The Dune Encyclopedia

by Willis E McNelly

  The essence of Zen appears to be captured in Duncan-Hayt's advice to Chani just before Leto and Ghanima were born: "wait without purpose in the state of highest tension... Do not be trapped by the need to achieve anything. This way, you achieve everything." The doubleness of poised extremes, of reconciled opposites, of both heightened and resolved inconsistencies, permeates this advice. "Have no purpose; only thus will you achieve it."

  Stilgar, thinking about what Ghani's and Leto's and Jessica's horde of memories required of them, noted that "what works is that which does not work," and associated such paradoxes with the old Fremen game of riddles whose answers lay in the question and the questioner, not in logic or evidence. Leto pondered the paradox of "knowing": it prevents learning, makes difficult the process that would seem to produce "knowing" in the first place. Likewise, knowledge is useless without purpose, yet it is purpose which "builds enclosing walls," walls that keep one from learning. This awareness of paradox appears to encircle the core of Zen. The Fremen treated night as refreshingly hopeful and day as intimidating; their life on Arrakis, and their rituals, are rooted in a poison, the spice, which extends life. Surrounded by inconsistencies and paradoxes, more concerned about questions than answers, wary of purpose and achievement and success (measurements against predictions), the Fremen reflect a significant Zen component in their heritage.

  This fragment of their background appears to have supported the Fremen resignation to things-as-they-are. Self-discipline, acceptance, avoidance of frustrating struggle are associated with Zen, which does not prevent choice and action but permits little or no prediction against which to measure achievement. This tenet correlates with the words of Muad'Dib to the effect that prescience (being neither traditional nor passive) did not "conform to the ordering of the Zensunni." In Zen, what you do is what you do; there is no scale against which to measure "success" or "failure."

  Similarly, individual Fremen were freed from responsibility — from accepting burdens of guilt "in the future" — in part because outcomes were not of their making. Their rituals, said Ghanima, freed them from guilt; what may look in retrospect like a transgression can be ascribed to "natural" (that is, not chosen) badness, or bad luck, or to a failure on the part of authority. Zen traditions emphasized the present and the individual.

  Final untangling of the strands of Sunni and Zen in Fremen culture may someday be possible: the new archive discoveries will certainly help. Both of the ancient traditions were warped and stretched by the Fremen adaptation to different environments, particularly the drought of Arrakis. Sunni ways taught community and long-range destiny; Zen's withdrawal taught personhood and acceptance of situation. Sunni was ripe for a "savior"; Zen did not seek any outside agent. Sunni was wary of change; Zen was willing to be flexible. The record shows that the Fremen swarmed behind a mysteriously prophesied stranger who they hoped would lead them to just revenge en route to a watery paradise. They were later skeptical about the religion erected in Muad'Dib's name. Such inconsistencies are hardly unusual in Galactic cultures. Theoretical analyses of cultural undercurrents will never quite "explain" actual behavior. An outline of the Fremen's Zensunni heritage, however, conjectural as it must be at this distance, does fill in some of the background behind Fremen activities on Arrakis.

  C.W.

  Further references: ARRAKIS; FREMEN LINGUISTIC PHILOSOPHY; ZENSUNNI WANDERERS, HISTORY; Defa 'l-Fanini, Taaj 'l-Fremen, 12 v. (Salusa Secundus: Morgan and Sharak); Leto II, Journals, Rakis Ref. Cat. 55-A89; Duncan Idaho-10202, The Ghola Speaks, tr. Kershel, Reeve Shautin (Finally: Mosaic); Princess Irulan Atreides-Corrino, Conversations with Muad'Dib, Lib. Conf. Temp. Series 346; Stilgar ben Fifrawi, The Stilgar Chronicle, tr. Mityau Gwulador, Arrakis Studies 5 (Grumman: United Worlds).

