The Yoga of Doctor Orient

This is the first of what will probably be a number of posts about Owen Orient, the main character of a series of occult novels written by Frank Lauria, starting in 1970’s Doctor Orient.  Over the course of eight books (or at least the 5 ½ that I’ve read so far) Orient struggles against a variety of supernatural evils, various gangsters, and the Central Intelligence Agency, aka Computer Integrated Assassins.  The tools at his disposal are wide and varied- the ability to invoke angels; telepathy; and both kundalini and tantric yoga.  It’s that last part that first caught my interest, because there aren’t a lot of books with leads who use yoga to fight evil.

Like The Shadow, The Green Lama, Doctor Strange, and Batman, Owen Orient spent a number of years in Tibet learning esoteric arts under the tutelage of a wise master in the mountains.  This is certainly where he learned his yoga, and perhaps telepathy as well.  This teacher was Ku, leader of the Nine Unknown Men who are the secret masters of the League of Serene Thought.  We don’t get a lot of information about Ku, other than when he sent his student Owen back into the world he left him with a gift- a cigarette lighter with a mandala to help Owen focus.  Turns out Himalayan mystics like to smoke (more on that later).

Orient's 1920 Rolls Royce; not everyone gets the Batmobile

At first glance Owen Orient is a model of yogic abstemiousness.  He eats a strict vegetarian diet, practices asana and meditation daily.  In his own way Orient has committed to bhakti yoga, the yoga of service, by working to bring universal harmony to the world by spreading the art of telepathy.  On the other hand, Orient pokes around the edges of this puritanical lifestyle in a way that is distinctly tantric.  He may refrain from meat, but he does occasionally drink.  Orient smokes hand rolled cigarettes that are usually tobacco, but sometimes have a certain green herb scent to them.  He’s uncommonly attached to his restored 1920 Rolls Royce Ghost limousine.  Orient follows the tantric version of brahmacharya, following a path of subtle restraint in sexual relationships rather than chastity; that is, unless he has lost his senses inside a tantric dakini (books #3 & #4) or is snorting back rails of cocaine while locked naked in a bedroom with his boss’s wife for a weekend (book #5).  In one encounter Orient mentally weighs his commitment to ahimsa against the consequences of inaction, just before smashing someone’s trachea with a rusty pipe (book #6).  If tantra means straying from the classical path and embracing a non-dualistic worldview, then Owen Orient is quite the tantric yogi.

The two worlds of Doctor Orient- sometimes you meditate, sometimes you do cocaine off a semi-naked woman

Being a tantric yogi myself, I’m fascinated by what this outlook and lifestyle in the hero of an occult detective action series. What really catches me about Orient’s outlook is how closely it is informed by the same yoga as me in some ways, yet how widely it strays from my own in others.  People ask all the time what I get out of yoga- flexibility, nice ass, a better golf game, killer moves in the sack.  Sure, I have all of those, but that’s not the main lesson I’ve taken away from the last six years of yoga practice.  What I have learned from tantra yoga is santosha, or radical acceptance, and non-attachment to goals.  For me that means accepting I cannot on my own make the world a better place.  To think that is hubris.  What I can do is through my own practice help the best parts of me emerge, and hope that version of me will be reflected in the people I encounter every day- at least until it’s time for me to go full Vanaprastha and retire to a cabin in the forest.

Owen Orient, on the other hand, has never fully grasped this message.  He sincerely believes that being able to share his practices of telepathy and esoteric yoga will make the world a better place.  In pursuing this goal Orient loses friends, loses fortunes, sleeps with the wrong women, is nearly killed numerous times, has his heart broken and his house burned down, and ultimately becomes hunted by the CIA.  Attachment to goals is Orient every day, and he suffers for it continuously.  

More on Doctor Orient in the future.

First Earth Battalion, the Real Men Who Stare at Goats

As it turns out, there really were men who stared at goats. 

Great WIRED article the explores how much of The Men Who Stare at Goats gets right about the First Earth Battalion. 

