I'm not talking about the definition of the word. I'm talking about Raiden Ei.
To be fair I didn't even think anything of it when I was making my theory on Inazuma and Raiden. But I was checking others and it all boiled down to the same thing: mental illness. Euthymia simply means a state of stable emotions or calmness. But it is used in psychology to define a condition in bipolar patients where a person can't help but be content. Judging by the previews we saw of Inazuma during the two livestreams for the new region Raiden seemed to be emotionless which many theorycrafters latched onto. It was further strengthened by the cutscene in Act 2 that showed Raiden seemingly shifting between emotionless and emotional (eyes glowing) phases.
But we now know for sure that isn't the case. Ei's of perfectly sound mind and extraordinarily emotional. She really loves her Dango Milk and light novels. I'd say even I underestimated how immature and girly the Shogun really was.
Anyway because of the inconsistencies of the ending for this quest I had decided to check out the original Chinese dub but I also like Yae so I decided to watch from when she shows up and what do you know? I ended up finding out about Euthymia.
So in Chinese the term for "Plane of Euthymia" is
Those last 2 words are actually a Buddhist term for the removal of desires. The whole thing actually translates to a single-minded resolution to remove desires. I don't know how much you guys know about the religion but in short you want to remove the desire for any material or earthly things because doing so will lead you to nirvana. I'm not quite sure what MiHoYo's trying to say with this but it comes down to the major subject of the Vision Hunt Decree: Ambitions.
======================
Going into a tl;dr analysis so if you don't like reading turn back now [emoji]
======================
Basically Ei thought Visions caused humans to chase their ambitions and every time she did she lost somebody so she wanted to protect her people from them. IslandXD actually talked about this part where he assumed Raiden's removing of people's Visions was how she wanted to protect them from their ambitions. This is legitimately a part of Buddhism as he pointed out with the Statue Raiden was building. That statue and her decree mirror a Shogunate era move too which I also talked about in my theory called the katanagari or Sword Hunt Decree. But the difference is that while IslandXD believed this was everybody misunderstanding Raiden's motives (serious there were a ton of theories from people defending Ei) I always believed that her move was made out of her immaturity. And she's confirmed to be that by both the story and her own Character Quest.
We saw how wrong she was and the story suggests that ambitions are necessary for progress making the old Buddhist belief wrong. Which is funny because the other side of this is the mono no aware which I talked about in my theory saying that Raiden's wrong for following a path of Eternity instead of the Moment. And this was confirmed by her Eternity being "nearest unto heaven" actually meaning the heavenly principles of Celestia. So I'm not quite sure what MiHoYo's getting at with the opposition towards the Buddhist teachings of the path towards nirvana but at the same time being in favor of mono no aware the Buddhist teachings of valuing impermanence. As far as I know the two teachings are supposed to go hand in hand.
See the reason why a person is meant to value impermanence is because all things on Earth are illusions in Buddhism. The material world is there to deceive you into falling off the path towards nirvana. That's why you need to give up your earthly desires like ambitions in order to reach nirvana and ascend beyond the material world.
Maybe that's why Raiden's still confused about it lol
