Hanuman Li Tosh
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Hanuman Li Tosh is a character from David Zindell's science fiction series, A Requiem for Homo Sapiens.
[edit] Bio
He is said to have blonde hair and blue fiery eyes, and a fierce set to his face. He is described as very beautiful throughout the series. He was raised on Catava by readers of the Universal Cybernetic Churches, and he grew to hate them and become a heretic to the Edeic algorithm. He stole the priceless Edeic Lights from the temple where his father worked and fled to Ornice Olorun, Catava's Capital (and only) city. There he sold the lights to buy him passage to Neverness, where he met Danlo wi Soli Ringess and became fast, albeit strange friends. Danlo saves him from death at the hands of a member of the Order of Warrior-Poets but as a result Hanuman is injected with a drug that causes constant pain at the dying hands of the poet. He becomes a cetic in the Order of Mystic Mathematicians and other seekers of the inneffable flame whereas Danlo becomes a Pilot. They both attend Bardo (Pesheval Lal)'s new joyances after he leaves the order in protest for the Alaloi's slow death via a plague. These joyances are devoted to his long-missing friend Mallory Ringess, and to the remembrancing of the Elder Eddas, the meaning of life supposedly coded into human genetic memory. He calls this the Way of the Ringess, which Hanuman would eventually subvert using his cetics skills to become Ringism, the only religion (despite the Order's Atheistic Holism) to be permitted in the Order. Eventually, Hanuman becomes the most powerful man in the civilized worlds, having long since become estranged with Danlo. He has Lord Pall, head cetic, instituted as Lord of the Order, and Lord Pall sends Danlo and all other non-ringists to start a new (and probably schismatic) order on the planet Theills in the Vild. After giving his legendary Fire Sermon, Hanuman becomes a secret grade of cetic and in name is expelled from the order owing to his religious authority permission, but is later permitted to assume a higher rank than all but Lord Pall himself in Order chambers. Hanuman proposes the building of a large computer in space called his "Universal Computer" to, in his own words, "Store the perfect memory of the Elder Eddas", when in fact he wished to use this computer to change the whole universe into a gigantic computer that would run a simulated universe free of suffering and free of death, but as a result he would kill everyone in the universe except himself, and install himself as God of this new, simulated, fake universe.
After some time he grows hateful of himself and tries to inflict as much suffering on himself as possible as a strange psychological response. Eventually he tortures and gives Danlo the same drug he was administered by the warrior-poet when he was very young. He obtained this through the hiring of renegate members of the Order of Warrior-Poets for his own protection as Lord of the Way. As Danlo does not cry out Hanuman's internal emotions run very high and he leaves Danlo, who has his body sculpted in the sign and semblance of his father Mallory Ringess, and persuades the Ringists that Mallory has indeed returned to show the way. Breaking his vow of ahimsa, Danlo kills Hanuman and states that Hanuman was a false leader of the Way, and installs Bardo as new Lord of the Order.
[edit] The Fire Sermon
Below is a direct quote of Hanuman Li Tosh's Fire Sermon as written in The Broken God:
"He is watching us now, at this moment, as we stand beneath the stars he knew so well. And what is the first thing Mallory Ringess would see when he looks at us? He would see, and he does see, that each of us is suffering. Each of us burn with the pain of pure being.
"All things are on fire. Atoms are on fire, and electrons, and nuclei stripped to plasma are on fire. The rocks and the mountains are on fire. The air is on fire, and the ice of the sea, and the stars, all the stars in the galaxies across the sky are on fire. The Vild stars are exploding into fire one by one. And with what are these things on fire? They burn with the fire of pure being, they are afire with pure consciousness, the primeval urge to be, to organise into forms, to interconnect with other forms, to evolve.
"All the living things of the world are on fire. The trees on the hillsides are on fire, and the bacteria that are too small to see, and the snowworms, and the sleekits, and the shagshay lambs crying for their mothers' milk. The tigers in the forests of the night - they burn so brightly it wounds the eyes. You, who listen to these words tonight, are on fire. I am on fire. And with what are we all on fire? We burn with the fire of pure being, we are afire with pure consciousness, the primeval urge to be, to organise into forms, to interconnect with other forms, to evolve. We burn with the fire of passion for life, and with pain, with fear, with birth, old age and death. With hatred, misery, sorrow, lamentation and suffering we are on fire. What is humankind but a knot of flames burning with nostalgia for the infinite? We burn with the urge to overcome ourselves and our terror to evolve. We are afire with our possibilities, with what we might become. With dread, with longing, with despair we are on fire.
"All things are on fire. And we are each of us on fire, and everything tells us this is so. Our eyes are on fire, whatever we see is on fire, eye-consciousness is on fire, images received by the eye are on fire, and whatever sensation of thought these images engender inside of us, that too is on fire. And with what are our eyes on fire? With the fire of passion for life, and with pain, with fear, with birth, old age and death. With hatred, misery, sorrow, lamentation and suffering we are on fire. What is humankind but a knot of flames burning with nostalgia for the infinite? We burn with the urge to overcome ourselves and our terror to evolve. We are afire with our possibilities, with what we might become. With dread, with longing, with despair we are on fire.
"It is said that there is a way to be freed of this burning. If our eyes are afire, we should cover them with damp cloths. If our ears burn, we should stop them with wax. We should conceive an aversion for images, and sounds, and smells, and tastes, and information, and for all things that might touch our body or that we might touch. It is said that we must renounce sensations, and whatever thoughts or ideas these sensations engender in our minds. We must conceive an aversion to mind-consciousness, and to the mind itself. For all things of the world we must conceive an aversion lest we become attached to them and to our burning for them. It is said that in this renunciation we may become divested of passion, and by the absence of passion we become free, and thus we become aware that we are free and then there is nothing in life than can cause us to suffer or burn.
"It is said that you should renounce all things in order to quench the fire in yourselves, but this is the way of a vegetable or a buddha or a stone, not a human being. A true human being burns to be more, and as long as you burn you belong to life. This is also said: you must consume yourself in your own flame; how else could you wish to become new if you first become ashes? This is what I've remembered and what I've felt and what I've seen: whoever would shine brightest must endure burning. For a true human being, there is no other way.
"Each man and woman is a star! Starfire is the hottest fire, the pure fire, the refining fire that would burn away the weakest and most ignoble parts of ourselves. Whoever would give light must endure burning. We must burn for a higher organization of our beings. Burn for more and deeper consciousness, burn for more life. We must each consume ourselves in our own flames. Only then will a vaster self be born who is a master of fire. Only then will the burning for the infinite lights be understood. Only then can a true human being become himself. Only then can a god let birth, old age and death burn away and be no more
"I speak to you of the god within each of us. This god is lord of fire and light. This god is fire and light, and nothing but fire and light. Each of us is this god. Each man and woman is a star that burns on and on with infinite possibilities. I must speak tonight of becoming this star, the eternal and infinite flame. Only by becoming fire will you ever be free of burning. Only by becoming fire will you become free of pain, free of fear, free of hatred, free of sorrow, lamentation, suffering and despair. This is the way of the gods. This is the Way of the Ringess, to burn with the fire of a new being, to shine with a new consciousness as bright as all the stars, as vast and perfect and indestructible as all the universe. This is the way of Mallory Ringess, who watches over all the people in the City where he was once as human as you or I."