  ZENSUNNI WANDERERS, History

  The Zensunni, who would eventually become the Fremen of Arrakis, began as a splinter sect broken off from an Old Terra religion. Originally followers of Maometh, the so-called Third Muhammed (1159-1241), the Zensunni abandoned Maometh's teachings in 1381, under the leadership of Ali Ben Ohashi. (Under his nominal leadership, at least; there is some evidence which indicates the Zensunni doctrines may have been almost completely authored by Nisai, Ben Ohashi's second wife.)

  While the Zensunni's mystic doctrines might appear hopelessly complex to the uninitiated, their underlying purpose was simply explained: they wished to answer the sunnah — the ten thousand religious questions posed by the Shari-a — with mystical understanding, and not with the more usual rational approaches.

  Some scholars believe that the name "Zensunni" was originally written as "Zen-Sunni," and was meant to incorporate the names of two differing philosophies of the period. These were the Zen, an antirational philosophy which predated the Butlerian Jihad by an unknown number of centuries; and the Sunni, a doctrine whose earliest writings are dated approximately 100 B.G., and whose precepts stated that it was the duty and mission of human intelligence to answer each of the sunnah. (The Sunni further believed that humanity's tenure in the universe would end when the final answer was discovered. The philosophy was not a popular one.)

  In accordance with their devotion to their religion, the Zensunni also believed that they owed no allegiance whatever to any secular government, on any level. For obvious reasons, then, the sect found most of its followers in those peoples already disposed to self-government. The Zensunni represented a small fraction of the Old Terra population. In 1572, according to a recently translated record fragment, there were less than 50,000 known Zensunni on the entire planet. Add to this the Zensunni preference for living as nomads in areas not usually frequented by comfort-minded travelers — the area of Old Terra usually referred to as the Sahara Desert, for example — and the reason for their continued tribal survival in the face of a steadily tightening governmental system becomes obvious. The Zensunni were simply too unimportant, and too difficult to reach, for their reabsorption into the mainstream to be worth attempting.

  By 2800, the Spacing Guild had rediscovered hundreds of habitable planets, most of them unpopulated. Under the Right of Domain rulings in the Great Convention the House paying the Guildsmen for a planetary find gained dominion over that planet, conditional upon the approval of the Landsraad Council and the emperor. But no House could expect to meet the Imperial revenues demanded for the new world — much less make a profit from the acquisition — without being able to establish a workforce there.

  Since the House often could not populate the planet, most Houses were content to relinquish all claim to a find and offer it, instead, as an Imperial Colony. If accepted, such an offer netted the House a handsome finder's fee, and left the problem of populating the new colony with the Throne.

  The Corrino emperors, being eminently practical in such matters, would spread the costs in lost manpower throughout their realm by demanding levees of "volunteers" to settle the colony; the methods used in persuading their own subjects to come forward were left to the rulers of the affected fiefs.

  In 2800, then, having graciously accepted Poritrin (the third planet of Epsilon Alangue) from House Maros, Emperor Elrood V turned a covetous eye on the population of Old Terra, hitherto left undisturbed due to its revered position as the cradle of human life. Elrood, in a precedent-shattering move, demanded a levy of two million men, women, and children from Siridar Baron Charles Mikarrol, planetary governor of Old Terra.

  Baron Mikarrol was thrown into a quandary. His subjects, so accustomed to their exemption from Imperial draft, were certain to rebel at the news that two million of their number were to be sent off-planet. The Baron had nearly despaired of choosing whom to send when one of his advisers — records do not indicate which one, but there are suggestions that it might have been Ari Manoud, Mikarrol's right-hand man and an outspoken Maometh Saari — reminded him of the existence of the Zensunni nomads.

  The Baron seized the idea gratefully. Who, after all, could object to his sending off a group of self-disenfranchised religious fanatics? And su
rely, after the passing of so many centuries, it would be possible to round up the necessary number from among them.

  By the end of their planet-wide search and seizure, the Mikarrol troops had uncovered more than two and one-half million Zensunni, all of whom were herded aboard Imperial transports and, over their most outraged protests, whisked off to Poritrin.

