René, The Demon Slayer - A Short Story
Cogito Ergo Sum X Buddhist 10 Fetters X Demon Slayer
"I will suppose therefore that […] some malicious demon of the utmost power and cunning has employed all his energies in order to deceive me. I shall think that the sky, the air, the earth, colours, shapes, sounds and all external things are merely the delusions of dreams which he has devised to ensnare my judgement. I shall consider myself as not having hands or eyes, or flesh, or blood or senses, but as falsely believing that I have all these things. I shall stubbornly and firmly persist in this meditation; and, even if it is not in my power to know any truth, I shall at least do what is in my power, that is, resolutely guard against assenting to any falsehoods, so that the deceiver, however powerful and cunning he may be, will be unable to impose on me in the slightest degree."
― René Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy
"When one knows and sees the fetters as they are, one becomes disenchanted with them, and by this disenchantment, they are abandoned."
— Samyutta Nikaya 22.48
"Sometimes, the greatest demons we face are the ones within ourselves."
— Tanjiro Kamado, Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba
One overcast day, sitting under a tree, young René was immersed in an inquiry. He wanted to know the truth. The truth about what? Well, the truth about everything, anything really, just something that was true without a doubt. This inquiry immobilized his whole being — body, mind, soul — all was held in abeyance, on the verge of being torn to pieces.
And then like a flash of lightning as big as the universe, it hit him:
Cogito ergo sum.
“I think therefore I am.”
Hold up; there was an error in there. He cut the excess:
“I think therefore I am.”
Looks good.
This is what I know for certain, he concluded.
He marinated in this insight. The birds’ song sounded particularly clear; the colors, although muted by the cloudy sky, radiated in newfound intensity; his perception had widened panoramically.
Then, perhaps only a moment or perhaps a whole eternity later, a new idea formed in his mind:
Anything else than ‘I am’ must be an illusion. But who’s the illusionist and what if he’d ceased his wicked game? To deceive me (and everyone else) to such an extent, this illusionist must be a most powerful and malicious demon. I wonder where this beast resides and how to defeat it…
Later, on his evening walk along his favorite trail in the Dutch countryside, he came upon an intriguing figure. A bald man in ragged clothes stood beside the river, looking at it intently. When René had closed in on the man, he saw that the man was an elder of Asian descent.
It was rare to see an Asian man in Europe at this time. But it was not completely unheard of. The Dutch East India Company had extensive tradeworks with Asia, including India and Japan. Seems like they imported the occasional person.
The man was watching his reflection in the river. What a curious fellow, René thought.
René spoke to him, “What are you doing, sir?”
Still watching his reflection in the river, the man answered with a thick Japanese accent, “The tenth man has died.”1
A lunatic, René thought. “Pardon me?” René said.
The elder turned away from the river, looking into René’s eyes. Never had René seen such beautiful eyes — they held the whole cosmos, reflecting colors he (René) had never seen before; they drew him in and swallowed him whole and spat him right out and made him dizzy; yet looking into those eyes resolved everything into clarity, just for an instant.
René’s tongue had decided on a nap and refused to collaborate in the formation of words. His mind, the one he used to believe was separate from his body, had joined the mutiny and in fact, was nowhere to be found.
In the presence of this man, he was reduced to a mere information floating in infinite space.
The elder broke the spell, “You have seen it; you have caught a glimpse of the truth and are wondering how to defeat the masters of illusions.”
The words shook young René to the core.
“You know about the demon?” René asked.
“Demons,” the man replied.
“Demons?” René retorted.
“Yes, demons, plural, multiple,” the man assured.
“And these demons keep me from seeing reality as it is?”
“These demons make you ask such foolish questions.”
“What do you mean?”
The man gazed over the countryside, accentuating the stillness of the river and the trees.
“These thoughts coming out of your mouth — you seem to hold them dear, like trophies belonging to you. But they’re not yours nor are they trophies. The demons have you firmly in their grasp.”
