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ljwritesIn Part 1 of this essay I have discussed the contours and contradictions of Air Nomad culture and how it influenced Aang and other air Nomad characters. Now I continue with a more in-depth discussion of their cultural values through Aang's story.
Returning to the world of the living, and of war, was only the beginning of Aang's quest; not only the quest for peace, but also the quest for the ideal of spiritual freedom. There's a certain pathos in the last survivor of a culture exploring and trying to live by his its values, but maybe it's a question that becomes all the more urgent when there is only one survivor. There is going to be no one after Aang to remember the Air Nomad way of life and thought in its original form, and to grapple with its central question: how can a person remain free in spirit and compassionate in a world of cruelty and violence?
To-do list: End war, bring peace and balance to the world, keep my dead people's legacy alive in my own life. Totally doable!
One interesting point about Aang's personal journey toward freedom is how many things that look like freedom at first blush actually aren't. Running away, including procrastination, may feel like freedom at the moment, but Aang learns the lesson in "The Storm" that he can't run away into freedom. Evasion is just one of the many enticing traps on that road.
Something else that looks like freedom is total emotional detachment, which actually seems a perfect solution to the dilemma of being a compassionate individual and a liberated one at the same time. Nothing so free as emotional detachment, right? Aang certainly thought so when he withdrew emotionally after growing angry, even violent following Appa's disappearance. Yet that turned out to be another kind of flight, a flight from the very understandable pain of losing a friend, the only living link to his old life at that.
But the birth of Hope in "The Serpent's Pass" (in my mind I call her Xin Xin) helped Aang realize that he would be shutting himself off from joy and hope as well by being afraid to suffer. Like the elder monks of his temple from "The Storm" flashbacks and General Fong from "The Avatar State," Aang felt tempted to turn himself into a machine by shutting off his humanity--but not only was this the wrong way to be the Avatar (as Gyatso and Katara both strenuously argued), but it was the wrong way to spiritual enlightenment as an Air Nomad, too. Aang learned again that freedom comes from facing life, not in running from it.
Later on, continuing the theme of detachment and freedom, Aang was told to give up his feelings for Katara in "The Guru." It's one of the much-debated moments from the show; should Aang have given up a little thing like attachment to one person in order to be the Avatar? Did his love for Katara mean he couldn't be a good Avatar? Now I'm fairly sure being the Avatar doesn't entail a vow of celibacy (it didn't for Kuruk or Roku), but for this essay I'm more interested in another question: should Aang have been celibate for the sake of enlightenment? Can you be in love and also be free, as is the Air Nomad ideal?
To answer that question I think it's instructive to look to another order of persecuted warrior monks, the Jedi from Star Wars. There's a passage from Episode I (may it burn in bad movie hell) where Yoda recaps the Jedi philosophy on the Dark Side:
Listen to the little green thing, for he is wise.
Note that he is cautioning against fear and not love, which in its purest form is the opposite of fear. To make that point, let me quote from another eccentric old hermit. Here's what Jolee Bindo, from the game Knights of the Old Republic, had to say about love:
Listen to the crusty old fart, for he occasionally makes sense.*
The line between loving someone and having feelings of fear, anger, jealousy, shame etc. is a fine one, and one that is not easy to navigate. But does that really lead to the conclusion that it's not worth it to try? And even on a purely practical level, can anyone really turn love on and off like a lightswitch? If Aang were obsessed with the need to let go of his feelings for Katara, what would he end up thinking about? Katara, Katara, Katara, plus an unhealthy serving of shame. That's not freedom and it's not enlightenment, it's spiritual bondage.
I'm not so much trying to diss the ascetic lifestyle here as saying there's no one true way to spiritual freedom. I think it's a mistake to take Guru Pathik as objective and all-knowing; like any teacher he is influenced by his experiences and education. It doesn't mean he's a bad teacher, just that he has his own biases. The Guru himself has obviously lived a life above personal desires and connections, but that doesn't mean it's the right way for Aang. Aang's deep emotional connection to Katara helped him grow as both the Avatar and an Air Nomad, by helping him acknowledge his humanity rather than run from it.
