Shaka

Overview

Shaka is one of the Twelve Gold Saints. As the guardian of the Temple of Virgo along the path of Sanctuary, Shaka has played a pivotal role chiefly in the battle between Athena and the Pope in the Sanctuary arc, and also in the Hades arc. He is referred to many times on the story as the "the man who is almost a god" (or closest to attain godhood) due to his immense power and is also considered the only Gold Saint that has full control over the Araya Shiki (8th sense). Shaka alone of all saints occupies the rarefied spot between God and man, but living between two worlds has its blessings as well as curses. As a Bodhisattva, and endowed with the most powerful cosmos of all the saints even overpowering Libra Dohko's and Aries Shion's Cosmos, Shaka well deserves his reputation as the man closest to God. Even as a child in India, Shaka was precocious and communed with God himself--a scene recounted in the flashbacks moments before Shaka's death in the Twin Sala's Garden. For someone whose life has just begun, he had been unusually sensitive to sufferings and mortality of human life. Seeing pain and death as reflected in the Ganges gives the boy Shaka enough despair, if not a crisis of faith. With esoteric learning and training, Shaka eventually became powerful enough to don the Gold Cloth of Virgo, which he wore even as a boy in the manga, and wise enough to rise above human passions and attachments. For most of his life, he would look on human feelings with a mix of pity and compassion without being bound to them, with charity but not always with love. Detachment seems to be Shaka's answer to the poignant questions raised by human life, and he is seeing humanity from the point of God rather than living the experience. He would be disabused of this attitude in his encounter with Ikki. In the end, Shaka would have to remember that he is a man, as well, and return to whence he came. He often casts illusions to deceive his enemies. A probably illusionary technique is Transmigration (or Reincarnation) to the Six Paths (六道輪廻 Rikudō Rinne?) in which Shaka sends his opponent to one of the six Dharma's rebirth realms. These realms are, as described by Kurumada: Gakikai (the realm of the preta), Jinkai (the realm of humans), Jigokukai (the realm of hell), Chikushōkai (the realm of beasts), Shurakai (the realm of the warring demigods) and finally Tenkai (the realm of heaven). Interestingly enough, Kurumada presents the Buddhist realms of reincarnation as separate planes of existence from those found in the Hades arc of his manga, which he derived from Dante Alighieri's conception of the underworld. The Tenkai is considered the worst realm to be sent as mentioned by Shaka. Shaka strengthens his Cosmos energy by depriving himself of his eyesight. When he opens his eyes, the stored strength is then released. Due to his enormous power, Shaka is called the "man who is closest to god". He can also use Hāṃ (カーン Kān?), a defensive technique that creates a barrier that encircles Shaka's body. Between his offensive techniques he can use Demon Pacifier (天魔降伏 Tenma Kōfuku?) to expand his cosmos at multiple targets or at a single one as a blast, that it was strong enough to destroy a large part of the Cancer Temple and Heaven Supremacy on evil spirits of rivers and mountains (天空覇邪魑魅魍魎 Tenkūhajachimimōryō?) in which Shaka summons minor spirits and sends them against his enemies. Shaka's most powerful move, The Treasures of Heavens (天舞宝輪 Tenbuhōrin?), is an offensive and defensive combined technique. Not only traps and defangs Shaka's victims, it also wipes out their five senses named as "Remove of the 1st/2nd/3rd/4th/5th sense" (Dai Ikkan/Nikan/Sankan/Yonkan/Gokan Hakudatsu). Essentially reduces Shaka's victims to living corpses by stopping the main functions of the brain that allows the body to think, also called the 6th sense. The offensive power of this attack is so destructive that it can easily destroy the cloth of the opponent. Apart from those fighting techniques, Shaka also uses two concentration ones that belong to the Hinduism and buddhism like Om(ॐ) to maximize his Cosmo energy, allowing him to use the full extent of his power and Tenpōrin Mudra (転法輪印 Tenpōrin'in?) to erase any doubts in his mind that could refrain him during the fight. Tenpōrin is the japanese name for the Dharmacakra.