René shifted his weight from foot to foot. He was uncomfortable because he intuited the man was telling the truth.
“Oh wise man,” he began pleading, “how can I defeat these demons and banish their grip on my heart? I want nothing less than truth. I must know.”
“Classic demon talk,” the man scoffed, “but alright, I'll help you.”
René’s eyes brightened and his demeanor turned from despair to enthusiasm, “Let us begin right away,” he yelled excitedly.
René was mid-blink when the old man whacked him across the head with a bamboo stick. The first question zapping through René’s mind was, how did he do that? The second was, since when was there bamboo in the Netherlands?
“Lesson one,” the old man announced, “curb your passions. You need to be level-headed to see through the demons’ games.”
René rubbed his head. “How shall I call you?”
“Just call me none of your business,” the man replied.
“But I need to address you somehow, needn’t I?”
“Good point.”
The man caressed his long chin beard for a while, pondering, appreciating the sky with those divine jewels he called his eyes.
“Call me Mike,” he finally said.
“Mike?” René asked incredulously, “You want me to call you Mike? You're not a Mike. Calling you Mike would be silly. I'm not calling you Mike.”
“Just call me Mike for buddhassake!”
“Nope,” René crossed his arms and closed his eyes, “I'm not calling you Mike. Let's call this thing off then. I'll find someone else to guide me or I'll figure it out on my own. I don't care.”
“Are you serious?” the old man asked in unexpected surprise. (Unexpected because if you had known him you'd know he was known for being unsurprisable.)
“Deadly,” René turned to leave.
“Okay fine, chill dude. Call me Bodhi.”
“Thought so,” René scoffed.
“Anyway,” Bodhi cleared his throat, “I will teach you the way of the sword and by extension the way of the mind.”
He walked to the tree behind him and retrieved a katana nestled inside a void black sheath or saya — so black it seemed to attract the light around it — with a stylish golden rope around the base and golden diamond patterns wrapping the grip.
As if he had teleported, Bodhi had the blade against René’s throat. René's blinking habit made him vulnerable. The blade was as black as the sheath, yet it seemed to create a rainbow of colors out of nothing.
Bodhi sheathed his blade. “Let's begin.”
What followed was an intense training arc where Bodhi instructed René in the way of the sword and by extension the way of the mind. The training was grueling and René felt on the point of breaking many times. It demanded everything from him. Honestly, it was a really badass training arc — you should have been there.
Then the day had arrived. René had completed his training and Bodhi was satisfied with René’s development.
“My dear sensei,” René said kneeling, bowing his head, “you have taught me much and I will forever be indebted to you. I will sing the song of your praise into all eternities.”
“Don't be silly and get up.”
René got up.
“Anyway, thank you, Master.” René bowed very lightly.
Bodhi bowed back, also very lightly.
“Before I send you on your way, I must inform you about each of these demons. I haven't done so during our training because it would’ve clouded your mind,” Bodhi started.
“There are ten in total, each vicious in their own way but working together seamlessly as if one.
Demon 1 is called “self-view” and will make you believe in a permanent, inherent self.
Demon 2 is called “doubt” and will make you doubt the existence of truth.
Demon 3 is called “attachment to rites and rituals” and will make you cling to external practices as ends themselves.
Demon 4 and 5 come as a pair. They’re called “desire” and “ill-will” and make you crave and hate sensual experiences.
From here on out the demons’ powers are more subtle.
Demon 6 is called “insistence on form” and makes you attached to the “real” world of forms.
Demon 7 is called “craving for formlessness” and makes you attached to existence in immaterial realms.
Demon 8 is called “conceit” and makes you believe in the notion that “I am,” or “I exist.”
Demon 9 is called “restlessness” and makes you believe in permanence and substance.
Demon 10 is called “not-knowing” and makes you grasp or seek something that seems true but isn’t.
You will have to kill them, one by one.”
“I am ready,” René answered, “where can I find these bastards?”
