Andor and the Art of And/Or
On material conditions vs. ethereal traditions vs. Imperial munitions.
Much of the magic of Star Wars comes from the collision between epic fantasy myth and prosaic material reality — the universe is as much forces and fates as it is greebles and gears. That these two sides of Star Wars can’t be cleanly reconciled creates an ongoing tension that powers much of what remains compelling about the universe decades later.
Andor — which is quite possibly my favorite Star Wars work after Empire Strikes Back — swings the lever nearly all the way to the material end, and it’s one of the great virtues of the show. “What do meetings between mid-level Imperial bureaucrats look like?” wasn’t a burning question for much of the fandom, but Andor’s concern with particulars and logistics has made Star Wars feel real in a way that it hasn’t since childhood.
In last week’s season finale I was seized by one detail in particular, from Nemik’s manifesto:
The Imperial need for control is so desperate because it is so unnatural. Tyranny requires constant effort. It breaks, it leaks. Authority is brittle. Oppression is the mask of fear. Remember that. And know this, the day will come when all these skirmishes and battles, these moments of defiance will have flooded the banks of the Empire's authority and then there will be one too many. One single thing will break the siege. Remember this. Try.
“Try.” Most concretely, Nemik’s injunction to try is based on the premise that the distributed nature of rebellion means small acts aggregate unpredictably. Waiting for certainty will lead to inaction, and Nemik intends for his manifesto to serve as a Schelling point to justify action in the face of a more coordinated power.
A comment I saw on Reddit also pointed out that the emphasis on the word “try” immediately calls to mind, and contradicts, Yoda’s famous instruction to Luke: “Do or do not, there is no try.” Does Nemik’s perspective represent a direct challenge to Yoda’s, and the Jedi more broadly? I think it’s a rich question with layers of consideration.
The total absence of the Jedi and force powers in Andor is one of its refreshing characteristics, though Austin Walker made the compelling observation that you still feel the presence of the Force anyway, most clearly during the deeply spiritual event, the Eye of Aldhani.
During the Eye we see the Force expressed as a universal aspect of nature, equally present the in stardust as in the crowd observing it. While there are admittedly large gaps in the depth of their experience, everyone in the crowd is awe struck, even imperial troops! The universality and accessiblity of spirituality here harmonizes perfectly with the show's more primary thematic emphasis on decentralized political power.
It's a marked contrast to the hard lines created by the Jedi’s restricted monastic order, or the franchise’s general emphasis on bloodlines (most egregiously with the addition of midochlorians). In particular, Luke’s arc is framed in mythical terms of fate and prophecy, like a fairy tale: a farmer who discovers he is really a prince, a chosen one.
The citizens of Ferrix have no such myth available. Their collective lore instead revolves around immediate concerns of solidarity, labor, and the literal materiality of brick — little to suggest they are fated for something greater, mystical, and predestined. Yoda’s insistence that Luke already has the force available to him, that he already has the tools to destroy Vader, is a privilege a guy like Brasso could never assume. Brasso acts on principle, and the actor’s wonderful performance conveys a heavy, weary understanding that any day could be his last, and that the safety of Ferrix is in no way guaranteed. If Nemik addressed Brasso as Yoda does Luke it would just be an insult, an insult to the plain fact that many on Ferrix will simply die and never see the better world. Luke, on the other hand, gets an awards ceremony and a smooch from the princess.
As a longtime Buddhist practitioner, I feel there’s much to unpack about Yoda’s worldview to fully understand its place in the philosophies of Star Wars. I’m mostly going to be critical of Yoda and Lucas here, but only because I think there is great potential to explore alternative expressions of spirituality in Star Wars, which I’ll return to at the end.
It’s actually kind of tricky to tease out Yoda’s philosophy, much less that of the Jedi, owing in large part to the '70s New Age sensibility that informs Lucas’ notion of spirituality. George Lucas grew up in Bay Area, like yours truly, and we both grew up with an omnivorous attitude towards religion.
GEORGE LUCAS: Well, you got to remember I am from California. I am from San Francisco, the Zen Buddhist capital of the United States. But at the same time… In my study of anthropology which is basically the study of different religions and different ways of thinking of things… you know, my kids asked me “What are we? What am I?” I said “Well, we’re Methodist Buddhists.” Which… and you discover in anthropology that, you know… there’s, which is… when I was about, I don’t know, seven years old, the age of my daughter, I asked my mother, “if there are so many different religions, why there is only one God?” And she couldn’t answer that, but if there is only one God, then you realize that the religions are the manifestation of man, or woman, humans, but the God is still there. It’s just we don’t know what it is, how it looks like, what it is, but one thing it has constantly done in all religions, is that God is love. (Source)
Lucas was also famously influenced by the work of Joseph Campbell, who emphasized the universal, shared aspects between myths and religions. This was an era of perennialism, and you see traces of this all over Star Wars: Jedi robes evoke both Christian hermits and Buddhist monks, in Andor the spirituality is an astral event everyone shares in, etc.
