The Jedi and love

[1001001]

Yoda described a very Buddhist style philosophy to Anakin. It seemed to me he was talking about attachments, which lead to bad things (jealousy, anger, etc.). That is a very Buddhist way of looking at the world. "The cause of all suffering is attachment".

Anakin also said that Jedi are encouraged to love. I took from that the Jedi love, but do not become attached.

As for the new trilogy...hmmm. I don't have strong wish for Rey one way or the other, as long as it seems organic and relevant to the story. It would be a shame to turn her into something she's not. On the other hand there's really no reason she couldn't have a relationship, if it's with a true partner.

I don't know...Anakin and Padme were kinda messed up. Han and Leia were great. So the record here is mixed.

At the end of the day, Rey finding romantic love is pretty low on my list of wishes for the rest of the trilogy.

JMHO

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Worked well enough in 'Kung Fu' for the most part. The Jedi seem to be spiritual monks like Qui Chang Cain, or at least they did at first.

Great parallel.

---

About the Luke-Han-Leia "love triangle," as it were, I overlooked one thing in my first post. The triangle was represented in all three films of the OT, not just in both SW77 and TESB. In ROTJ, Han got jealous when Luke and Leia talked in private in the Ewok village, and at the end, when Leia said that she loves Luke, Han thought that he would have to step aside for Leia to be with Luke. In Han's mind, he was still in competition with Luke. Even though for the audience the triangle was, I believe, already resolved in TESB, when Leia proclaimed her love for Han in Cloud City, underscored by Lando's reassurances to Leia at the end that he and Chewie would find Han, Han had his own perspective, as a character. Any lingering doubts the audience might have had were resolved on Dagobah in ROTJ, with the reveal of Leia as Luke's sister. Han never knew this until the very end.

 

[Kor]

The Jedi order has a basically monastic life. In real life, those usually don't seem to allow for romantic attachments. If someone wants to pursue a romantic relationship, then they can choose to leave the monastic life.

I wonder if the Jedi enforce some kind of restrictions on those who choose to leave the order for whatever reason. It's not as if they suddenly lose their abilities to use "The Force" and fight with a lightsaber, as shown by Count Dooku. The Jedi masters in AOTC still spoke of him fairly respectfully (they didn't know he was a Sith Lord at that point).

Can someone be a "lay believer" in the Jedi way and go around using their abilities without being part of the sanctioned Order/Temple system? Or would the Order put the kibosh on that?

What's to stop someone from leaving the order and making their own separate Jedi "denomination" that does allow romance?

Kor

 

[Guy Gardener]

It seems to be a monopoly question. They may let Jedi leave, in the case of Dooku, but letting a competing church set up shop inside the old republic, would cut into their bottom line and reduce their numbers. The Republic tests the blood of every new born, appropriates/conscripts whomever they think necessary from their cribs, and begins training asap.

This is a matter of procreation.

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Maybe the biochemical reactions, and hormone unbalancing caused by love stirs up the midi-chlorians into a cruel state?

 

[Shaka Zulu]

Luke had Mara Jade each other in the novels/comics/games and she was delightful.

He also had a red-skinned humanoid alien lady as a girlfriend in the Marvel comics (the old ones from 1977-1983) called Dani.

 

[Guy Gardener]

You're not allowed to say red-skinned any more.

 

[JD]

I know the whole no attachments thing for the Jedi in the PT was meant to make them like religeous monks, but I also assumed it was put in there by Lucas to make the Anakin/Padme relationship a big forbidden love. I was never that big a fan of it, I understand what Lucas was going for with it, but I never liked the idea that love or similar emotion were looked at as bad.
I don't think Rey needs to have a romantic interest in the next movie, but I wouldn't mind it if they can manage to do it without taking anything away from her character.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

but I also assumed it was put in there by Lucas to make the Anakin/Padme relationship a big forbidden love

Good point.

 

[Reverend]

The more I think about how the Anakin/Padme "romance" was played out in the movies, the more I see how Lucas was consistent with his point that attachment leads to the dark side.

Despite what he might have believed, I don't think Anakin ever really loved Padme. He loved how she made him feel. If you analyse what he says, it's almost always about him. Fundamentally selfish in his outlook.
The tragedy is that Padme really did love him regardless. Not sure why exactly. That's always been a major sticking point for me. Sadly Padme doesn't come out of that looking very good IMO.

So yeah, I don't think love itself is portrayed as being inherently bad, but rather that attachment leads to possession, which leads to selfishness. Anakin didn't start out selfish, but became so slowly over time. When we first encounter him he's enormously generous, partly because he has so very little. It's only when he loses the one thing he ever truly felt was "his" that he begins to become possessive.

One might argue that true love is in being able to let someone go, regardless of your own feeling. Selfless love as demonstrated with the Obi Wan & Satine romance rather than the selfish love of Anakin & Padme.