“Oh, in the castle just down the road. Here, look,” Bodhi pointed down the street, “you can see it from here.”
René looked where the finger pointed. There was a castle there, okay.
“Okay, then I'll be on my way.” René turned to leave.
“Before you go,” Bodhi said interrupting his (René's) departure, “take this.” Bodhi handed him his void black katana.
“Take good care of Void Black — she is a powerful katana. Her soul is difficult to handle but when she lets you in, you'll be able to penetrate to the deepest end of the way of the sword and by extension the way of the mind.”
“Thank you, sensei,” said René. He attached the katana to his hip and set out again.
“And student,” Bodhi said, interrupting the departure once more, “kill ‘em good, kill ‘em real good; splatter their blood, bathe in it, enjoy it; make these sons of bitches suffer,” he clenched his fist.
“…ahh okay,” said René awkwardly and turned. “That was weird,” he continued under his breath.
The castle was imposing. It had capitalized the peak of a lonely hill and had scorched the vegetation as a welcome gift. Its dark grey walls and black spired roofs pointed high high up, kniving into the stormy clouds, which wailed in pain and shot lightning in return.
René was afraid. But he had known he would be. Bodhi had told him so. “Don't run from the fear,” he had said, “fall right into its arms.”
René was falling alright.
When he reached the gigantic wooden door, it split in half and opened only for him, embracing him, like a hunter embracing his prey. René entered a huge cold foyer with a spiraling staircase and many weak candles scattered all across the room struggling against the darkness.
Before he could see anything, he heard footsteps echoing up the walls and around him. A figure stepped out of the shadow to his left, motivating the candles to glow brighter. The figure looked an awful lot like him.
The first demon — the demon called self-view.
“Before you attack me,” the demon smiled, looking like a grotesque version of René, “know that I am truly you. Can you kill yourself?” he laughed.
Without changing his expression, René gripped his sword — the handle with the right hand and the sheath with the left.
“居合一刀流飛竜斬り,”2 René yelled, drawing his blade quicker than an eye can follow, slicing the demon right in half, vertically. Slowly he sunk the blade back into its sheath.
But instead of seeing two halves of one corpse pumping blood all over the place, he saw only the evaporating of whisps of nothing. He saw what the demon had been hiding: there is no separate self. It was only an illusion.
A veil lifted of René's perception and his step lightened. He saw the immense burden of believing oneself to be a self. The burden had lifted.
But something else surprising had occurred: He saw two more demons disintegrating right behind the one he had just cleaved. He had slain the first three demons in one stroke and with that had slain his doubt about the quest and his attachment to ritualistic behaviors.
Demon 2 and 3 burbled and gurgled — non-existent blood and phlegm bubbled in their non-existent throats. They couldn't even get a nice speech out before collapsing into lumps of dissolving dream stuff. René liked that.
With newfound assurance, he climbed the staircase to the second floor. The second floor smelled like an incense factory had burned. It stank. Two figures clad in robes — one in black, one in white — were prostrating on the ground.
René felt a paradoxical pull of attraction and aversion.
The white figure looked up from her immersion. Her alabaster hair flowed endlessly and her golden skin sparkled like the night sky. Her eyes and lips beckoned him closer, tempting him, arousing him. René loved what he saw. She was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.
Then the black figure looked up from his immersion. He was an old, bald abomination of a man with rotten skin covered in pimples and warts and scars. He smiled a most sickening smile, lacking all teeth but one very moldy very useless one. He was the most hideous creature René had ever looked upon. René hated him and was more than ready to murder the disgusting fuck.
But could he hack into the beauty who was clearly into him?
Bodhi's words echoed in his mind: “Steel your heart, young Padawan; don't let the strings puppeteer you.”
He took a deep breath and put his emotions aside. He felt the internal pull of attraction and aversion but remained steady. He unsheathed his katana and gripped the handle firmly with both hands. Seeing this, the demons lurched towards him.