Lucas does cite Zen specifically, and Yoda certainly calls to mind the notorious archetype of the Zen monk as a trickster who pranks you into enlightnment. A Buddhist parable, courtesy of Ken McLeod’s superb book Wake Up To Your Life:
One day, a young monk asked to be taken across the river. As the ferryman rowed, he asked the monk a few questions about his training. At first the monk had little interest in talking with this obscure person. Yet the questions were probing and made the monk a little uneasy.
Who was this ferryman? For his part, the ferryman soon determined that the young monk showed promise. In the middle of the river, he asked the monk, “What is your mind?” “Mind is no thing,” said the monk, “infinite like the sky, it has no center or perimeter, and is beyond coming and going, birth or death, many or one.” “Hmph,” grunted the ferryman, “fine words. Now tell me, what is your mind?” Before the monk could answer, the ferryman tipped over the boat. The monk thrashed his way to the surface spluttering with shock and rage. “What are you doing? We’re in the middle of the river! What kind of crazy ferryman are you?”
The ferryman calmly lifted up an oar and brought it crashing down on the poor monk’s head. “What is your mind?” the ferryman demanded as he pushed the monk under the water. This time, when the monk rose to the surface, his face was clear and radiant. He had seen into the nature of mind. Flooded with the clarity of original mind, he silently bowed his head to the ferryman. “Now I have repaid the kindness of my teacher,” said the ferryman, and he slipped beneath the waters and drowned.
That’s a Yoda. On to the critical scene in Empire. During his training lifting rocks, Luke discovers his ship has sunk into the swamp:
LUKE: Oh, no. We’ll never get it out now.
YODA: So certain are you. Always with you it cannot be done. Hear you nothing that I say?
LUKE: Master, moving stones around is one thing. This is totally different.
YODA: No, no different! Only different in your mind. You must unlearn what you have learned.
LUKE: Alright, I’ll give it a try.
YODA: No! Try not. Do or do not. There is no try.
Luke proceeds to fail, and Yoda’s subsequent practice instructions are to “feel the force” that exists between the rocks and the trees. Later, Yoda barks, “Control, control, you must learn control!” And in their final exchange, Yoda insists that Luke has received all the instruction he needs. We don’t see too much else in the way of instruction or philosophy. What are we to make of the spiritual practice going on here?
The best-seller Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance derives its name from the lesser-known Zen in the Art of Archery (1948), in which German philosopher Eugen Herrigel offers an account of his time studying Zen by way of Japanese Kyūdō archery, under the master Awa Kenzô. Herrigel's account introduced Zen to many Western audiences for the first time and we still live with the remnants of his characterization. Consider this exchange, lightly abbreviated from the original text:
The Master exclaimed to Herrigel, “Don’t think of what you have to do, don’t consider how to carry it out! You mustn’t open the right hand on purpose,” to which Herrigel replied, “I understand well enough that the hand mustn’t be opened with a jerk if the shot is not to be spoiled. But however I set about it, it always goes wrong.”
“You must hold the drawn bowstring like a little child holding the proffered finger. It grips it so firmly that one marvels at the strength of the tiny fist. And when it lets the finger go, there is not the slightest jerk. Do you know why? Because a child doesn’t think.”
“When I have drawn the bow, the moment comes when I feel: unless the shot comes at once I shan’t be able to endure the tension. And what happens then? Merely that I get out of breath.”
“Do you know why you cannot wait for the shot and why you get out of breath before it has come? The right shot at the right moment does not come because you do not let go of yourself. You do not wait for fulfillment, but brace yourself for failure.”
Herrigel struggles to internalize his lessons and the master Awa takes the bow for a night time demonstration:
The training hall was brightly lit. The master instructed Herrigel to place a long thin stick of incense in the ground front of the target but to not turn on the light in the target-stand. The Master’s first arrow flew from brilliant light into pitch blackness. Herrigel could tell from the explosive sound that it was a hit. The second arrow also hit the target. When Herrigel switched on the light in the target stand, he was dumbfounded to see that the first arrow was in the center of the black and that the second arrow had splintered the nock of the first arrow, plowed through the shaft, and was embedded in the black right next to it.
The Master surveyed the arrows critically and then said, “The first shot was no great feat, you will think, because after all these years I am so familiar with my target-stand that I must know even in pitch darkness where the target is. That may be, and I won’t try to pretend otherwise. But the second arrow which hit the first—what do you make of that? I at any rate know that it is not ‘I’ who must be given credit for this shot. ‘It’ shot and ‘It’ made the hit. Let us bow to the goal as before the Buddha!”
