Subject: Good and Evil
From: rhaller@oregon.uoregon.edu
Date: 1991-04-18, 09:06
Newsgroups: alt.tv.twin-peaks

Several people have commented on the dissonance of having Coop, supposedly the
good guy, play black in the chess game and vice versa.

I strongly suspect that this dissonance was intentional on the part of L&F and
that they intended that it would lead to thoughts about issues like duality
versus ultimate oneness and reflections on Coop's fascination with Tibet and
Buddhism.

As I understand it, one of the most important barriers to enlightenment in the
Buddhist tradition is clinging to ideas of essential opposition. To quote the
Zen Patriarch Dogen: "When the opposites arise, The Buddha Mind is lost."

As someone else has pointed out, the notion of a struggle between good and evil
is NOT Buddhist, Tibetan or otherwise. It is usually attributed to
Zoroastrianism which arose in Persia and has had a strong effect on
Judeo/Christian thought, stronger in some eras than others.

By the way, it is interesting to note that FIRE plays a very important part in
Zoroastrian worship!!!

Also, in checking my memories about Z, I came on a reference that said that the
sacrifice of bulls was also an important part of the religion. If so, any
tauruses in TP should be on their guard :-)

-Rich (Taurus) Haller

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