Many thanks for your thoughtful response to my pre-holiday take on the panels of the TinTin cartoon, challenging in several ways my interpretation. I'm now back home, and have a comment or two and a couple of questions for you.
I note there are only about ten locals who have turned out to gawk at the parade, all of which seems totally caught up in its own imaginative importance. Is there really any reason for this display? Is it called for at the moment? These people almost seem to be in a dreamlike trance, self absorbed, putting nothing in the begging bowl of the two committed practitioners, or even noticing them.
Isn't Haddock (by inference long-time meditator) dismayed because of the missing connection between the outer display and the inner understanding of those involved in the big parade? They look happy but kind of vacuous, an empty display without much inner meaning. TinTin seems to be exhorting him towards compassion. "How can we help?"
Branded by some as aging hippies, are the meditators the ones who are living in the past here? Are the people who want to keep parading around in the same way they did thirty years ago not ignoring the current realities of stretched economies of the world, climate change, poverty, destitution, lethal pollution? Refer to the chant "Fulfilling the Aspirations of the Vidyadhara."
In the story of Rudra, a tantric teacher tells his students to eat meat, sleep with women, and enjoy sensual pleasures. One uncomprehending student thinks this means to indulge literally. The other realizes he needs inner experience to bring these things to the path. The one who follows the external pleasures ends up murdering his teacher. So who is who in this cartoon?
Yours, Dan Taylor
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