Zen Beyond Disco Elysium’s Pale

Blanket Theory

Spoiler alert: While the material is not, per se, central to the main plot thread, this post discusses Zen and how it relates to some of the hidden aspects of the world built for the ZA/UM game Disco Elysium. Information about the Pale and certain other themes is presented as occasional in-game rewards though, so a note of caution is advised if you are still going to play it.

Kim Kitsuragi: Detective, each of us has our part to play in the world. My part is to solve crimes. I am under no illusion that my role isn’t a minor one … but I embrace it because it’s my role.

An unquiet mind

Disco Elysium on its surface is a dysfunctional buddy cop adventure in a world eerily like our own. Using a memory loss conceit to place the head character, let’s call him the detective, in a newly unfamiliar world, we are invited to help reconstruct his life and world from the ground up.

The game has strong philosophical/political undercurrents, perhaps these are the undercurrents. The detective is different in that apparently all his mental faculties have trains of thought and personalities all of their own. They appear in order to offer scathing comments and (often poor) advice to the detective. Sometimes their intuitions are insightful. Listen to the limbic system, whispering from the murky depths of human emotion:.

Limbic System: It was *him*. *He* is the infernal engine. He never stops. He only gets worse.

This striking inner world is coupled with strong and engrossing world building, bringing us the Communism of Kraz Mazov with revolutionaries experimenting to see whether their fervour can allow them to mentally bend or suspend the laws of physics.

The focus of this post, the Pale, is kept mostly shrouded throughout the early parts of the game. Some character builds might even not encounter any substantial, coherent information about it.

One of the sources of tension in the game is having to learn a new geography and history from scratch. New peoples, cities, political systems pieced together mostly through in-game dialogue while desperately trying not to reveal how severely broken the detective’s brain is.

The world is divided up into isolas sometimes explored, sometimes colonized and sometimes oppressed by foreign powers. It seems from the outset that we might be dealing with continents or a planet-scale archipelago. This perception is encouraged throughout the early game to cultivate the weirdness and wonder. One character, Joyce Messier, serves partly as the detective’s informant in matters of reality.

Joyce Messier: The pale is the most dominant geological feature of the world, detective — the separative tissue between the isolas. It is the interisolary mass.

Slowly you learn nothing about the Pale because the Pale is nothing. Information can only be inferred about it from nearby somethingness like matter interacting with it. It is also not uniformly nothing.

Travellers entering the Pale would not immediately notice it, but there would be a progressive subtraction or suspension of properties: material, epistemological, linguistic and “numbers” (does this imply higher mathematical constructs go first?). At the numbers barrier, as the name suggests, numbers stop working. No-one has ever passed this last barrier, has this even been reached by humans or only with instruments?

Zen consciousness, Zen humanity

Apart from the intriguing creepiness of an abyss of nothing eating at the boundaries of fragile reality, I like the concept of the Pale because reminds me of Zen meditation. I’m serious though, there is something subtractive about Zen meditation too, just, if you try to drive the subtraction, it becomes an addition. Problematically, the thing added is actually the same as what is left in a real sense, so what exactly are you dropping rather than something else? Why does what remains remain? The Pale is something analogous to this process, subtraction from reality and, at least in my experience, certain things tend to go first, then second, and so on.

Some of this seems a bit arbitrary. What goes, what is left behind, when does what leave. I think that this is that Zen teachings actually fall into two categories (I fully expect a hit from the thwack-stick for this):

  • Teachings about absolute reality, about the general nature of consciousness. These apply universally, like suchness (the essential unique experience associated with something in your thought, keeping in mind that is all you can ever experience *thwack*). This applies to any conscious being, in an absolute sense. It is not possible for a conscious being to not have such experiences. It is what they are in the most real sense. This is the part of Zen experience I feel is unlikely to be accessible scientifically. Certainly the neural correlates of consciousness are worth pursuing, but the raw experience is a thing unto itself.
  • Teaching about cultivating, experiencing and living Zen and the consequences, being humans, of insight into the absolute teachings. Let me emphasize, this is about Zen as a human. Here neuroscience and other medical fields may be helpful in illuminating matters. Causality exists (this is related to why the neural correlates of consciousness are also worth pursuing), Zen doesn’t deny this (although it has observations about the continuity of our moment-to-moment awareness). Does this mean I think the Zen experience has causal consequences? Yes. I cannot explain this yet, apart from pointing out this is related to the hard problem of consciousness as formulated by some philosophers. So, I am not alone. But then, even without thinking about Zen, we take for granted the causality between thought and action.

But, the most important teaching is unlisted. It is always unlisted. The teaching that goes beyond these imperfect words, the teaching of the world as it is:

Volition: No. This is somewhere to be. This is all you have, but it’s still something. Streets and sodium lights. The sky, the world. You’re still alive.

This teaching is everything. It is a dropped flower, a gong struck. But I cannot write about it in a conventional way, so we content ourselves with examples of the first two types of teaching.