And finally, the cultural values instilled in Aang are put to the greatest test of all when his belief in the sanctity of life comes in direct conflict with his duty as the Avatar. Yang Chen, the spirit of another Air Nomad Avatar, puts the conflict in its starkest terms when she tells Aang that it's not all about him--that he must sacrifice his spiritual enlightenment to end the war. He can never achieve true freedom because he is bound inextricably to the world.
Note that this is pretty much the same argument Guru Pathik made, that connection to others, whether it's to an animal companion or a girl or the world, means you cannot truly be free. All these things drag the spirit down, bringing him ever farther from enlightenment. His relationships and his spirituality, the things he values most, must be sacrificed at the altar of his duties.
The value Aang places, as an Air Nomad, on the spiritual has been subjected to escalating challenges so far; first it was shaken by his attachment to Appa and the connection to his people the sky bison represented, then by his feelings for Katara, and now by his very identity as the Avatar. How does he get out of this seemingly intractable dilemma?
Hi there.
I know the Lion Turtle is not the most popular choice of story elements among fans, and I also have reservations about it as a plot device. As a symbol, however, it actually works; it comes from (or knows) a time before the Avatars, and given how freaking many of them there were, we're talking Serious Time. A lot can change in just a hundred years, as Aang learned. How different from us would be a being as awesomely ancient as the Lion Turtle, how alien and unknowable?
The age the Lion Turtle comes from is not only ancient but different, a time before element bending and one of bending energy. What matters with energy bending is not the boundary between elements but one's purity of heart, a light to cleanse even the darkness of the void. This is strongly reminiscent of Guru Pathik's teaching in "The Guru," where he emphasizes training the mind and calming the passions while downplaying the divisions between elements. In a way, Aang had to meet Pathik and learn to clear his mind before he was ready for the humbling responsibility and terrible power of energy bending. And the culmination of that meeting was the meeting with this ancient and alien being, one who was not bound by time.
Beyond the bounds of time and space, then, unhindered even by the boundaries of the world**, the Lion Turtle appeared like an answer to Aang's internal call. It came from outside the divisions between elements and from a place that unites all the peoples of all elements--the heart, universal emotionas that transcend the surface differences. The Lion Turtle, in other words, is freedom made real, the force of spiritual peace and renewal that came in answer to Aang's call. Possibly it came to him because Aang is an Air Nomad (Guru Pathik's teachings resemble the Lion Turtle's, and Pathik has been called a spiritual brother to the Air Nomads), but more likely because Aang was the Avatar on the eve of his ultimate test. It would have to have been a spiritual symbol with great meaning to show up in so many different places around the world, and the Avatars themselves seem to have had a certain fondness for turtles if their toys are any indication.
Of course I have no proof that the Lion Turtle came for the Avatars when they were facing their greatest challenges. It's an underdeveloped and ill-defined character/plot point/deus ex machina, which makes it both frustrating and fascinating. Certainly it's possible that it doesn't always come to the Avatars and act as a convenient transport to the place of the final showdown, as evinced by its comment about few of the previous Avatars mastering energy bending. But I also wonder, would a lot of these previous Avatars have wanted the help of the Lion Turtle or some being like it? Would the "be decisive," "do whatever it takes," "be proactive," "sacrifice your enlightenment" Avatars have sought an alternative way, cried out from the depths of their soul for a way to save the life of the world's greatest enemy? Aang did, because his compassion for all life was that deep. And the Lion Turtle was an answer to that cry. It might not be satisfying from a plot point of view, but as a symbolic development it worked for me.
And finally Aang faced the final test armed with the new ability to bend energy. Noble in his intentions, his heart the stronger from his suffering and from lessons learned, Aang came to his final battle a different young man from the "Boy in the Iceberg." He had known the fires of fear, loss, rage, love, shame, and all the rest. He had run away from his duties only to be drawn back to the world by friendship. He had tried to shut himself away from a painful world but realized he loved it too much to let himself turn into an unfeeling machine. He was urged to give up his worldly connections, but it was his connections that sustained him, both as a human being and an Avatar. He was caught between his spiritual needs and the needs of the world, but his will to save the world while staying true to himself called forth a helper from beyond the bounds of our paltry conceptions and the world, who showed him another path--but a path fraught with danger. With so many hardships of body and spirit behind him, Aang now had to face the final one alone.