The Jedi order has a basically monastic life. In real life, those usually don't seem to allow for romantic attachments. If someone wants to pursue a romantic relationship, then they can choose to leave the monastic life.

I wonder if the Jedi enforce some kind of restrictions on those who choose to leave the order for whatever reason. It's not as if they suddenly lose their abilities to use "The Force" and fight with a lightsaber, as shown by Count Dooku. The Jedi masters in AOTC still spoke of him fairly respectfully (they didn't know he was a Sith Lord at that point).

Can someone be a "lay believer" in the Jedi way and go around using their abilities without being part of the sanctioned Order/Temple system? Or would the Order put the kibosh on that?

What's to stop someone from leaving the order and making their own separate Jedi "denomination" that does allow romance?

Kor

Ten to one, that's how the Sith got started.

Seriously though I don't think it's ever indicated that the Jedi have any authority over force users in general. Parents don't *have* to give up their force sensitive children, though there's apparently been a few misunderstandings on this point.

The Empire on the other hand seems to have very definite views over what is done with force sensitives.
Probably the most telling thing was that episode of 'Rebels' where Ezra poses as an Imperial cadet. The first thing they do is start running them though an assault course designed to identify a force user within a group, just like the one from the "Obi Wan undercover with Cad Bane" arc in TCW.
One would think a midichlorian blood test would be a lot simpler, but perhaps that's not as clear an indicator as me might think.

 

[The Mighty Monkey of Mim]

@The Mighty Monkey of Mim So what's your thought on whether or not the movies should aim at remodeling the Jedi attitude towards love anyway?

As pointed out by others, it's really not about love or sex at all—although I do think consciously or unconsciously Lucas had some notions of Shaolin monks and chivalrous medieval knights and such flavoring his soup of ideas surrounding the Jedi—but rather attachment and possession. I think the idea was that if a Jedi is strongly attached to someone or something, his or her resulting fear of losing them can be a potential path to the Dark Side. And this is basically what Palpatine played on to lure Anakin down that path. Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, blah blah blah.

I really couldn't care less what they do with any of it from here, to be honest. I'll be charitable and say I'm content to wait and see.

I mean, it's what the thread is about. I don't see what Finn's potential desires have to do with any of this.

Hey, you opened that door with "Finn is completely out of question as it's so refreshing to finally see a true male-female friendship in a movie." Nobody brought it up apropos of nothing. And "we're so glad that there's finally a strong and complex female protagonist who is not defined by her relationship to a man"? We are? I would be, but there wasn't one. None of the characters in this were "strong and complex"! The actors all did great jobs (at least the new ones, the old farts not so much) but the characters—or should I say caricatures—were all pathetic, and not in the little-used positive sense of that word. Leia in ANH managed to come off as less defined by her relationships with men in spite of being unabashedly cast in the role of damsel-in-distress than Rey did despite all the hamfisted "see, she doesn't need to be rescued, she can take care of herself, look how hard we're trying here" slop in TFA, for crying out loud! I can't believe so many supposedly progressive-minded people have fallen hook, line and sinker for the gussied up sham of a cash grab this film was. No offense intended, just my (strong and accordingly sharply worded) opinion. Obviously you and many others disagree. Fair enough.

You're a mod, so if you're saying these particular aspects of your initial post are not fair game to comment on, I'll respect that and bow out right now, because I don't want a warning. In fact, I'll just do that anyway, as it's not like I haven't said more than enough already. Excuse the hell out of me, sorry.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Leia in ANH managed to come off as less defined by her relationships with men in spite of being unabashedly cast in the role of damsel-in-distress [...]

I wouldn't use the word "unabashedly."

Leia did some of the heavy-lifting in her own rescue literally right out of the gate, in blowing open the hole to the garbage chute immediately after the four were trapped in the cell bay. She was handy with a blaster when fighting troopers, and Leia was also the one who realized that the Falcon was being tracked and that their escape had been too easy. Plus, she was the spy that Vader had been looking for at the start of the film, who also hid the plans in R2 and got them out of Vader's reach. Pretty much at every stage she was the opposite of a damsel-in-distress. She was indeed a Princess in need of rescuing, but the original Star Wars was consciously deconstructing the damsel-in-distress trope at many junctures.

 

[Reverend]

Yeah, there's really just one point in the film where she's truly helpless. No, not the interrogation scene; she never breaks so she still has a measure of power. Nope, not the destruction of Alderaan either; still doesn't break. It's the third act space battle where all she does is stand around in Base One's control centre with the other rebel leaders, looking worried. And that's fine, she's done all she can to get the rebels this far and now it's just down to the pilots.