René closed his eyes and felt into the heart of his katana, whispering her name, “Black Void.” Black Void whispered back, “Open your eye and see.” He felt a crackling energy tearing from between his eyes up to his skull, and, although his eyes were closed, he could see them — the demons pouncing toward him.
His grip tightened.
“一刀流自由十字斬り,”3 he announced, unleashing two vicious chops quartering both demons.
He opened his eyes and found eight vanishing pieces of illusion. He approached the demon “desire” — or rather the piece that contained her head — and looked into her eyes. Her eyes responded but he was no longer moved. René watched her fading existence and noticed something: his perception was no longer clouded by craving and aversion — his heart was unstirred.
René continued his ascent.
The next floor was full of strange objects in all forms and sizes and textures. Their variety was hypnotizing. They seemed so… real. Among the objects was a large rectangular mirror. René walked up to it and looked at his reflection. I truly am one handsome son of a gun, he thought, admiring his reflection.
But then he noticed that he saw himself as one of the many objects in the room and as real as they were. That seemed wrong.
The demon called “insistence on form” stepped out behind the mirror. It vaguely resembled human form but had no distinguishable features. Instead, the demon looked like a solid slab of stone a sculptor had abandoned before finishing.
“You can see,” the demon spoke, “that you live in a world of solid objects and that you are their central position; you are the subject.” The demon pointed its fingerless hand at René.
His whole life, René had believed what the demon was telling him, but no more. He was willing to question the reference point he called himself; he was willing to question this subject/object split.
“Good try,” René answered, “but you have no more power over me, you rock.”
“Why thank you!” answered the demon.
“What? No! I don’t mean you rock. I called you a rock, you stone-faced pebble.”
“Oh, that’s mean,” said the demon who tried to look sad but whose lack of facial features made this impossible.
The demon swung his pillar of an arm into René’s left ribcage, breaking a few ribs and hurling him into the objects assembled next to him — a stabbing, searing pain galloped through his body. René struggled to his feet, unwilling to lose his determination.
He clutched his sword and held it high above his head. His gaze pierced through the stone slab demon, making it seem less solid than before.
“一刀流大山切り”4
René sliced downward, splitting the demon in half. The now-two pieces of rock crumbled apart, first into pebbles and then into sand before being whisked away by a gust of wind from nowhere.
René looked around. The objects were gone and so was he as their subject. The shift was almost not worth mentioning; it was so obvious to him now — the subject/object duality was never actually there. The boundaries disappeared. And René’s sense of 3D became more subtle, tending toward 2D, as René’s exaggerated sense of depth ceased.
He was ready for the next stage.
The next floor was devoid of any objects. Only a delicate mist was weaving throughout the room. He felt shadows creeping around the edges of his awareness and someone giggled wickedly into his ear.
Part of the mist took shape — a vague silhouette swayed before him — the demon called “craving for formlessness.”
“You might have defeated form,” the silhouette lisped snake-like, “but things still exist in a tangible way. You can’t get beyond time and space and the formless perception of existence.”
René sliced through the silhouette but it simply reassembled itself.
“That tickles,” the demon chuckled.
How can I defeat something that doesn’t have form, René pondered. He turned his inquiry toward Black Void and listened intently.
“You have to pierce the core,” Black Void suggested.
René knew what he had to do. He grasped the blade with his right hand, took a sideway stance, aiming with his stretched-out left arm, and pointed the tip at the demon.
“一刀流天空突き,”5 he announced, unleashing a powerful thrust, penetrating the core of the formless demon. The demon shrieked like a banshee whose time was up and went poof!
The mist cleared and an empty room remained. René saw clearly that there never was a thing called ‘perception’ that he possessed. He realized how foolish he had been for trying to find truth in concepts. Time and space were illusions.
The quality of his experience had changed profoundly but his work wasn't done yet. There was more slaughtering to be dished out. René licked his lips in anticipation and pressed on.
