Violence in Movies: Kill Bill Vol. 1 May 31, 2010
Posted by Philip Ryan in : Art , 10 comments
Kill Bill Vol. 1 was on TV last night. (Kill Bill Vol. 3 is slated for 2014, I don’t know how seriously.) And so, oddly, for the second time in a week I found myself defending it, despite disliking strongly when I saw it in the theater years ago. Aside from its pervasive violence, it is adolescent, pornographic, fetishistic, pointless, and often dull, and yet it is great movie—by which I mean I think it’s worth watching.
It is a loving homage to several genres now—or perhaps always—largely disdained by movie audiences (rape revenge, kung-fu, etc.) and an exercise in form. It is an unapologetic B-movie. I don’t think it’s the case that if Tarantino hadn’t made it, someone else would have. No one else would have made this movie.
My defending it to friends this week is partly contrariness and a knee-jerk objection to sanctimoniousness. if that many people I respect hate something so much, surely there must be something to it. There is a lot to criticize: The roles are stereotyped, the dialogue is silly, you know how it’s going to end… but the reason my friends were so upset by it was because of the violence.
It is very violent. Every scene is extremely violent. Worse, it is a cartoonish kind of violence where limbs are lopped off and fountains of blood spray across the screen. (I haven’t seen the SAW movies or the new kind of ultra-violent hour film like Hostel, but I imagine they’re similar. For that matter I haven’t played any first-person-shooter games, so I can’t speak on that either.)
Anna Karenina’s main plot revolves around adultery, but the book is not a celebration of adultery. Kill Bill does not exactly celebrate violence, but it takes some childish delight in it. The violence, while cartoonish, is not without consequence—people are hurt, and people die. Does a movie need to condemn violence in order to feature it? No Country for Old Men takes a great deal of pleasure in its fight scenes and dripping blood, but [SPOILER ALERT] the main character dies at the end. Does that make the violence that precedes it ok? It’s actually a more cynical view of the universe.
I don’t think violence in movies de-sensitizes or habituates people, especially children, to violence. I don’t think violence on screen causes violence any more than sex on screen causes sex. Kill Bill takes place in a particular universe that none of us live in, You can dislike Kill Bill for a lot of reasons, or choose not to watch it, but the fact that it is incredibly violent and every scene contains gushing blood isn’t enough reason to dismiss it out of hand as immoral, amoral, or unworthy of an intelligent person’s attention.
What’s my point? It annoys me when people get sniffy and high and mighty and start talking right and wrong about things like movies. Keep your ethics out of my art.
Knowing the story doesn’t solve it
Posted by James Shaheen in : Buddhism, Buddhist Teachings, Meditation, Mindfulness, Theravada, Vipassana , 4 comments
A few days ago I posted an interview with Jack Kornfield and said I’d post an earlier interview with him soon. Well, here it is. The interview was given in 2000, around the time Kornfield’s After the Ecstasy, The Laundry appeared. Here are two excerpts that will give you an idea of some of the modes of practice Jack was thinking about and teaching nearly a decade before the later interview. In the first excerpt, interviewer and Tricycle founder Helen Tworkov responds to Jack’s telling of his own initial and quite rigorous introduction to the dharma with a question about commitment to practice among his own students:
Without the demanding initiation of the ascetic or the warrior, can the path inspire the same levels of motivation and commitment?
True dharma practice is a revolutionary activity, and you can’t do it in a comfortable way. You really have to challenge the whole identity of your life. But the strength that’s asked for is not necessarily the strength of eliminating the impurities of body and mind, or fighting against the defilements of greed, hatred, and delusion, the inner corruptions, though this language is very common in Theravadin, Tibetan, and Zen Buddhism. The strength that’s needed is the courage of heart to remain undefended and open, a willingness to touch the ten-thousand joys and the ten-thousand sorrows from our compassion, the deepest place of our being. This is a different kind of fearlessness, which requires as much or more passion and fire.
Here, in the second excerpt, Jack discusses his own approach and understanding to the principles of Western psychotherapy in the context of Buddhist practice and the role of one’s own “story” along the path:
Aren’t Western students prone to seek a kind of comfort that can undermine the revolutionary quality that you speak of?
Yes. One of the dangers of dharma success is comfort. As the teaching becomes more mainstream it has become more comfortable. Practitioners have become more affluent, and if you combine that with greater emphasis on compassion and less ascetic warrior practice, there’s a danger that the true depth of commitment that’s necessary for this revolutionary transformation will get lost.
And your students don’t engage you in their personal stories?