As for the Rey/Finn thing. My read was that it was first and foremost a friendship. They did leave the door to a future romance open, but just ever so slightly. I'm just speculating, but I'd say they chose to wait and gauge fan reaction before deciding which way to go with that in the next two movies. Personally, I'd prefer if they stay friends, a platonic M/F bond is a rare thing in cinema and was also one of my favourite things about 'Pacific Rim' but then I've never been much of a "shipper". I'm sure others have much stronger opinions and more power to them.

 

[Kor]

Rey has put Finn in the "friend zone" for sure.

She will have many passionate relationships and always come and complain to him about the problems, but all he will be able to do is nod and look concerned, even though he wants to be so much more to her.

Kor

 

[Guy Gardener]

TFA Visual Dictionary says "19-year-old Rey"

Rey is practically a sand person, who has been living in a stark box, by herself, not freezing by the light of a (space)propane every night, for maybe the last decade.

Depending on when she was lost or abandoned by her parents, I'd question whether she can read and write. Intense prolonged isolation has probably made this woman incapable of creating healthy attachments, romantic or otherwise. She is so starved for companionship, Rey thinks that droids are people.

Antisocial, depressed, arrested development.

 

[SPCTRE]

tangentially related - the issue of Jedi sex appeal

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[fireproof78]

Yoda described a very Buddhist style philosophy to Anakin. It seemed to me he was talking about attachments, which lead to bad things (jealousy, anger, etc.). That is a very Buddhist way of looking at the world. "The cause of all suffering is attachment".

Anakin also said that Jedi are encouraged to love. I took from that the Jedi love, but do not become attached.

As for the new trilogy...hmmm. I don't have strong wish for Rey one way or the other, as long as it seems organic and relevant to the story. It would be a shame to turn her into something she's not. On the other hand there's really no reason she couldn't have a relationship, if it's with a true partner.

I don't know...Anakin and Padme were kinda messed up. Han and Leia were great. So the record here is mixed.

At the end of the day, Rey finding romantic love is pretty low on my list of wishes for the rest of the trilogy.

JMHO

This sums up most of my feelings as well. I would rather the characters grow and develop and not be boxed in to a specific role for no other reason that "plot." I would rather see Rey, Poe and Finn grow as people than have to be in a relationship.

Secondarily, the PT Jedi had a rule of "no attachment." I think that that rule has gone by the wayside and Luke will reimagine it, as it is his love for his dad that ends up saving Anakin Skywalker, and, by extension, brings down the Empire. I would be curious to see what kind of teaching Luke actually adds to the Jedi Order in Episode VII.

 

[JD]

One of the things I'm curious about with EPVIII is how Luke trains Rey. It will be interesting to see how closely he sticks to the PT Jedi philosophies and methods and how much he does his own thing.

 

[Draculasaurus]

Just look where the Jedi were living. Obi-Wan lived out in the desert all by himself, but he also seemed to have a lot of knowledge about exactly how scummy Mos Eisley was, and how rough certain bars could get.
He was going into town to get at the honeys obviously. -but no love, just wham bam thank you ma'am like a good Jedi.
Yoda was some kind of swamp creature so he moved to Dagobah because he wanted to have sex with swamp monsters and whatever else. The monster that attacks R2-D2 was probably just leaving Yoda's house and was mad 'cause Yoda doesn't love her and just wants sex. Then Yoda shows up a few minutes later at Luke's campsite and he's all giddy and hungry.
The pieces all fit together.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Secondarily, the PT Jedi had a rule of "no attachment." I think that that rule has gone by the wayside and Luke will reimagine it, as it is his love for his dad that ends up saving Anakin Skywalker, and, by extension, brings down the Empire. I would be curious to see what kind of teaching Luke actually adds to the Jedi Order in Episode VII.

That's an excellent point. Luke's attachment to his father saved Anakin.

 

[Reverend]

^It wasn't attachment. He barely knew him.
It was compassion and faith that Anakin was still in there somewhere.

It was however his attachment to Han & Leia that nearly got him killed at Bespin, to say nothing of his brush with the dark side. Indeed, he fell for that one twice and the second time it nearly cost him everything. Both times though he was able to resist the pull and become calm and passive.

One of the things I'm curious about with EPVIII is how Luke trains Rey. It will be interesting to see how closely he sticks to the PT Jedi philosophies and methods and how much he does his own thing.

There's a question of just how much doctrine he was able to piece back together. No doubt the Emperor confiscated or destroyed every Jedi artefact he could get his hands on and had all accurate information of them purged from the holonet.
So whatever Luke would have been able to recover would have been fragmented at best.

That said, given Rey's age, he's probably going to take a similar streamlined approach that Kenobi and Yoda took with him. The key skills would seem to be control and serenity. Both of which Luke struggled with and I suspect Rey will be no different. Indeed her counter attack on Kylo was clearly fuelled by hate and Luke's going to need to help her deal with that.