  It was a most expedient solution for Baron Mikarrol, and one that reaped him a number of benefits. First, there was the satisfaction of knowing that his fief had been cleared of a group which did not consider itself bound to his rule; second, he was well rewarded by his emperor for having produced a larger levy than demanded, and that in record time; and third, his action was unexpectedly recognized by the highest levels of authority within the Maometh Saari.

  PORITRIN. From the moment of their arrival on Poritrin, the Zensunni acted not like a terrified group of exiles, but like a people who were accustomed to challenges and fully capable of facing those of a new world. The various tribes, each obedient to the commands of its naib, or leader, worked in concert to divide the machinery and other resources the transport ships had left, decide on the planetary areas each tribe would settle, and disperse accordingly.

  There is a Zensunni chant (recorded in Daiwid Kuuan's Monuments of the Zensunni Migrations) thought to be from this period, which contains the following:

  ...and though our enemies scatter us far, even throughout the Universe, they shall never destroy us. For we are Misr, the People, and to us have been revealed the Fiqh and Ilm [the half-legendary sources of the Zensunni faith] which none other have seen. This remains. We remain.

  Despite their belief in their own racial survival, loss of the homeworld weighed heavily on the Zensunni. On Poritrin, where a plentiful supply of water, a long growing season, and a gentle climate combined to make the work of settling the planet unusually light, leisure time was frequently spent in reshaping and adapting the mystic doctrines and superstitions of the sect, and much of the reshaping concerned itself with the Zensunni's lost point of origin.

  By 3500, many of the Ulema (doctors of Zensunni theology; often, any Zensunni religious leader) and Sayyadina no longer preached that the Zensunni had been gathered and transported to Poritrin by the interfering planetary government. Instead, they taught that the Zensunni had fled Nilotic al-Ourouba (translates roughly as The Place of Truth and Mystery) to escape persecution and death — a subtle alteration of the truth which fit easily with the concept of the Zensunni being the sole bearers of mystic truths.

  By the end of another five centuries, most Zensunni had been taught, and wholeheartedly believed, that Poritrin was their original homeworld. Nilotic al-Ourouba was still believed to be the place in which the ten thousand sunnah would be answered, but it was also believed that this would not take place until the Zensunni’s time on Poritrin was completed. Then, they would make a great hajra (a religious journey) to Nilotic al-Ourouba to seek those answers. Only a small, select number of the Sayyadina passed on the truth concerning the migration from one generation to the next; even the Ulema had forgotten, or never been told, the facts.

  The easy living conditions on Poritrin affected the sect’s societal makeup even more drastically. Since a large number of people could be comfortably fed and housed on a relatively small land area, the population began to stabilize. Permanent settlements, some of them comparable in size to small cities elsewhere in the Imperium, grew all over the planet. The ways of the ancient Zensunni — the nomadic lifestyle, the fierce insistence on independence — were abandoned.

  The new Zensunni, the soft ones, were no match then for the raiders who were dispatched to Poritrin in 4492 by the Landsraad leaders of the First Republic. It was their wish that Poritrin be used as a new homeworld for House Alexin (whose native world, Pelouzen, had been rendered uninhabitable by a series of semi-legal atomics tests) and the existing population divided between colonies on Beta Tegeuse and Salusa Secundus.

  It had taken the entire force of House Mikarrol to locate and transport the Zensunni on Old Terra. On Poritrin, the task required a mere five legions: approximately one hundred fifty thousand men.

  Their easy success with so light a force against an entire population — the Zensunni are believed to have numbered over ten million by this time — was due even more to the Poritrin Zensunni’s superstitious beliefs than to their weakness. Until almost the moment of departure, when a handful of the craftiest Sayyadina managed to learn the actual destinations of the heighliners on which the Zensunni were to travel, the populace had simply accepted the arrival of the Landsraad force as a fulfilling of the Zensunni prophecies concerning the hajra they must make to Nilotic al-Ourouba, Their time on Poritrin was done, the raiders had said, and they were there to take them to their designated place. Where could that place be, if not the planet from the legend?