If Aang's fight with Ozai, indeed his whole story is an indication of anything, it's that true freedom is never the easy path to walk. Running away is easy. Becoming unfeeling and aloof is easy, or at least easier compared to the alternative of feeling all that life has to throw at you. Killing Ozai would have been easy with the kind of power Aang had at his disposal. But he turned away from the easy path because his compassion was not only for the world, but for his enemies as well. Others had forgotten to be compassionate to Aang in their drive to stop the war, but Aang would not abandon his compassion for an enemy, for even the worst of men, in his duty as the Avatar. Even if it meant risking irreparable harm to his own soul, he would live his principles and take responsibility for them because that was his choice as a spiritual man.
In meeting the final test successfully, even magnificently, Aang became "Avatar Aang" indeed--no more evasions, contradictions, or dilemmas, but a harmonious whole as both Avatar and person. In the choice between being the Avatar and Aang he had chosen both, and suffered and taken terrible risks for that choice. That was the meaning of freedom for him, that he would make choices according to the currents of his soul and take responsibilty for those choices. In doing so, he not only shaped his own life but left a great legacy that would outlast his destroyed people.
The end of the war would not mean the end of the world's problems, but rather the start of different problems. No doubt Aang would experience exhaustion that cut down to the bottom of his soul, spend many dark nights questioning himself and his calling, and feel sick with disappointment at humanity itself. But he would face all of these challenges as himself, with the inner peace knowable only by those who have been forged by the fires, the blows, and the chilling colds of life lived to its fullest. Through it all he would remain Avatar Aang, in his hard-won freedom that no one can ever take away from him. That was the gift of the Air Nomads to the last of their culture, and Aang's gift to the world.
Insert snarky comment here. *sniffle*
* Just to be clear, Jolee is one of my favorite characters in KotOR and in the entire Star Wars franchise. I kid because I love.
** June made it clear that Aang went outside the world when Nyla, her shirshu who can smell anything in the world, couldn't catch a sniff of Aang.
Returning to the world of the living, and of war, was only the beginning of Aang's quest; not only the quest for peace, but also the quest for the ideal of spiritual freedom. There's a certain pathos in the last survivor of a culture exploring and trying to live by his its values, but maybe it's a question that becomes all the more urgent when there is only one survivor. There is going to be no one after Aang to remember the Air Nomad way of life and thought in its original form, and to grapple with its central question: how can a person remain free in spirit and compassionate in a world of cruelty and violence?
To-do list: End war, bring peace and balance to the world, keep my dead people's legacy alive in my own life. Totally doable!
One interesting point about Aang's personal journey toward freedom is how many things that look like freedom at first blush actually aren't. Running away, including procrastination, may feel like freedom at the moment, but Aang learns the lesson in "The Storm" that he can't run away into freedom. Evasion is just one of the many enticing traps on that road.
Something else that looks like freedom is total emotional detachment, which actually seems a perfect solution to the dilemma of being a compassionate individual and a liberated one at the same time. Nothing so free as emotional detachment, right? Aang certainly thought so when he withdrew emotionally after growing angry, even violent following Appa's disappearance. Yet that turned out to be another kind of flight, a flight from the very understandable pain of losing a friend, the only living link to his old life at that.
But the birth of Hope in "The Serpent's Pass" (in my mind I call her Xin Xin) helped Aang realize that he would be shutting himself off from joy and hope as well by being afraid to suffer. Like the elder monks of his temple from "The Storm" flashbacks and General Fong from "The Avatar State," Aang felt tempted to turn himself into a machine by shutting off his humanity--but not only was this the wrong way to be the Avatar (as Gyatso and Katara both strenuously argued), but it was the wrong way to spiritual enlightenment as an Air Nomad, too. Aang learned again that freedom comes from facing life, not in running from it.
Later on, continuing the theme of detachment and freedom, Aang was told to give up his feelings for Katara in "The Guru." It's one of the much-debated moments from the show; should Aang have given up a little thing like attachment to one person in order to be the Avatar? Did his love for Katara mean he couldn't be a good Avatar? Now I'm fairly sure being the Avatar doesn't entail a vow of celibacy (it didn't for Kuruk or Roku), but for this essay I'm more interested in another question: should Aang have been celibate for the sake of enlightenment? Can you be in love and also be free, as is the Air Nomad ideal?