This sequence is the centerpiece of Herrigel’s book, as is this notion of an impersonal "It" that Awa merely channels. Beyond a generic sense of “tapping into the Force” present here, the specifics mirror two critical scenes in Star Wars: the aforementioned Dagobah training where Luke abandons hope in raising his ship only for Yoda to demonstrate the impossible, and also Luke’s initial breakthrough with the Force in A New Hope wherein he disables his sensors during the Death Star run and trusts the force to guide his shots.
At first blush, it would seem Star Wars successfully conveys these awesome spiritual acts, but an understanding of the historical context behind Herrigel’s work makes this a complicated conclusion. Some notes on the credibility of this scene as a portrayal of Zen spirituality, drawn heavily from Shoji Yamada’s excellent re-examination of Herrigel, titled Shots in the Dark:
When asked later about this incident Master Awa, on mulitiple occasions, denied its significance: “No, that was just a coincidence! I had no special intention of demonstrating such a thing.” In another exchange: “You know, sometimes really strange things happen. That was a coincidence.” In fact, it can be considered shameful to break an arrow like this, and Awa may have even been disappointed to have done so.
Most of Herrigel’s time with Awa depended on a translator, Komachiya, who was not present for this incident and hardly believed it, writing Herrigel a letter asking, “Did you really see that? Did you just think it up, or did you write your essay to make it appear that is what master Awa actually said?”
Komachiya, for his part, had a habit of mistranslating Awa due to the incoherence of Awa’s philosophy: “For that matter, in those days, there were many occasions when Awa would say something that seemed to contradict what he had taught previously. At such times, I did not interpret for Herrigel but remained silent. When I did that, Herrigel would think it strange. He would insistently ask me about what Awa had just said, which left me feeling completely flummoxed. (..) In effect, as Awa expounded on the spirit of archery he would become spontaneously excited, and, wanting desperately to express his feelings he would use various Zen terms. Even today I think that both Awa and Herrigel knowingly let me get away with my translation strategy of ‘sitting on and smothering’ [difficult sentences].”
Yamada can find no evidence of the “It shoots” teaching in Japanese kyūjutsu archery, not in any of its six-hundred year history — not even among any of Awa’s other students!
Awa never spent time at a Zen temple, never studied under a Zen master, and much of what he says contradicts Zen teachings. And for that matter, he was even an outsider from the kyūjutsu archery community, with tales of people throwing rocks at him when he visited traditional kyūjutsu locations.
Instead, Awa appears to be a solo entrepreneur of sorts, pioneering his own idiosyncratic form of spiritual archery likely inspired by the success of judo, which had been created during Awa’s lifetime by a single founder seeking to break from traditional jujutsu.
Why, then was Herrigel so certain that his experience was an authentic expression of Zen teaching? As is typical of Western writers of the time, much of Herrigel’s understanding of Zen seems to come from the Japanese writer D.T. Suzuki. Herrigel:
In his Essays in Zen-Buddhism, D.T. Suzuki has succeeded in showing that Japanese culture and Zen are intimately connected and that Japanese art, the spiritual attitude of the Samurai, the Japanese way of life, the moral, aesthetic, and to a certain extent even the intellectual life of the Japanese owe their peculiarities to this background of Zen and cannot be properly understood by anybody not acquainted with it.
This premise — that all of Japanese culture is inflected with Zen — is problematic to the say the least, but I don’t want to drift farther from Star Wars than I already have. For now I’ll just note that D.T. Suzuki was not a Zen master or even a particularly committed Zen practitoner, despite being one of its most vocal popularizers in the West. Suzuki was much more commited to political and cultural projects, frequently wielding Zen to advance Japanese nationalism more than any spiritual aims.
Further, many of these supposedly Zen concepts are largely projections of western premises originating in movements like Romanticism or Christian asceticism. Herrigel:
By [visiting Japan] I had the hope and welcomed the idea of making contact with “living” Buddhism, and that thereby I might come to understand in somewhat more detail the essence of so-called “detachment,” which Meister Eckhart had so praised but yet had not shown the way to reach.
Herrigel again, offering his general understanding of Zen:
I mean Dhyana Buddhism, which is known in Japan as “Zen” and is not speculation at all but immediate experience of what, as the bottomless ground of Being, cannot be apprehended by intellectual means, and cannot be conceived or interpreted even after the most unequivocal and incontestable experiences: one knows it by not knowing it.
A peer of Herrigel’s once quipped, “[It] would be a problem for him if Zen were to be clearly explained. Zen must remain ambiguous. That’s because Herrigel is trying to take advantage of that ambiguousness. Do you understand?”
