AKandolaJanuary 16, 20171 Comment on Fan Theory Relating Sikhi and Legend of Zelda or Why My Dad Should Buy Me a Nintendo Switch so I can Learn More About My Religion

A little basic background to start you guys off:

Let’s start with Sikhi (aka Sikh Religion). Without going into too much detail, there are 3 aspects of Sikhi relevant to this post:

The first is the existence of some single divine force (aka The Creator, The Divine, God, whatever you want to call it) that permeates existence and is in fact inseparable from creation.

The second is that each person is also a part of this by virtue of being part of the universe which, as mentioned, is inseparable from The Creator.

The third is re-incarnation of the soul of each individual.

The three are tied together through the following: the goal of each person is to escape the cycle of re-incarnation by tearing away the illusion that they exist as a separate entity from the rest of the universe, thus connecting themselves with The Divine.

As you might expect, even within this super basic outline, there are already so many different ways to interpret the specifics as to how all of this actually takes place. The one I will focus on here is how re-incarnation works.

As far as I know, there is 1 main way most people think re-incarnation works, and 1 fan theory which, surprise surprise, is the one that I pick. The main one is the classic story: the karma of your past life determines your current life and your actions in your current life determine your future lives. If you are good, you might be reborn into a better situation, but if you are bad, you might be worse off or even come out as an animal. Also, I’d like to add as a side-note that most people think re-incarnation works on a linear timescale such that your past lives are literally in the past, but I think that’s a bit ridiculous and instead you should be able to be reborn in the past (ie. You might die in the year 2060 and then be Napoleon  in the next life). Anyways, this is a pretty tidy way of looking at things because it explains many things. First of all, there is a clear mention of re-incarnation in the Sikh texts which this view would obviously satisfy since it is the literal way of interpreting the text. Moreover, it would also explain the wide disparity in status of people at birth. It would also explain how it is fair for babies to die before they have a chance to become spiritual, why some people are never introduced to Religion, and it would explain why the human birth is important because it is the only birth in which you have a chance to achieve enlightenment. Overall, its pretty neat isn’t it.

But, if you’re at all like me, this all sounds a bit too magical to be true. I’ve always felt that Sikhi was a very, very practical philosophy. Where, in a practical philosophy, would there be the need for something like that kind of re-incarnation? I am personally of the view that this particular view on re-incarnation is an influence of the historic use of re-incarnation in South Asian society as a way to justify the oppression of the caste system. Instead, I think that re-incarnation as written is a concept mentioned in the Sikh texts as a metaphor for something else. The Sikh Gurus often referenced popular beliefs at the time to relate to the people and I think this was one of those cases.

Now, before I get into my version of re-incarnation, let me get into The Legend of Zelda for a bit. And, I know I’m simplifying this by a lot so please don’t murder me in my sleep if you get triggered by my slaughtering of the Zelda Universe/plot.  There are a few things we should clear up right away. The three characters of interest here are Zelda, Link, and Ganon. No, Zelda is not the green dude with the sword, that’s Link. Anyways, the overall Zelda timeline is SUPER complicated, but here is the relevant part: At the end of Skyward Sword, the antagonist of the game, the Demon King Demise, tells Link that his hatred will be reborn as a being (Ganon) to fight against future incarnations of Zelda and Link in a never ending cycle. And in fact, a common fan theory is that this event sets the foundation for all Zelda games taking place in the future: the trio are reborn/revived/resurrected many times and battle it out in a classic good vs. evil matchup. You might see where I’m going with this now.

The first view on re-incarnation can sort of tie in with Zelda. Each life, you have to fight for good. If you lose, you have to do it again, but what happens if you win?  Does that mean you’re done? People don’t reach enlightenment often so this would mean you lose most of the time. This is because in Zelda, even after winning, there must be another cycle, but that would not be the case if you reached enlightenment. Thus, implying that you have to lose the battle each time so that the cycle can continue. But losing is not only not fun, pretty much all Zelda games end in a victory (unless you suck at video games). Besides, in a single life, we don’t fight evil only once. There are many different forms and it comes back many times. This leads me into the fan theory on re-incarnation.

The way I see it is that re-incarnation takes place within a single life. We are constantly living through cycles of happiness and sorrow, of success and failure, and of various other things. Re-incarnation is the cycle through our mental state, and when we finally tap into our connection with The Divine, we can permanently escape all of these cycles. This concept of re-incarnation loses some of the neatness in explaining away luck and fate as compared with the other system, but it has some advantages as well: it is a lot simpler than the other system, it makes more sense to someone who doesn’t believe in an afterlife,  and it makes more sense with the Legend of Zelda. Under this system, our life is the entire Legend of Zelda series. We constantly fight internal battles that sometimes result in bad decisions and sometimes in good decisions. And even when we do make the right call and Link defeats Ganon, just as you can never seem to get rid of all of your vices and one or another eventually comes back to disrupt your life, you can be assured that Ganon will find his way back to haunt Hyrule. It means right now we could be living out the events of The Windwaker! And tomorrow might be Twilight Princess!

In this case, how does enlightenment happen? Well, all we can do is try our best to stick to our path and if we’re lucky it’ll work out. There is no guarantee it will occur, and that’s ok! Its clearly fun enough to play each Zelda game even though you know Ganon is going to come back again anyway. And in fact, sometimes you find out you didn’t even win (as in the Fallen Hero timeline)! And how can Link defeat Ganon for good? Well, we don’t know if that will ever happen (please please don’t so that there will be more and more games). This is just a fan theory, we’ll have to see if future games confirm it.

Anyways, I think this is mostly a nice way of making myself feel more important than I am. But I also think it makes it easier for me to cope with my shortcomings and failures. The whole thing is a long process and we constantly get chances to prove ourselves and improve on our past mistakes. Link always has to struggle for a long time, and usually even longer if I’m the one controlling him, before he can finally win and then the next game, he has to start all over and solve completely different puzzles. At least we have the advantage of building on our previous knowledge (though technically if you played through every Zelda game, you’d probably get faster at beating those too, further proving why our lives are a Zelda series). So there you have it – some empty motivational words to cap off the most ridiculous fan theory in existence. I am sure there is more evidence out there to prove this theory, but I am clearly already convinced so we’ll leave it at that.

Thanks for reading!