As someone who just spent their free day one-shotting the Temple of Space exploration, I really love your posts about it because I have nooo idea what you mean. I spent the whole time going "oooh pretty exhibits" and "ooooh chest" with a side of "oh this is lore stuff let me skim it in 2 seconds." I really like learning stuff from your posts btw this is not a criticism I love seeing someone get so focused on the lore <33
Hahaha!! I am literally lore-flailing to out-of-town wife about the Temple in a chat as we speak!
We still haven't finished it, so now to avoid any potential spoilers until Sunday.
But I think my greatest fascination at this point is the connection to the philosophy behind Dottore's boss theme, and how that philosophy is closely tied to the Temple. Because especially in the library, it is VERY present!
Dottore's boss theme is titled Prajnaparamitopadesa To Quell Seven Calamities. (Translation here)
This references a school of Buddhism called Mahayana, and specifically Prajnaparamita, the philosophical framework necessary to become a bodhisattva, an enlightened saviour who chooses not to ascend but voluntarily remains in the flawed world to help others attain enlightenment and escape suffering.
He does allude to this world-view and his frustration with the cycles of suffering a few times in his talk with Traveler;
Even his out of left field offer to Traveler to 'kill' innocent people and "tear off their heads, or limbs as you please!" actually references this philosophy;
The Prajñāpāramitā sutras give the simile of a magician (māyākāra: 'illusion-maker') who, when seemingly killing his illusory persons by cutting off their heads, really kills nobody and compare it to the bringing of beings to awakening (by 'cutting off' the conceptualization of self view
In our world, this school of philosophy was founded by a man named Nagarjuna. And there is a Nagarjuna in Genshin, whom I'm 90% sure is Dottore - they're from roughly the same era and the same nation.
His boss lyrics further echo this existing philosophy, the cornerstone of which is a type of "emptiness" - that all phenomena we perceive as real in truth have no "essence", and as such, could really hold the potential to be anything. That only by accepting and defeating the illusions of existence and non-existence, birth and death can you break free from suffering.
These are the opening lyrics to his boss theme, quoting that philosophy:
No cessation, no origination
No annihilation, no permanence
The same sentiment can be found in the description of his Madman's Restraint boss drop;
Yet believing that all things, whether they exist or not, can be contained within reason may itself be another form of lunacy. The madman sees through reason's cunning, and in his world, all things are permitted.
Now, in the Temple of Space, the great library is called the Mahavaipulya Chamber.
I am very much not an expert on Buddhism, all I know I've gathered from some quick googling, but Mahavaipulya is a sutra in that same Mahayana school of Buddhism, also attributed to our world's real Nagarjuna.
And the different people we meet in the library keep referencing this philosophy of existence and non-existence, the lack of inherent "essence" (or in Genshin terms, I suppose that would be pre-ordained Fate).
In the Temple also exists the Cage of Suchness. To quote another Buddhist passage;
They make up their minds that 'one single self we shall tame ... one single self we shall lead to final Nirvana.'
A Bodhisattva should certainly not in such a way train himself.
On the contrary, he should train himself thus: "My own self I will place in Suchness [the true way of things], and, so that all the world might be helped,
I will place all beings into Suchness, and I will lead to Nirvana the whole immeasurable world of beings."
So that whole Temple is, without doubt, connected to Dottore's world-philosophy which in turn is based on the real world Mahayana school of thought. It's literally what the lyrics of his boss theme are all about.
And bringing back the Nagarjuna connection with a second in-game reference in the Temple makes me even more certain of my assessment that they are either closely connected or the same person.
Genshin's Nagarjuna (who was a hero! He fought on the frontlines against the Cataclysm, was brothers in arms with Dain, allied with the Pari and helped seal the Abyss at the gates of Khaenri'ah) only has one arm. So at first glance, it would seem it's not a fit.
But. We never see young student Zandik's right arm in those carefully angled illustrations from Thoth's quest. And now not only one, but two of Dottore's subsequent boss forms have something weird going on with their right hands. One, a mechanical golden hand. The other, a half-transparent pixellated one with strange cube-growths.
Young Zandik suffered from Eleazar and lost his arm to it. Just like with Abbas, whom he later treated at Dar al-Shifa, only amputation saved him.
That is what his musings in the Wise Doctor's Pinion artifact description could reference;
A human is nothing more than a machine of a certain level of complexity.
If one were to disassemble a part of this machine and make enhancements to it,
Its performance could be greatly amplified.
Taking on a very different meaning if he's talking about himself and the possibility of using prosthetics to regain the 'part of the machine' he'd lost.
In which case his horrid treatments of the patients at the Eleazar hospital were also not simply the clinical experiments of a detached researcher, but the ruthless fury of a fellow victim hellbent on finding a cure for the sickness that he himself was left maimed by.
There is one more place in the game where those lyrics from his boss theme above show up; on the monument of the Order of Skeptics (or Rectification Order, as they're called in original Chinese. The ones who want to set the world right) at Tunigi Hollow, outside the gates of Khaenri'ah.
A group of people disillusioned with the hypocrisy of the Akademiya, founding their own darshan of Heresy in the desert.
The same creed of frustration and disdain at the Akademiya preaching the seeking of knowledge while at the same time suppressing it, that's found in the description of one of his other boss drops.
The thing is, for all the horrible things Dottore's done, if you actually listen to what he's saying, not the snarky tone it's said in...
This is a man genuinely wanting to save the world.
He may not care much for people as individuals, but humanity as a whole... He strives to break their cycles of suffering.
He wants to set the world free.
The conclusion to his boss theme:
It shines like the full moon