On Dagobah, Luke asks Yoda how he’ll know the good side from the bad and Yoda replies, “You will know when you are calm, at peace, passive.” Where does this sort of passive, non-intellectual approach to ethics lead you? Well, for Herrigel, after returning from Japan to his native Germany, he joined the Nazi party, benefitted from an attendant rise in academic power, and remained a staunch member until the very end.
And what did this stance mean for guys like Obi-Wan and Yoda? Isolation and inaction in the face of ever-expanding Imperial control. The prequels really made a mess out of Yoda’s decisions, given his prior role as a political leader and even a military general. In that light it seems hard to justify Yoda’s withdrawal from the conflict. At best one could argue that Yoda knew the only viable solution would be to wait around until the chosen one arrived, and that anything less would be fruitless, but here’s where we return to the dissonnance with the ordinary citizens on Ferrix, who had plenty of immediate, direct action available to them despite having none of Yoda’s established power.
In sum, the Yoda we see reads like the confused product of a decidedly modern, Western, and projected understanding of Eastern spirituality. I’m being harsh to make a point, and in truth I feel that many, including myself, have benefitted tremendously from the Buddhist Modernist projects that encouraged this. It’s also not a total fabrication that Zen contains teachings of nonaction or nonthought, though they’re likely more rooted in pre-Buddhist Taoism than the teachings of Siddhartha Gautama. But like ancient religions and modernism more broadly, it’s been clear for a while that the world needs fresh alternatives.
This is not to say that the only good option puts Yoda on the streets of Ferrix. I actually feel there’s a substantive case to be made for political inaction. Here’s one of my favorite Buddhist teachers, Ken McLeod, in a recent interview with Michael Taft:
MICHAEL: Do you find that as you’re writing about Vajrayana, you’re finding it relevant to what’s going on currently?
KEN: For better or worse, how I practice on a personal level is quite different from politics, and basically the general functioning of society. It’s intensely personal, and the book I’ve written is intensely personal. My teacher lived in the far east of Tibet, so far east that I’m not clear whether it was part of China or part of Tibet, back in the day.
MICHAEL: This is Kalu Rinpoche?
KEN: This is Kalu Rinpoche, yes. And when he left Tibet, he had heard rumors about the first World War. He hadn’t heard a thing about the second World War.
MICHAEL: Wow.
KEN: And the same is true of some monks at a monastery in the Sinai peninsula. After the Six-Day War in 1967 — when Israel temporarily took over the Sinai peninsula — that monastery, which was at the foot of Mount Sinai, was obviously an important pilgrimage place for people in Israel, and they flocked to it. And the monks were completely bewildered. They had not heard, they didn’t know what country they were in, they didn’t know that there’d been any wars, either the first or the second. And I find these things actually interesting because they give you a different perspective on things that we take so seriously.
Coming immediately off of Andor, Ken’s remarks might sound as hollow as Yoda’s, but I think any honest appraisal has to admit that political and material conditions are only loosely coupled to spiritual profundity. This is evidenced by the long history of asceticism in many world religions, as well as the profusion of spiritual experiences found in places like prisons or even concentration camps. This loose coupling is also made clear by the observable dearth of meaning in the lives of the extremely wealthy and powerful. Many Buddhist practices attend directly to this fact, focusing on aspects of our experience that seem conditionless, that follow us regardless of our wealth and health. I would kill to see a portrayal of the Force that allows for a spiritual life that lives laterally to the Rebel–Empire dichotomy, that swings the lever as far towards mythic as Andor does for the material.
But I would also stress that it doesn’t have to be material “or” spiritual — ANDor, not AndOR. If Luthen turns out to be a force user, as heavily theorized, we’ll have a fantastic contribution to the halls of the Jedi (or Sith!?), an exemplar of the politically engaged Buddhist, of which there is a long tradition. I'd even be excited to learn more about the trad-Cath Chandrilan practices introduced in Andor, if the showrunners were interested in more than strict critique (though I'd happily watch that too).
Looking beyond Andor, Star Wars has plenty of other jumping off points to explore alternative models of spirituality. The prequel era could be seen as a cautionary tale about a spiritual order overextending into realms of material concern, and Qui-Gon Jinn’s complicated relationship with the Jedi could be a wonderful avenue for exploring that. The witches of Dathomir are a dramatic departure from the straightlaced practices of the Jedi — the Varjyana of the galaxy perhaps?
I’m somewhat cynical that the people in creative control of Star Wars have the relationship with spirituality needed to pull this off, but I would’ve never predicted we’d get as serious a treatment of Star Wars politics as Andor has given us, so I’ll leave the door open for a new hope (sorry).