  To their credit, the Sayyadina even managed to get the word out among their people, but it was to no avail. The Zensunni were as effectively contained as cattle in a ground transport, and the reward for the women who had tried to save them, when they were found, was torture and death at the hands of their captors.

  It is interesting to note that, in spite of their having been split from friends, neighbors, and in many cases, loved ones, the Zensunni on the ships bound for both planets were reported as showing no signs of personal grief.

  Theirs was a deeper grief: the chance for salvation for their people had been stolen from them. Each ship's crew gave an account of the same cry punctuating the captives' incessant wailing: "They denied us the Hajra!"

  SALUSA SECUNDUS. Some five million Zensunni were transferred to Salusa Secundus, the homeworld of House Corrino which had been made the Imperial Prison Planet when the Corrinos shifted their capital to Kaitain (1487). The prison planet had an ecological system so harsh that six out of thirteen persons born there died before the age of eleven. Among those not native to the planet, the death rate was markedly higher.

  This was the environment in which the relatively pampered Zensunni found themselves. It was made worse for them by the fact that the Landsraad troops had recognized their unshakable sense of loyalty and community, even in conditions of extreme peril; considering this, they were held as slaves and made to perform the most difficult and dangerous tasks in the hope of breaking their spirit and making them easier to manage.

  The plan did not work quite as expected. While thousands, then hundreds of thousands, of the Zensunni died within the first few years of their captivity, the vast majority of them appeared to have reverted to the ways of their barely remembered ancestors. At the end of their first generation as slaves, the off-planet Zensunni were exhibiting a survival rate which compared very favorably to that of those born on Salusa Secundus (the traditional place of recruitment for the Imperial Sardaukar, the Padishah Emperor's soldier-fanatics).

  Different approaches were tried. Subjected to ever more rigorous oppression, the third generation proved more resilient than the second. The fifth generation was commanded to give up the faith, or die; though all known Sayyadina, and over half the population at large, were butchered, the Zensunni doctrines continued to be passed on in the slaves' carefully disguised work chants, and new Sayyadina were initiated as quickly as the old could be spied out. In the seventh and eighth generations, attempts were made to convert all the able-bodied Zensunni to the mystic disciplines of the Imperial Sardaukar. The end result was always the same: the Zensunni either completely ignored the attempt, or feigned going along with the conversion until the instructors could no longer keep him away from weapons training. At that point, the "convert" arranged to kill as many of his fellow students and instructors as possible, along with himself.

  In 5295, near the end of his reign, Ezhar VII reviewed the records detailing nine generations of his ancestors' failures with the Zensunni and decided that he would not be responsible for a tenth. Taking full advantage of the chance to be remembered for his benignity, the old emperor announced that it was not his policy
to punish people whose only crime lay in having had criminal forebears, and arranged for the surviving Zensunni to be transferred to Ishia (second planet of Beta Tygri), a Corrino holding which had been allowed to lie fallow since its discovery.

  BELA TEGEUSE. Aside from the initial wrench of having lost half their number, the Zensunni who were transported in 4492 from Poritrin to Bela Tegeuse were well treated and fared much better than their numbers on Salusa Secundus. Upon landing, they were given what stock and machinery they would need and left alone on a planet very similar to the one from which they had been taken.

  When years had passed with no sign of the raiders' return, the Zensunni once again adopted many of the customs acquired on Poritrin. They established their homes, their farms, their grazing areas — but with differences. On Poritrin, where they had been so certain that no one and nothing was going to disturb them until the time came for their people to journey back to Nilotic al-Ourouba, they had scattered their settlements all over the planet, and left them open to visitors. On Bela Tegeuse, the settlements were larger, closer together, and more often in contact; they were also heavily walled, and sentries were posted every hour of the day and night.

  It was not all grim and military, however. There was time, as there had been on Poritrin, to study the Shah-Nama, the First Book. There was time to raise fruit trees and flowering plants, to build fountains, to wonder about and pray for the half of the misr never expected to be seen again. And there was enough time — almost eight centuries of peace — to dull the pain and soften the memories of having been uprooted from the world that most of the Zensunni considered their home planet.