For teachings about absolute nature, you might hear talk about emptiness and form. These aren’t arbitrary, in the sense that they are well crafted, pointing to a reality beyond ordinary experience, and yet simply this experience we are having.

On the other hand, for human focussed teaching, you might hear teachings about breathing and posture, about the actions of Zen masters like hitting their students with grandmotherly compassion. These are all in the realm of encouraging the experience, and then understanding its consequences (which is also a teaching aid). These consequences differ markedly from practitioner to practitioner, but are not really arbitrary. A human experiencing great compassion reacts in a personal way, but there are still some similarities between our brains and other physiology that shape probable actions. Jumping three stories up is not possible for humans, and neither is being callous while expressing their enlightened nature fully (I guess this is by definition? No true Scots Zen master). Non-attachment and compassion help Zen masters act ethically. But, for all of us (sometimes even for Zen masters?):

Empathy: The tiny apes are doing all they can to be better. It’s not their fault.

Zen masters can make mistakes, they are human and certainly fallible.

Of the tiny apes, take the example of the detective. He is a conscious being, in an absolute sense, but has a very specific dynamic in his consciousness (his human particularities). Fundamentally, as a conscious being, he too is enlightened. But, I wonder, with his various internal dialogues, how would he react to zazen? Perhaps the voices would quieten down. Perhaps they would shout him out of any focus he might have. And yet, he is enlightened. Beyond his inherent Practice, what should his practice be? No, don’t say drink, I know it’s tempting but that’s not the kind of emptying we are talking about. Perhaps walking the beachfront, collecting bottles with his full being, just so, might be the thing. I am being serious, even the most menial seeming work can be a thing of beauty, assuming you are treated with dignity. This is also one of the reasons why Zen is so appealing to me, equality is built in, not tacked on. Zen demands the impossible, save all sentient beings, yet you are already equipped for the impossible:

Volition: You can do it. It’s nothing. Do it for the city. Go.
Shivers: Do it for the wind.
Logic: Do it for the picture puzzle. Put it all together. Solve the world. One conversation at a time.

Wow, what a digression, do I get a t-shirt? But in all seriousness, there is a point. The seeming arbitrariness of what gets dropped first from our consciousness during meditation is a function of our individual makeup. Indeed, zazen performed in one way might “not work” for you, you may have to adapt it (some suggestions exist for common conditions). Please note I think it is exceedingly unlikely that (adapted) zazen would not work for you, get in touch with a Zen teacher if you struggle with your practice.

Don’t be worried though, you cannot not be enlightened, experiencing it fully is just a matter of seeing your current reality just so. That is something you are already equipped to figure out, and one of your clues is exactly this truth, why can I say with certainty you are equipped? Hint: It is an absolute, not just human.

Traveling without moving

The isolas are actually regions of matter surrounded by Pale, and travel between them involves having to set off from one isola steering yourself just so so that you pass in a straight line to another isola, because eventually steering no longer works. No nearby isola straight ahead? You are lost to the Pale.

Joyce Messier: Hybrid airships, detective. Conventional rotors or jet engines no longer add velocity after the point of reference for motion is suspended — once you’ve crossed from near pale to far pale…

In Disco Elysium, two means of dropping off the self are shown. One is in the detective’s habit of drinking himself into the oblivion he seeks, free from his past. The other is due to the effects of the Pale.

What I want to write about is this second gradual dropping off. Being subtracted out of existence itself. What is a source of horror or fascination or wonder in Disco Elysium is reminiscent of Zen meditation (zazen) when you think about it (with a very important caveat, please see the commentary).

I am suggesting that we could read people’s reactions to the Pale (fear, curiousity, wonder and surrender) as running parallel to the process people run through when encountering Zen (suspicion, curiousity, wonder and enlightenment). Call these my four “ox-herding pictures”. Yes, I did draw these in crayon, poorly, thanks for asking *winks*

Important: This is meant to be a light-hearted and deeply flawed comparison, please fetch your popcorn. Just keep in mind Zazen is, in fact, not a hungry unvapour that disassembles reality. Zazen is a gentle letting go by letting that which goes, go of its own accord. Or stay, if it wants to! The Pale compels and violates by forced negation. Zen is letting things be what they are in the meadow of your mind, they just happen to sometimes wander out of sight (where did they go?), or wander back, or are seen for the first time (where were they?). Now, I hope you have the popcorn ready, let the Zen begin!

Blanket Theory: It is said people go there to lose themselves. They come back changed, seeing the world with new eyes that are still their own.

The Pale certainly causes a sense of dread. Stories of lost souls receding into the nothing. It is the fear of annihilation. The fear of the slowly expanding front of hungry nothingness. The fear of being consumed. The fear of losing ourselves and never returning.

So it isn’t too surprising that you find people hostile to Buddhism or even Zen in particular (because of its minimalist tendencies). There is talk of nihilism, that you lose yourself and can never return. There is fear that meditation is somehow narcissistic or solipsistic, because it involves deep self inquiry. There is a fear it is atheistic (noting emptiness) or a fear that it is theistic (noting Buddha). People’s own worlds are often fortresses beset by the other, other worlds.