Sometimes the story needs to be told in the presence of another person in order to accept it or let go of it. But usually a little bit of the story is enough; we don’t need to go back into our whole history. Someone might say that they are suffering because of the past, and we might spend a little bit of time asking, well, what are the beliefs that you have, what are the fears, the memories, the images that you carry? But always working with an underlying awareness which asks: Is that who you really are? Not to solve it or go back and rework it. True inner work is to experience the reality of contraction or fear, just now, and then to discover that it’s not our true nature, not who you are. Knowing the story doesn’t solve it. What brings freedom is turning to face the root of that suffering, and the identity that’s constructed around it, going right into the center of it until one comes to its true emptiness. And wise psychotherapy must also do that in the same way that dharma practice does, because that’s how liberation happens.
There are lots of exchanges like the above in which we discover that Jack doesn’t attempt to “bring together” Buddhism and psychotherapy rather, he doesn’t necessarily make a distinction between them—or at least, he finds a middle way. In one amusing exchange, Jack points out that if he trained his students like Marpa trained Milarepa, “they’d either leave or sue.” But he’s got another way to teach the same thing.
You can read the full interview here.
Image: Wisdom Quarterly
Who discovered tea?
Posted by James Shaheen in : Buddhism, Tricycle, food , 3 comments
Was it Bodhidharma (the Indians and Zen Buddhists think so) or Emperor Shen Nung (all of China thinks so) who discovered tea? The emperor found that it kept his soldiers alert, while Bodhidharma, marathon meditator that he was, discovered that it helped keep him awake in meditation (in his commitment to stay awake, Bodhidharma severed his eyelids, from which sprang forth the first tea plant). You decide whose uses are most noble.
So who was it? It’ll depend on where you are when you ask—in other words, there is no answer—but there are good and reliable tips for everything from choosing the right tea to brewing a cup to cleaning your teapot. Take a look at this from Haaretz.com.
And a few tea facts you’d otherwise miss if you didn’t read the Haaretz article: The English drink nearly 4.5 kilograms (9.9 pounds) of it per person every year. Worldwide, Lipton’s Yellow Label is probably the bestselling. And whoever it was who first discovered that it was good for brewing, the tea plant is indigenous to India.
For more on tea, read Phyllis Segura’s “The Essential Pause.”
The World Without Us May 30, 2010
Posted by James Shaheen in : Books, Buddhism, Environment, Science, Tricycle , 2 comments
I came across an Elephant Journal tweet that took me to this, by Jay Winston:
Hell, pumping every kind of toxin into our ground, air, and water while carelessly wasting every natural resource we can find is perhaps the single most defining characteristic of human society. Nonetheless, in big-picture terms, our total effect on Mother Earth really hasn’t amounted to anything more serious than a bad case of planetary eczema or psoriasis. And, the way things are going, we won’t be bothering her for long.
Take a look, it’s a good, short read. But it brought an interview of our own to mind: Clark Strand interviewed Alan Weisman, author of The World Without Us, for Tricycle some time ago. What would the earth be like without us? Turns out it’d recover pretty quickly but, as our friends at EJ tweeted back, “not all the sentient beings or biodiversity on it.”
I once heard Gelek Rimpoche say, “The world will end but the dharma will continue.” And this, from someone who is certainly concerned about the earth and its future and who is tuned into contemporary politics and culture. I didn’t manage a follow-up question—it was at some gathering or other—maybe I’ll have that chance another time.
Image: old metal plating factory, 2006 © Rob Dobi
How the clouds of thinking clear & 6 Words of Sage Advice
Posted by James Shaheen in : Buddhism, Buddhist Teachings, Tibetan Buddhism, Tricycle , 1 comment so far
Ken McLeod is currently leading a Tricycle Retreat (you can listen to his first talk to “The Way of Freedom” here). Included in his teaching is his translation of Tilopa’s Pith Instructions on Mahamudra. (Tilopa is considered the founder of Tibetan Buddhism’s Kagyu lineage.)
Here’s a verse:
Mists rise from the earth and vanish into space.
They go nowhere, nor do they stay.
Likewise, though thoughts arise,
Whenever you see your mind, the clouds of thinking clear.
Ken also lists a number of other translations of Tilopa’s Pith Instructions by, among others, Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche and Keith Dowman here.
And, for good measure, here are Tilopa’s six words of advice to his student Naropa:
From Wikipedia:
According to [Ken], the text contains exactly six words; the two English translations given in the following table are both attributed to him.