To answer that question I think it's instructive to look to another order of persecuted warrior monks, the Jedi from Star Wars. There's a passage from Episode I (may it burn in bad movie hell) where Yoda recaps the Jedi philosophy on the Dark Side:
"Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering."
Listen to the little green thing, for he is wise.
Note that he is cautioning against fear and not love, which in its purest form is the opposite of fear. To make that point, let me quote from another eccentric old hermit. Here's what Jolee Bindo, from the game Knights of the Old Republic, had to say about love:
"Love doesn't lead to the dark side. Passion can lead to rage and fear, and can be controlled, but passion is not the same thing as love. Controlling your passions while being in love, that's what they should teach you to beware, but love itself will save, not condemn you."
Listen to the crusty old fart, for he occasionally makes sense.*
The line between loving someone and having feelings of fear, anger, jealousy, shame etc. is a fine one, and one that is not easy to navigate. But does that really lead to the conclusion that it's not worth it to try? And even on a purely practical level, can anyone really turn love on and off like a lightswitch? If Aang were obsessed with the need to let go of his feelings for Katara, what would he end up thinking about? Katara, Katara, Katara, plus an unhealthy serving of shame. That's not freedom and it's not enlightenment, it's spiritual bondage.
I'm not so much trying to diss the ascetic lifestyle here as saying there's no one true way to spiritual freedom. I think it's a mistake to take Guru Pathik as objective and all-knowing; like any teacher he is influenced by his experiences and education. It doesn't mean he's a bad teacher, just that he has his own biases. The Guru himself has obviously lived a life above personal desires and connections, but that doesn't mean it's the right way for Aang. Aang's deep emotional connection to Katara helped him grow as both the Avatar and an Air Nomad, by helping him acknowledge his humanity rather than run from it.
And finally, the cultural values instilled in Aang are put to the greatest test of all when his belief in the sanctity of life comes in direct conflict with his duty as the Avatar. Yang Chen, the spirit of another Air Nomad Avatar, puts the conflict in its starkest terms when she tells Aang that it's not all about him--that he must sacrifice his spiritual enlightenment to end the war. He can never achieve true freedom because he is bound inextricably to the world.
Note that this is pretty much the same argument Guru Pathik made, that connection to others, whether it's to an animal companion or a girl or the world, means you cannot truly be free. All these things drag the spirit down, bringing him ever farther from enlightenment. His relationships and his spirituality, the things he values most, must be sacrificed at the altar of his duties.
The value Aang places, as an Air Nomad, on the spiritual has been subjected to escalating challenges so far; first it was shaken by his attachment to Appa and the connection to his people the sky bison represented, then by his feelings for Katara, and now by his very identity as the Avatar. How does he get out of this seemingly intractable dilemma?
Hi there.
I know the Lion Turtle is not the most popular choice of story elements among fans, and I also have reservations about it as a plot device. As a symbol, however, it actually works; it comes from (or knows) a time before the Avatars, and given how freaking many of them there were, we're talking Serious Time. A lot can change in just a hundred years, as Aang learned. How different from us would be a being as awesomely ancient as the Lion Turtle, how alien and unknowable?
The age the Lion Turtle comes from is not only ancient but different, a time before element bending and one of bending energy. What matters with energy bending is not the boundary between elements but one's purity of heart, a light to cleanse even the darkness of the void. This is strongly reminiscent of Guru Pathik's teaching in "The Guru," where he emphasizes training the mind and calming the passions while downplaying the divisions between elements. In a way, Aang had to meet Pathik and learn to clear his mind before he was ready for the humbling responsibility and terrible power of energy bending. And the culmination of that meeting was the meeting with this ancient and alien being, one who was not bound by time.
Beyond the bounds of time and space, then, unhindered even by the boundaries of the world**, the Lion Turtle appeared like an answer to Aang's internal call. It came from outside the divisions between elements and from a place that unites all the peoples of all elements--the heart, universal emotionas that transcend the surface differences. The Lion Turtle, in other words, is freedom made real, the force of spiritual peace and renewal that came in answer to Aang's call. Possibly it came to him because Aang is an Air Nomad (Guru Pathik's teachings resemble the Lion Turtle's, and Pathik has been called a spiritual brother to the Air Nomads), but more likely because Aang was the Avatar on the eve of his ultimate test. It would have to have been a spiritual symbol with great meaning to show up in so many different places around the world, and the Avatars themselves seem to have had a certain fondness for turtles if their toys are any indication.