Some try Zen meditation but have difficulty letting go. It can also be difficult letting go of trying to let it go. The thought of becoming less is frightening. The irony is, in letting go, you lose nothing. And what you had becomes a treasure.

Joyce Messier: The nations who colonized this isola called theirs Mundi. The World … That there would be something more was a gamble. Akin to another world — or life after death.

But the curious ones listening to the stories have also heard other things, things that spark fascination. The Pale. Emptiness. Suchness. Revachol. A frontier that challenges all we can perceive and know in the world, even our own minds. Whispers of another side of strange beauty, and those ordinary mortals who have made their way there. They return as they were, yet changed. What is it they know? Can it be retold?

The curious ones begin to study the terrainless terrain they mean to navigate. Previous navigators have left maps and instruments pointing skillfully in the direction they need to go, passing beyond the Pale just so. But the exploration is theirs to make.

The voyage begins haphazardly. Trying to make their vessels do what they want them to do. Nevertheless, they hear something, a slight quiet. The quiet is elusive, but gets more assertive as the voyage progresses.

Stillness as the layers on top of the world drop away one by one. The curious ones have learned that the world quietens itself as the voyage continues. Even layers that they considered part of themselves are sloughed off. Themselves sloughing off. Sloughing off itself, sloughing off. What is left?

They come to an indescribable barrier that is no barrier. Passing through, they return to the world and the world is alive. And yet, nothing has changed.

Before enlightenment; chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment; chop wood, carry water – Zen koan

—

Joyce Messier: “But they could not. They were sane and conscious, as islands began to appear on the horizon… There are 78,000 uninhabited islands in the Insulindian archipelago, officer. The freckled face of god,” she smiles.

You may be surprised afterwards by what dropped off though, especially aspects of yourself you usually see as constant. That can unnerve people, but those aspects of you simply come back, don’t be too concerned. The way you see them and yourself, how they are related to, that changes. They are yourself, and you are them, and everything is still what it is. And yet, below all that, nothing has changed. It is all the same activity, funny shaped clouds against a clear blue sky.

Perhaps we return to Revachol. Perhaps we walk through the doors of the Whirling-in-Rags, a sullen karaoke machine sitting on a table. A boombox is playing “Smallest Church in Saint-Saëns” as a handful of the clientele think forward, for once, to better days. Garte the manager stares warily as the detective enters with a smile on his face. Not The Expession, though not the absence of it either. The lieutenant follows with a rare satisfied look. His role is a minor one, but he is embracing it so deeply that he is lost in its embrace. And the song from the boombox played on:

I have been so glad here
Looking forward to the past here

—

Commentary

I have to be clear in what I think zazen roughly means. I note up front that I am not the Zen poster practitioner, but I think there may be some things here to help you. I suggest that you will simply experience things as they are, but unmediated by “layers” on top of them. These are actually things themselves, remember this By layers I just mean thoughts and perceptions (the thought “that is red” versus “the word redness” versus redness experienced), there may be an ordering to them, there may not. Thoughts are as real as the screen in front of you (why is he saying that?).

As your practice progresses, you realize this practice applies to all other facets of your life too. I chop wood, I carry water.

You may be surprised afterwards by what dropped off though, especially aspects of yourself you usually see as constant. That can unnerve people, but those aspects of you simply come back, don’t be too concerned. The way you see them and yourself, that changes. Without erasing distinctions, the limits of what you feel as self expand. And yet, below all that, nothing has changed. It is all the same activity, funny shaped clouds against a clear blue sky, before and after.

A basic example would be your opinions about how the meditation is progressing. I am not suggesting you will somehow be subtracted from until you experience nothing, like in the Pale. Zazen is only just sitting.

Zazen is not meant to, as I understand it, produce “unusual” mental states, but instead reveals our everyday mind for what it is by letting it uncover itself.

And if you do experience “unusual” states (people sometimes do, and that’s just how their mind works) or even chase after them, that’s ok too (just keep in mind I am not a teacher, consulting and working with a Zen teacher is a good idea if you plan to adapt zazen in some way). Just realize attaching to them as “the way” or depending on them is not the point, just as it is unhealthy to attach to conventional ideas of zazen too strongly. Not attached, not detached, non-attached.

Zen Buddhists see zazen as a tool, not an idol. If it helps, use it, if it hinders, discard it. Experience just teaches that it is very effective for most people, and can be adapted for the others too. Remember, Zen is possible for anyone, even if zazen is difficult or impossible. This I intend for those who lose hope, not for those who are overconfident. If you feel you have it, you don’t. If you don’t feel you have it, you do. Discipline makes the difference. I say this as someone who has slipped into periods of non-practice way too often.

The point is encountering your everyday mind moment to moment. So simple, it seems a fiendish puzzle.

This is my experience, I only hope you find it useful.