The Formulations
Debate 4

What is the "Pure Heart"?

In the process of assembling my information and presenting my argument concerning Burori's nature I came across an interesting piece of information which may be of some concern to serious DBZ fans.

On a website (while I was trolling for really great stuff on Burori) I came across a section on what happens when a character goes SSJ (DBZ Dojo). Now, since Burori does go SSJ, I figured that I should check this out. According to this site, only saiya-jins with a pure heart can go SSJ. And the heart can be either pure good or pure evil.

A pure heart? I asked myself. What is this?

Reaching back into my meager experience with Asian customs, I have come up with a possible interpretation of this which may make more sense, especially for those of you out there who have a difficult time seeing Vegeta as a character with a pure heart. (It seems to me that Vegeta's heart is neither completely good nor completely evil and yet he transforms to super saiya-jin as well.) The following is an argument meant to illustrate the interpretation I have alluded to:

1. Traditionally, concepts like "good" and "evil" are Western inventions. In the Eastern hemisphere, things are seen as active or inactive, creative or nuturing; the symbol for yin and yang is a perfect example of this. The first thing one should notice about the Taoist symbol is that the black and the white halves are not cleanly separeated. One flows into the other in an endless motion. Secondly, in each of the halves there is a dot containing the opposing color, showing that even in the strongest amount of yin, there is still some yang, and vice versa. You cannot have one without the other.
Under this interpretation it would make no sense to say that a person has a pure heart of yin or yang because neither can exist without some measure of the other at any given time. It would be impossible for someone to have a heart of pure activity because such a thing does not exist. There is activity as being temporarily dominant over inacitvity, but one never stands completely on its own.

2. Asian cultures (especially in Buddhism) contain the belief that when a person has "emptied" himself, he is able to make spiritual contact with the Divine. This "emptiness" of self is necessary (in order to reach enlightenment) because your ego will get in the way. The very act of being enlightened means to transcend the ego (e.g., "I am", "I can", and other such thoughts) and have an intimate connection with that which exists in all things. The ego is excluded from this experience because you cannot cause yourself to be enlightened. You must depend upon the Divine, and in Asian traditions, the Divine is vacuous, empty, and non-personal. Westerners might call it "energy" but it is far more than that.

So when I heard the phrase "pure heart" I thought of these two things. "Pure Heart" likely means something similar to an "empty heart" or a "vacuous heart" rather than a heart filled with something (i.e., good or evil). Once a saiya-jin has emptied himself, he is able to reach further into enlightenment and the Divine, which, in my opinion is what transforming into a super saiya-jin is all about.

As to why anger is the trigger for this transformation, I believe that modern cultural customs are more to blame for that than any deep, philosophical reasonings. In Asia, the group takes precedence over the individual (in the West it is the exact opposite). So an individual's anger (in the East) must usually be supressed in order to maintian group stability. The saiya-jin anger is probably an outlet for the strong emotions that are not considered to be good manners if expressed in public.

As to why the saiya-jin becomes more powerful when he transforms, I am inclined to think that the power is a manifestaion of what one can achieve by mastering one's art. When it becomes so natural that a painter no longer has to plan each brush stroke or an archer no longer has to conciously think about shooting the arrow, when the tasks seem to complete themselves, that is mastery. The saiya-jin is the archer. The ki is the arrow. And the ability to use it as they do, unconciously, is the mastery.