I'm not an expert here. I'm talking about an experience I had rather than something I intellectually worked out. From what I can gather, the original mystery religions are still, largely, as the name suggests, mysterious. But they are associated with intoxication, fertility and resurrection.

I'm constantly struggling with the futility and even sinfulness, from an antinatalist point of view, of creativity. And that struggle itself seems part of the creativity, though I sometimes suspect that it's nothing but a burden and an obstacle.

It's interesting, the sense of pastoral utopia that exists in so much fantasy - in [Edward ] Dunsany, [John R.R.] Tolkien and so on.

I was born in the seventies, age of bad haircuts and grainy colour photos.

If we do want to do that [ colonise space to survive, ], then vacuous materialism is not going to be enough for us.

People may wish to say that the thing that is in conflict with my creativity is not Buddhism - that's fine.

I'm not claiming anything like sainthood - merely a native perception.