He found himself inside a square room with mirrors instead of walls, ceiling, and floor. Endless reflections of himself rushed toward and away from him. It was dizzying.
Suddenly, the reflections started moving independently of the original — they turned and stared at him intently. Then they began murmuring: “I am. I am. I am…. Yes, you can be sure of I am.”
René’s blood froze. It was his precious Cogito. He could be sure of that, couldn’t he? How could he doubt his own existence? René had clung to the words Cogito ergo sum as a lifeline, a certainty in a world of uncertainty. But now, staring into the endless cascade of reflections, he saw the hollowness of that certainty.
“I, I, I…,” the reflections kept echoing.
What was this ‘I’ or ‘me’ he believed himself to be? Was “he” existence? There was no proof of it anywhere. He couldn’t scratch that itch. He turned inward. Inward? That’s when it hit him. Why was there still an inside?
He clutched his sword with his right hand in a reverse grip.
“一刀流逆刀聖なる竜巻”6
René spun around like a vicious cyclone shattering all the mirrors. The broken glass drizzled around him, glittering like a Million diamonds. It was beautiful.
With the death of the 8th demon, self-identification ended completely and forever. He could no longer introspect or “look within” because there was no inside/outside anymore. All boundaries had disappeared. He clearly saw the error in his Cogito: I am was reduced to I am — not I exist but simply exist.
Although he felt increasingly freer, the battle was taking its toll — he was exhausted. But he couldn’t stop now. He had to finish the job. So he schlepped his tired body onward.
He entered a room with a beautiful ocean sunset on one side. Many warm colors were present — red, yellow, pink… oh, and orange, don’t forget orange. They transitioned into each other in the sky and swam in the ocean.
René enjoyed the view for a while. The sunset seemed substantial and permanent — it wasn’t fading into darkness. For a moment, it felt as if he had found what he had always sought. Then, all at once and without transition, night crashed in and his satisfaction was shattered.
At his hip, Black Void rustled.
He gripped the sword softly and relaxed deeply.
“一刀流流れる川の舞,”7 he exhaled and began swaying.
The swaying turned into a dance — a dance that had no beginning or end, no goal or purpose, no meaning or intent. He moved like a river, slicing everything and nothing, free from expectation.
When his movement ceased, night remained but René no longer felt like doing anything about it. Nothing was wrong; nothing was right. The resistance toward the world he had known his whole life was gone.
He looked up toward the ceiling — one more left — and climbed the stairs to the roof.
On the roof, he was met by an icy wind and shivered. He looked for cover. There was none. He kept looking because it was fucking cold, but it was in vain. The wind wailed on, mocking his attempts to find relief. This was the final demon’s work.
What he had been chasing his whole life, through endless battles and endless doubts, truly didn’t exist. No permanence, no final answer, no substance to cling to. And yet, the realization didn’t leave him hollow—it left him free. His need to resist, to strive, to fight, melted like ice under the morning sun. With trembling hands, René released Black Void. The sword clattered to the ground, its weight no longer his to bear.
He walked to the roof’s edge, the icy wind slicing through him, and looked over the flat Dutch countryside. Everything appeared so mundane, so perfect in its simplicity. René felt peaceful.
"Shhhk-squelch-thunk!”
Sharp and sudden, the cold bite of steel pierced his belly. Black Void’s blade protruded from his stomach. He turned around and looked into Bodhi’s eyes — as gorgeous as ever.
“Ah, you old son of a bitch,” René chuckled. His grin widened as the weight of it all settled in. “So this was the final fight?”
René exhaled a weightless breath. No resistance. No struggle.
Bodhi smiled back, tilting his head slightly. “Who else was there to fight?”
René blinked. His chest ached—but not from the wound. From laughter. From knowing. From the sheer absurdity of it all.
He had been swinging at shadows all along.
The end.
After(s)word
“Cogito ergo sum” is the insight René Descartes is most known for. He concluded that he may be deceived about everything but his existence.
