I mistakenly attributed it to wishsong. The names are still atrocious, but anyway it's the dreams in scion of shannara.
Humans wandered the ashen devastation in packs, more animals than men. They rent and tore at each other; they howled and shrieked. Dark shapes flitted among them, shadows that lacked substance yet had eyes of fire. The shadows moved through the humans, joining with them, becoming them, leaving them again. They moved in a dance that was macabre, yet purposeful. The shadows were devouring the humans, he saw. The shadows were feeding on them.
The vision shifted. He saw himself then, a skeletal, ragged beggar facing a cauldron of strange white fire that bubbled and swirled and whispered his name. Vapors lifted from the cauldron and snaked their way down to where he stood, wrapping about him, caressing him as if he were their child. Shadows flitted all about, passing by at first, then entering him as if he were a hollow casing in which they might play as they chose. He could feel their touch; he wanted to scream.
And abruptly Par found himself recalling the dreams that Allanon had sent, the visions of a nightmarish world in which everything was blackened and withered and life was reduced to something barely recognizable. Reddened eyes blinked like bits of fire, and shadow forms flitted through a haze of ash and smoke.
(Par ultimately found his bosom companions; eagle, birdie, hole-in-one, poached, and stir-fry. The cooking is bad though; his brother is named colic, or coll for short. Don't worry, the two passages above are by far the best part of the whole series.)
5 comments:
A question about where does good and bad karma come from. Karma is supposed to determine both ones place and circumstances of birth and ones strengths and weaknesses. I think this leaves only desires to be the original source of karma, the one that determines the souls future at point of creation, because even if for example I have few chances to earn good karma due to my circumstances and abilities, that would itself be effect of bad karma that had to come from somewhere else. So which desires are good karma vs bad? So far you mentioned that existence, and thus desiring to exist, has a price, which only the best can pay. But being the best is itself supposed to be an effect of good karma, leaning into the buddists here. So which desires help pay back existence debt vs add to it. Or do all desires just cost, and only specific actions help? Based on your previous writing I would guess that the enjoyment of creating and destroing are a plus, and desire to prevent destruction via maintenance and restoration, a minus. I would also guess that the desires to learn is likely plus, and maybe also to struggle, compete and challenge. Are than all desires other than the above, plus biological drives, sinful, or neutral, except certainly irresponsibility (wanting to be free from consequences of ones actions) and desire for treachery ? For example is loyalty over orofit a sin? Does doing the right thing despite how one feels help more or less than doing sam thing in agreement with ones feelings?
I meant to write is loyalty a profit or a sin. I need to write slower.
On the one hand, loyalty such as keeping your agreement that the other side kept despite they clearly are no longer profitable is the opposite of treachery, on the other, it is by Definition unprofitable, otherwise not loyalty. What about when the outcome is unknown and so is the risk of loss. So is it karmić debt or karmić credit?
You determine your own strengths and weaknesses, but it turns out Reality runs on a point-buy system. You have infinite arrangements but there's a cap on total value.
Re: [circumstances of your birth] it turns out individuals make characteristic mistakes, resulting in characteristic circumstances. Includes birth, includes jobs, includes marriage.
I don't see any pre-existing serious attempt to work out how to increase your karma.
If you do something nice for a bad person, you'll take a karmic debt.
If you do something good for a good person, it was only because they had deserved it anyway. You're a messenger; you don't shoot the messenger and you don't pay the messenger either.
Overall, a problem.
Write slower? If you never miss a plane you're spending too much time in airports.
You can farm good karma by doing nice things for divine principles and divine entities. However, they then pay you. They don't let you run a balance. They're on-time, up-to-date.
If the outcome is unknown the outcome is known to be unknown. In this case karma takes the worst option. E.g. if you intend to do bad and fail, you get dinged for what you intend to do. If you intend to do good and you kill a friend, you get dinged for murder. If you don't know what you intend to do, and something bad happens, you will get dinged for what happened. I'm not 100% sure on what happens if it works out well.
Karma experiments are nearly impossible due to all the noise in the system.
You can reduce the weight of your sins. Indeed you can't not do that. If you have a debt any service to the divine will be credited against that balance.
It amuses me a lot to talk about the sacred using accounting jargon.
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