Pacifist Gaming in Grand Theft Auto

I've done very little blogging of any type for the last year or so, but when I stumbled across an article from Vice on pacifist gaming, of all things, Grand Theft Auto, I had to place a link here.  I haven't played Grand Theft Auto since I tried to get GTA 3 to play on a computer that was not nearly up to processing demands of the game, but it's hard to imagine this working well.  My own pacifist gaming has taken a pause after I finished Alpha Protocol, and took what turned out to be a very long pause in Deus Ex.  Stupid job, always getting in the way of good gaming!

Pacifist Run- Alpha Protocol

Recently I’ve had an urge to go into my video gaming with an eye towards ahimsa, finding ways through games without leaving a trail of bodies behind me.  It’s one thing to play a game like Arkham Asylum without killing anyone- technically the game doesn’t let you kill opponents, and even when you knock a thug off of a cliff or tower Batman is able to tie them up so they swing helplessly rather than drop to their death.  Playing games where killing is not only possible but in many cases expected presents a whole different challenge.  This is certainly not possible in many games, but a few role-playing and action games / series do make this a possibility- for example Deus Ex, Dishonored, Fallout, and one of my favorites, the “espionage role-playing game” Alpha Protocol.

I ran through Alpha Protocol as a “technical pacifist”- certainly ready to crack a few heads, but trying at all times to avoid killing my opponents.  This is actually quite fun in Alpha Protocol.  The game gives you lots of ways to avoid needless bloodshed, from talking your way through or out of fights, to a wide range of non-lethal combat options.  There are a large number of end-mission “bosses” to be fought, and after questioning them you are always given the option of execute or (as I chose) spare.  The clever game design rewards you for consistent game play, and by consistently sneaking around, bypassing foes, and doing non-lethal takedowns you are given a number of perks that make your character even stronger.

Sometimes a headbutt is a useful negotiating tool.

My original plan was to play with a style that was very close to Emile Antoon Khadahji, aka The Man Who Never Missed from the Matador series, relying primarily on tranq darts to subdue opponents with occasional use of hand to hand combat.  By bumping up my pistol skill I could potentially slow time to take careful aim and merrily leave a slew of slumbering foes in my wake. 

The plan didn’t last particularly long, as there are by my count there are less than 200 tranq darts available in the game.  I found myself conserving my darts, and instead went for sneaking up behind my enemies and putting them in choke holds until they passed out.  Alpha Protocol lets you build an impressive ninja-style character, eventually allowing you to become invisible for 20 seconds (or more depending on perks) at a time.  One of the most fun parts of the game was opportunities to turn invisible right before entering a room full of enemies, then silently putting the Vulcan nerve pinch on a half dozen before you became visible again.  Unfortunately because the duration does occasionally run out, and there are long cooldown times for powers, I did get stuck in situations pretty regularly where I had to just start laying out punches, kicks, and headbutts.  Tactically not the best, but it was lots of fun and the animations on hand-to-hand combat were great.  Coming out of invisibility at unfortunate times also got me in the habit of tossing around flashbang grenades and “shock traps” (think area-of-effect tasers) as a backup strategy.

Skilled in the arts of Tai Kwan Leap.

I did carry an assault rifle with me, and used it primarily for taking out automated machine guns that are in some sections of the game.  I had to use it on human targets a couple times.  The first was against a particularly annoying foe (Sean Darcy) who isolates himself in a tower without doors, using a sniper rifle and an unlimited supply of grenades (which he tosses three at a time) to make life miserable.  Look up any in-depth reviews of Alpha Protocol and you’ll see this is the most hated part of the game.  I had to use my assault rifle and blast past all of the body armor my foe wore using armor piercing bullets, but eventually got to a place where some solid shots with tranq darts took him out.  I regretted using up all of those armor piercing bullets moments later when a Blackhawk helicopter with a rocket launcher showed up, and once again I had to resort to the assault rifle (and a few conveniently placed rocket launchers) to take it down- apparently with the pilot surviving the crash.  Both of these happened in the last 30 minutes of the game, an odd choice in a game that until then rewarded subtlety and stealth. 