Of course I have no proof that the Lion Turtle came for the Avatars when they were facing their greatest challenges. It's an underdeveloped and ill-defined character/plot point/deus ex machina, which makes it both frustrating and fascinating. Certainly it's possible that it doesn't always come to the Avatars and act as a convenient transport to the place of the final showdown, as evinced by its comment about few of the previous Avatars mastering energy bending. But I also wonder, would a lot of these previous Avatars have wanted the help of the Lion Turtle or some being like it? Would the "be decisive," "do whatever it takes," "be proactive," "sacrifice your enlightenment" Avatars have sought an alternative way, cried out from the depths of their soul for a way to save the life of the world's greatest enemy? Aang did, because his compassion for all life was that deep. And the Lion Turtle was an answer to that cry. It might not be satisfying from a plot point of view, but as a symbolic development it worked for me.
And finally Aang faced the final test armed with the new ability to bend energy. Noble in his intentions, his heart the stronger from his suffering and from lessons learned, Aang came to his final battle a different young man from the "Boy in the Iceberg." He had known the fires of fear, loss, rage, love, shame, and all the rest. He had run away from his duties only to be drawn back to the world by friendship. He had tried to shut himself away from a painful world but realized he loved it too much to let himself turn into an unfeeling machine. He was urged to give up his worldly connections, but it was his connections that sustained him, both as a human being and an Avatar. He was caught between his spiritual needs and the needs of the world, but his will to save the world while staying true to himself called forth a helper from beyond the bounds of our paltry conceptions and the world, who showed him another path--but a path fraught with danger. With so many hardships of body and spirit behind him, Aang now had to face the final one alone.
If Aang's fight with Ozai, indeed his whole story is an indication of anything, it's that true freedom is never the easy path to walk. Running away is easy. Becoming unfeeling and aloof is easy, or at least easier compared to the alternative of feeling all that life has to throw at you. Killing Ozai would have been easy with the kind of power Aang had at his disposal. But he turned away from the easy path because his compassion was not only for the world, but for his enemies as well. Others had forgotten to be compassionate to Aang in their drive to stop the war, but Aang would not abandon his compassion for an enemy, for even the worst of men, in his duty as the Avatar. Even if it meant risking irreparable harm to his own soul, he would live his principles and take responsibility for them because that was his choice as a spiritual man.
In meeting the final test successfully, even magnificently, Aang became "Avatar Aang" indeed--no more evasions, contradictions, or dilemmas, but a harmonious whole as both Avatar and person. In the choice between being the Avatar and Aang he had chosen both, and suffered and taken terrible risks for that choice. That was the meaning of freedom for him, that he would make choices according to the currents of his soul and take responsibilty for those choices. In doing so, he not only shaped his own life but left a great legacy that would outlast his destroyed people.
The end of the war would not mean the end of the world's problems, but rather the start of different problems. No doubt Aang would experience exhaustion that cut down to the bottom of his soul, spend many dark nights questioning himself and his calling, and feel sick with disappointment at humanity itself. But he would face all of these challenges as himself, with the inner peace knowable only by those who have been forged by the fires, the blows, and the chilling colds of life lived to its fullest. Through it all he would remain Avatar Aang, in his hard-won freedom that no one can ever take away from him. That was the gift of the Air Nomads to the last of their culture, and Aang's gift to the world.
Insert snarky comment here. *sniffle*
I want to call here the ancestors. I want to call here the ancestors of my people.
They're in my heart; I carry them with me.
Their hands are on my back when I talk. They keep me from falling.
-from the opening of the Star Trek: Voyager fanfic Talking Stick, by Macedon
* Just to be clear, Jolee is one of my favorite characters in KotOR and in the entire Star Wars franchise. I kid because I love.
** June made it clear that Aang went outside the world when Nyla, her shirshu who can smell anything in the world, couldn't catch a sniff of Aang.