The Buddhist 10 Fetters model postulates that 10 Fetters or illusions keep one from full realization and the end of suffering. (If you want to read more on the 10 Fetters model, I recommend checking out the website simplytheseen.com — it’s written in contemporary English and the one who wrote it worked through the fetters himself, making it a clear and compelling read.)
I started thinking about Descartes’ demon a while ago and wondered: What if it wasn’t one demon? And then I remembered the 10 Fetters model and wondered: What if it wasn’t fetters but malicious demons?
So in my mind, a story formed: René Descartes has to confront the Buddhist 10 Fetters in the form of 10 demons. But because a story about someone reflecting and inquiring is boring as hell, I had to bring in some action.
I love the manga/anime called Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba where, after a tragedy, the protagonist joins the so-called Demon Slayer Corps. In the story, demon slayers use different breathing styles manifesting in various sword techniques (e.g. water breathing, fire breathing, etc.) Instead of using the idea of breathing as the focal point of his technique, I decided to focus on René as a master of the one-sword style. In the final arc — the Infinity Castle Arc — of the manga (don’t worry, I won’t spoil you) the demon slayers confront the top demons inside a changing and moving castle. The idea of a castle where each demon has its own “floor” appealed to me and that’s why I used it for this story.
In manga/anime, they tend to announce their attacks by yelling the name of the attack. So René does the same.
The katana ‘Black Void’ represents that which cuts through everything.
If you wonder why some demons have more description than others and some are defeated quicker than others, I tried to incorporate the fact that not each fetter takes the same amount of time to fall or leads to equally dramatic shifts; especially the final fetters are more subtle.
Of course, a philosophical, martial arts story wouldn’t be complete without an eccentric elder to teach the protagonist. This is why we have Bodhi — Bodhi is Sanskrit and means “awakening” or “enlightenment.” Thus Bodhi represents the ideal René is striving for.
And, if you’ve gotten this far, thank you for reading! I hope you enjoyed reading this short story as much as I enjoyed writing it. :)
There is a story about ten monks traveling from Master to Master, in search of enlightenment. Crossing a flooding river, they were separated. When they reassembled at the other shore, one of them counted the others to make sure all made it safely. He only counted nine.
Each of them counted in turn and each could only count nine. So they wept for their drowned brother. Then a traveler came by and asked what their trouble was. He counted and assured them that all ten were present. But the monks couldn’t be persuaded.
One monk went to wash his tear-stained face in the river and lo’! there he was their poor drowned brother, at the bottom of a clear pool. The other nine monks checked and, unable to retrieve him owing to the pool’s depth, they celebrated a funeral service in his memory.
When the passing traveler returned from town and asked what they were doing, they told him and he in return pointed out that each of them had celebrated their own decease and therefore they were all truly dead. On hearing this, each monk was instantly awakened and ten enlightened monks returned to their master.
The moral of the story? The tenth man is the only man.
Paraphrased from Wei Wu Wei, The Tenth Man
Iai Ittōryū Hiryū Giri – "One-Sword Style Flying Dragon Slash (Iai)"
Ittōryū Jiyū Jūji Giri – "One-Sword Style Freedom Cross Strike"
Ittōryū Ōyama Kiri – "One-Sword Style Great Mountain Cleaver"
Ittōryū Tenkū Tsuki – "One-Sword Style Heaven Piercing Thrust"
Ittōryū Gyakutō Seinaru Tatsumaki – "One-Sword Style Inverted Blade Holy Tornado”
Ittōryū Nagareru Kawa no Mai – "One-Sword Style Flowing River Dance"
What a fun story! Your humor took me by surprise each time and gave a good laugh. I'm particularly fond of these kinds of warriors too. I immediately recognized the traditional story of an enemy hosting each floor. The ending took me by surprise! You even hinted at René's role at the very beginning (or perhaps we never left the river...).
This is so good I got the chills