DAK

Originally Posted by AAM1232

Copy pasted from Fallacies's post on SpaceBattles. All credits for the stuff below goes to her.

taiboo said:
Scheherazade brings up that Kama and Mara could be viewed as the same divinities. The incarnation of love and lust. And the epitome of demonic temptation which causes man to fall. However, Kama doesn’t really see the distinction between Kama and Mara. Ultimately they’re the same. There are humans who regard love as evil, after all.

There was a technicality that was missed here. Scheherazade states, "Originally, the Divinity referred to as Kama was ... to a different Divinity referred to as Mara, regarded as the same existence." So, no, they weren't necessarily the same Divinity to begin with.

Earlier, when describing "what precisely was burned" by Shiva's Third Eye, Kama states, "My existence unto its very root. Until my flesh and concept were likewise rendered ambiguous." Ergo, the distinct Divinity referred to as Kama was destroyed. The "ambiguous emptiness that remained behind thereafter" was what was rendered as equivalent to Mara.

More to the point, the fact that she's Mara isn't in itself meaningful; she describes it as nothing more than a "premise" to the events presently occurring -- and then continues on to describe her present state of existence as a kind of chain manifestation provoked by the appearance of III/R.

She later states to Parvati that she is neither the Kama nor the Mara known to her.

When Kama asserts that Kiara was a fragment of a Beast, Kiara's response is, "In the past, some such phenomenon may have occurred." Also, previously, Kama implies that somebody like Kiara shouldn't have existed at Chaldea as of the rendering of her attack.

The Beast III/L presides over the Sin of Pleasure, in the aspect of Lapse -- directly written in English as "Lapse," but rendered in Japanese as 堕落 (daraku, lit. "falling / degenerating" as unto corruption).

Whereas she states that she has become identified to the Universe itself, she subsequently pronounces Universe as 全人類 (zenjinrui, "all of humanity").

taiboo said:
Kiara: “Yes… this is troubling. This is truly troubling. If all life receives love from the god of love, then all which has life will be fulfilled. That means love will disappear. A living being which receives infinite love from another is complete in and of itself. It does not need anything else from others. In other words, there will be no love born towards myself… ahem, I mean, towards others.”

There was a technicality that was missed here. What she actually said was, "A living organism granted an unlimited love unto others attains completion as an independent entity. The necessity of doing anything unto others vanishes." In other words, the stress is that humans that receive love in unrestricted quantities become "complete," because the desire / necessity for love is satiated.

taiboo said:
I will teach you true love and desire, just like I once did to the ascetic under the Bodhi tree. There is no need to put yourself under hardship. There is no need to reach a meaningless truth.

The connotation is that she herself is "the emptiness of the Universe" -- the "space" unto which one can commit themselves so as to quench their every desire, and thereafter require nothing more of anything or anyone.

Whereas Kiara's cult comprehends the carnal act (performed strictly with Kiara alone) as a means of quenching and therefore extinguishing earthly desire (rendering deliverance from suffering), Kama is giving herself to represent the quenching of desire by the perpetration of every sin, to the exclusion of the recognition of other living beings.

The "love" that she grants to humans is rendered by means of inculcating them within the mindset of satiating every desire, in the perpetration of every sin; and because, to her, the world itself and all the things within it are meaningless, everything can be used as an instrument to end of attaining a masturbatory pleasure. The maze is a construct that realizes this rule. Being fabricated of human souls, it's a place in which "those who become as Tokugawa can satiate their desires by making use of humans."

To put it in other words, Kama is a system that mass produces humans with Kiara's mindset. The "Tokugawa-ization" that she's set up as a feature of the Great Interior is a test-run of this phenomenon.

Both Kiara and Kama, in theory, lead to the cessation of pain that the Buddha sought within Nirvana -- if in a twisted form. The Buddha as well posits material reality as ultimately meaningless. Kama is positing that what the Buddha discovered under the Bodhi Tree was "the emptiness that is her" -- but by comparison, the Five Vows of the Ascetics after which the floors of the maze are themed are intended to divorce Buddhist ascetics from the Klesha, the "poisons" (desires) that bind humans to the cycle of suffering.

In essence, the Buddha's conclusion is that desire begets desire begets suffering (either because desire cannot be satiated; or because one is injured by the actions of somebody else in an effort to satiate desire), and therefore the solution is simply not to desire; to remove oneself from engaging with the world that propagates the cycle desire and suffering.

Kiara and Kama's solution, by contrast, is that if desire begets suffering, that suffering can be relieved by continuously engaging in acts that fulfill the desire from which it was spawned. In theory, such acts if infinitely perpetrated yield the same cessation of suffering as not experiencing desire in the first place.

Incidentally, as the Maze of the Great Interior is the same existence as Kama herself; as the act of breaking the Five Vows is the only way to advance; and as the act of advancing is in essence the same as becoming a creature of Kama -- taking into context the Buddhist notion that violating the Vows would entrench / bind a human unto the karmic tapestry of desire and suffering, the symbolism of the vow-breaking within the dungeon is a suggestion that Kama is in essence the tapestry of karma itself. That is, Kama is the same thing as the Buddhist understanding of "desire." When you commit yourself to Kama, you're committing yourself to the earthly realm of material reality (in precisely the way that Buddhist philosophy advises not to).

Or, if you prefer, Kama is all of the Mara in this list.

Also, the "completion meter" on the left of the image here:

Spoiler: By the Way, the Grail Was Also Female Symbolism

-- charges from the bottom toward the circle at the top as you advance toward the innermost sanctum of Kama's existence. Symbolically, the player's progress is an advancement unto the uterus. I'm surprised Jack isn't in this event.

Also, why is Lady Kasuga in this event? Because, she's the "caretaker" of the Shogunate's heirs, and the creator of the Great Interior. Kama has symbolically usurped her in this role, by extending unto the self-centered vices held by the scions of the House of Tokugawa her unlimited understanding / tolerance / indulgence. Actually, her nature as a Beast is less like Kiara, IMO, and more like the opposite of Tiamat's overparenting.

SirGrim said: ↑
The Counter-Force will forever be useless...

The Great Interior of Kama is in essence "just" a Bounded Field that excludes the Human Order. Given that even Kiritsugu can somewhat exclude the World from the interior of his soul for long enough to perform Innate Time Manipulation, it's not really too surprising.