So how did my pacifist run work?  Alpha Protocol keeps track in exacting detail the number of enemies defeated, weapons used, and impact of defeating these foes on the world around you.  I did have one foe killed during an early mission.  I was sneaking into an airfield and came under fire from a machine gunner in a guard tower.  More guards came running as I took cover behind a truck and threw shock traps at anyone in range.  The truck caught on fire, and as I jumped away it blew up, taking out one of the guards as collateral damage in the explosion.  Fatality total- 1 killed by collateral damage, leaving behind three orphans.  And the non-lethal style?  34 enemies knocked unconscious by stun traps, 36 by tranq darts, and 462 knocked out in hand-to-hand, racking up over $1 million in medical bills! 

However as the credits rolled to the sounds of newscasters describing the world my actions built I also learned that by sparing the life of a terrorist leader earlier in the game he later killed hundreds in a series of West Bank bombings.  Here Alpha Protocol throws in your face the conundrum of global politics.  Do you spare the lives of terrorists and show them mercy?  What happens if they turn around and go back to the warpath?  Ahimsa, you are a tricky fellow.

Game Church; or, Ahimsa, Motherfraker!

I’ve tended to blog more about yoga than gaming here.  Okay, I admit it, I tend not to blog at all.  Hey, y’all must have liked that funny cartoon from a few days ago, right?

Anyway, I found a neat gamer page called Game Church, which takes a look at computer and console gaming from a Christian point of view.  There’s some good stuff on mercy and pacifism in gaming, or as my level 10 dual-wielding fighter with delusions of sainthood likes to say “Ahimsa, Motherfraker!”

For example:

What Would Jesus Play? 

Pacifism in World of Warcraft

Pacifism in Skyrim

The Man Who Never Missed In the Streets of Syria

In Steve Perry’s Matador series, Emile Antoon Khadaji kicks off an interstellar rebellion against a corrupt government using nothing but non-lethal weaponry (primarily a fancy dart gun with poison that paralyzes victims for six months) and his mighty Zen kung fu skills.  He becomes The Man Who Never Missed, waging a one man war on a single planet, incapacitating close to 2400 troops without creating one fatal casualty.  The plan all along is for Khadaji to inspire revolutionaries to go out and topple the “Confed”, and soon enough his name cried out in street battles and uprising across a dozen star systems.

But all along Khadaji has fought with a worldview that holds life precious- ahimsa, anyone?  He carries the weight of robbing thousands of people of a half year of their lives as some kind of karmic debt that he can barely hope to repay.  As the blood starts flowing in the streets during the uprising he uses his resources to ship the kinds of non-lethal weapons he had used to revolutionaries everywhere.  Crates of dart guns, tranquilizer darts, and gas grenades that cause immediate vomiting and diarrhea start showing up at every hot spot.  Khadaji knows that not everyone will accept these non-lethal approaches, but he can at least offer those he inspired the option to overthrow the Confed without tumbling down a karmic sinkhole.  Overthrowing a violent government leaving behind no bodies, just sleepy soldiers with messy pants?  What a great notion.

What you see above, however, is the reality of street warfare, specifically Aleppo in the middle of the Syrian Civil War.  Could all these noble concepts of non-lethal rebellion possibly work in a real life situation?  Every day in the news lately there has been discussion of new US Secretary of State John Kerry’s decision to send non-lethal aid, meaning food and medical supplies, to the Free Syrian Army.  His fear, quite justified, is that any advanced weaponry sent may end up in the hands of al-Qaida elements of the Syrian revolution.  But what if the United States airdropped literally hundreds of tons of non-lethal weaponry into the Free Syrian Army zones?  Would a mountain of tasers, tranq darts, tear gas, stingball grenades, (dubiously non-lethal) rubber bullets, bean bag shotgun shells, flash-bangs, and a hundred thousand flex cuffs make a difference in an environment like this?