Representations of Buddhist Teachings 

With the major plot of the game out of the way, we can begin to dissect the way in which,  beyond the statues of the Buddha scattered throughout the game as decoration, the narrative and  mechanics tell a hidden story below the surface, one of the Vipassana meditations. 

To begin we will break down what immortality really is in Sekiro. First, we find a solution the question I posed you earlier. What should we think about the blur our hand leaves  behind as it travels back and forth in front of our eyes? To answer, we can turn to the Dharma  practice of purification (Kornfield, 199). This practice tells us that a yogi practicing Vipassana must first not only  come to grips with the impermanence of the world, but also feel the impermanence throughout  themselves. The Buddha spoke of physical and mental phenomena, which, in short, are bodily  actions, and thoughts. These physical and mental phenomena are not set in place, in fact they are  constantly changing, but beyond changing they are repeatedly vanishing and appearing. Going  back to the hand question, the blur that is seen as the hand moves are not iterations of the hand  itself, but rather separate physical phenomena. The hand that was once on the left is no longer,  there only exists the hand that now resides on the right, and if the hand were to move back to the  left, the reverse is said. In the purification there is no past or future, but only the present, the past  has vanished, and the future has yet to appear. The original question ends up being the perfect  analogy to visualize this concept, and can be used to contemplate the impermanence of self. With  proper implementation and understanding of impermanence, ego and personality are destroyed,  two important steps on the journey to enlightenment.  

Immortality in Sekiro is the antithesis of purification. It is built to represent the desperate  cling to self that comes with a rejection of the cycling nature of the physical and mental. When  Genichirio reveals his immortality, he tells us. 

“This land is everything to me. For her sake I will shed humanity itself.” This shedding of  humanity refers to the separation of his mental and physical state his immortality has perpetrated.  An immortal flesh paired with a mortal soul, permanently detached so long as he remains  immortal. A similar phenomenon depicting the destruction of mind of body occurs to the monks  found in Sekiro’s Senpou temple. Upon reaching the destination, a nearby tapestry depicting a  practitioner of the Dharma tells us that the monks of Senpou temple, seduced by immortality,  have given up their path to enlightenment to pursue permanent physical stasis. As Sekiro moves  through the temple, the monks become more and more disfigured, growing centipedes from their  mouths with skin decaying from their bodies. Yearning for stability from the volatile world they  ruin their purification, resulting in unsatisfaction and suffering. They have given up the vanishing  and appearing nature of the hand on a pendulum, instead they attempt to ignore their  impermanence, clinging onto artificial immortality.

It becomes a trend to forgo authentic life to pursue an inauthentic escape from suffering.  From this artificial escape breeds evilness from greed, hatred, and ignorance, three traits which  contradict the Dharma’s message that “universal love comes from total unselfishness”(Kornfield, 14). No  imagery within Sekiro makes this interpretation clearer than the Halls of Illusion. Within this  subsection of the Senpou temple, the player is transported via meditation to a place described as  somewhere between life and Nirvana. In this halfway point the unique encounter Folding Screen  Monkeys are fought. This ‘boss fight’ can be better described as a puzzle, where the player must  figure out ways to capture four monkeys running around the halls. Each has a unique trait which  makes its capture fairly obvious: a green monkey, with excellent hearing can only be caught by  ringing a bell while it stands nearby. A purple monkey, with perfect vision needs to be cornered  into a dark room where it cannot use its enhanced eyesight. An orange monkey, who carries a pot  and pan to warn the others when the player approaches can be forced into a room neighboring a  waterfall, where nothing can hear the clanging over the sound of rushing water. And lastly is a  white monkey, who follows the player around invisible, with only its footsteps visible. Each  monkey represents the opposite of each of the four wise monkeys; those being, hear no evil, do  no evil, see no evil, and speak no evil. Slaying these foes is the player rejecting each evil thought  themselves and moves the player beyond the Halls of Illusion into an inner sanctum of the  temple.  

While this is an up-front interpretation, practically spelled out by the game, there is  beyond, a deeper importance to this section. After talking to a monk found standing solemnly in  the halls, he reveals his own fate, that he finds solace in his closeness to Nirvana, essentially  giving up completely on the life defining purpose to seek true enlightenment. Beyond this, he tells a story of another who came through the halls, fruitlessly chasing the monkeys for a long  time, before eventually falling silent. I argue this is the real reason for this room to be added, as a  representation of the Buddhist teaching to not dwell on evil thoughts. The constant chasing of  these monkeys which represent the evils themselves is the inability to truly let them go, it is only  through capturing them can you release the evils, and sincerely speak, hear, see, and do no evil.