellow seekers after truth. The only Buddha he recognises is Koumyo Sanzo, long overthrown and dead, beyond killing. The only teaching he understands is Koumyo's single injunction: kill the Buddha as you meet him. Let nothing captivate you. Genjo Sanzo cares nothing for the trappings of faith, nothing for what others think of him. Beneath, he is still Koryu, the great river that flows across the land, blind and inexorable as fate. What he cannot tear down and destroy he will wear down and bear away.
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Son Goku
Goku understands emptiness, vacancy, space. Born of stone, bound in stone to reach towards the world outside, grasping nothing, for how long, for reasons beyond his comprehension... Goku knows what it is to wonder about his lack of family, what it means to be parentless, born of something that cannot acknowledge his existence. Goku knows the gaping emptiness where his memories should be, a vacancy where his sun should shine in place of the burning orb outside his prison. Goku understands the space in him that cannot be filled. Perhaps they fear he will devour the world. Goku understands emptiness.
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Sha Gojyo
Gojyo understands purity. Often he's dreamt of it: chaste wives as patient as Penelope, the sanctity of marriage vows, loving mothers... do humans not sing of the purity of a mother's love? But they are merely dreams, that flicker and vanish in the pure light of reason when he wakes. These are not for him, halfbreed spawn of a forbidden union, fruit of lust consummated. He remembers it every time he looks in a mirror, every time he sees his half-brother. He has nothing to do with purity, which will have no part of him. Oh yes. Gojyo understands purity.
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Cho Hakkai
Gonou understands power, and the limits thereof. Had the choice been his to make, between his beloved sister and an outsider, he would done no less than the frightened villagers. He knows this. And he exacts that bloody repayment from them, giving up his humanity in every way, and still she is beyond his power to save. Now that is behind him, and his name is Hakkai: eight precepts. He's broken nearly all of them. He breaks them still. But he remains, and in him is exemplified the price of failure. He can only live, and remember. Gonou understands impotence.
Genjo Sanzo
Deep and vast, the Three Refuges: Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. The Buddha, his teachings, fellow seekers after truth. The only Buddha he recognises is Koumyo Sanzo, long overthrown and dead, beyond killing. The only teaching he understands is Koumyo's single injunction: kill the Buddha as you meet him. Let nothing captivate you. Genjo Sanzo cares nothing for the trappings of faith, nothing for what others think of him. Beneath, he is still Koryu, the great river that flows across the land, blind and inexorable as fate. What he cannot tear down and destroy he will wear down and bear away.
*
Son Goku
Goku understands emptiness, vacancy, space. Born of stone, bound in stone to reach towards the world outside, grasping nothing, for how long, for reasons beyond his comprehension... Goku knows what it is to wonder about his lack of family, what it means to be parentless, born of something that cannot acknowledge his existence. Goku knows the gaping emptiness where his memories should be, a vacancy where his sun should shine in place of the burning orb outside his prison. Goku understands the space in him that cannot be filled. Perhaps they fear he will devour the world. Goku understands emptiness.
*
Sha Gojyo
Gojyo understands purity. Often he's dreamt of it: chaste wives as patient as Penelope, the sanctity of marriage vows, loving mothers... do humans not sing of the purity of a mother's love? But they are merely dreams, that flicker and vanish in the pure light of reason when he wakes. These are not for him, halfbreed spawn of a forbidden union, fruit of lust consummated. He remembers it every time he looks in a mirror, every time he sees his half-brother. He has nothing to do with purity, which will have no part of him. Oh yes. Gojyo understands purity.
*
Cho Hakkai
Gonou understands power, and the limits thereof. Had the choice been his to make, between his beloved sister and an outsider, he would done no less than the frightened villagers. He knows this. And he exacts that bloody repayment from them, giving up his humanity in every way, and still she is beyond his power to save. Now that is behind him, and his name is Hakkai: eight precepts. He's broken nearly all of them. He breaks them still. But he remains, and in him is exemplified the price of failure. He can only live, and remember. Gonou understands impotence.
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