Six Words of Advice First short, literal translation Later long, explanatory translation Tibetan (Wylie transliteration) 1 Don’t recall Let go of what has passed mi mno 2 Don’t imagine Let go of what may come mi bsam 3 Don’t think Let go of what is happening now mi shes 4 Don’t examine Don’t try to figure anything out mi dpyod 5 Don’t control Don’t try to make anything happen mi sgom 6 Rest Relax, right now, and rest rang sar bzhag
Surviving the dragon
Posted by James Shaheen in : Books, Buddhism, Interview, Politics, Tibetan Buddhism, Tricycle , 1 comment so far
Tsering Namgyal writes for phayul.com today that Arjia Rinpoche, former tutor to the last Panchen Lama, spoke to the Tibetan community in Minneapolis this week about his book Surviving the Dragon: A Tibetan Lama’s Account of 40 Years under Chinese Rule, published earlier this year. Arjia Rinpoche fled Tibet when he was asked to tutor the Panchen Lama’s Chinese-appointed successor (the successor the Dalai Lama selected disappeared into Chinese custody in 1995 and hasn’t been heard from since).
Arjia’s story is interesting not just because, like many Tibetans, he endured harsh conditions during his imprisonment, but because after he was released he rose to the highest echelons of the Chinese government. In the intro to his interview with Arjia Rincpoche for Tricycle in 2007, Michael Dunham writes:
Arjia Rinpoche’s life became a series of extreme swings of fortune: first as a carefree child, then as a protected and revered incarnate lama, then as a youth singled out and ridiculed by the Communists, then as a forced laborer in a Chinese camp, then as a “rehabilitated counterinsurgent” released from hard labor at the age of thirty, and, finally, as a favorite of the Beijing hierarchy. He was named head abbot of Kumbum Monastery, a position that proved to be more political than religious; it paved the way for even higher positions, including vice-chairman of the Chinese Youth Association, vice president of the Central Government’s Buddhist Association, and member of Beijing’s Central Government.
Pretty fascinating stuff. You can read Dunham’s full interview here.
Photo: Arjia Rinpoche with his parents in 1955 in Kokonor, Tibet. Courtesy the Tibetan Cultural Center, Bloomington, IN.
The Path of Supreme Optimism
Posted by James Shaheen in : Buddhism, Buddhist Teachings, Pure Land, Shin , 1 comment so farToday’s Daily Dharma:
Buddhism is a path of supreme optimism, for one of its basic tenets is that no human life or experience is to be wasted or forgotten, but all should be transformed into a source of wisdom and compassionate living. This is the connotation of the classical statement that sums up the goal of Buddhist life: “Transform delusion into enlightenment.” On the everyday level of experience, Shin Buddhists speak of this transformation as “bits of rubble turn into gold.”
Taitetsu Unno, “Number One Fool” (Spring 2008)
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Read the full article:
Number One Fool
Be a child of illusion
Posted by James Shaheen in : Buddhism, Buddhist Teachings, Tibetan Buddhism , 1 comment so farEach Friday, Acharya Judy Lief, teacher in the Shambhala tradition of Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, comments on one of Atisha’s 59 mind-training (Tib. lojong) slogans, which serve as the basis for a complete practice. Following each commentary Judy offers us a weekly practice.
Here is Slogan 6 (each slogan provides links to the previous slogans, including a two-part discussion of their history and use in practice). I’ve been following along each week myself—a good way to stay grounded—rather ungrounded!—in my practice.
6. In postmeditation, be a child of illusion.
Practice can be divided into two: meditation and postmeditation. Meditation refers to time spent in formal practices such as mindfulness-awareness, and postmeditation refers to what we do the rest of the time. The notion of practice, of being a spiritual practitioner, includes both meditation and postmeditation, which means that practice applies both on and of the meditation cushion.
Once you embark on the meditative path, once you are called a practitioner, everything you do should be seen as practice. The problem is that this could be taken in a very heavy-handed way, which would cloud ordinary activities with a pall of earnestness. It could be taken in an overly precious way, in which everything takes on deep import and a quality of icky religiosity. The trick is to maintain an attitude of practice and at the same time be light and ordinary.
In this slogan, the particular postmeditation practice is to “be a child of illusion.” It is to play within an environment that we recognize to be shifty and illusory. So rather than trying to make our world solid and predictable, and complaining when that is not the case, we could maintain the glimpses of the illusory nature of experience that arise in meditation practice, and touch in with that open illusory quality in the midst of our daily activities. That looser more open quality is the ground on which the compassionate actions of the bodhisattva can arise.
Today’s practice
Notice what happens when you move from formal meditation practice to postmeditation practice. Where is the continuity and where is the discontinuity? When you see yourself getting more and more solid and fixed, remember this slogan, take a fresh start, and notice how that affects the quality of your actions.
You can find the first 5 slogans and additional background here.
Less religion, more practice May 28, 2010
Posted by James Shaheen in : Buddhism, Buddhist Teachings, Interview, Meditation, Mindfulness, Theravada , 6 comments
The Los Angeles Times reports that Jack Kornfield is in Los Angeles this weekend to give a talk on CG Jung’s journals at the Armand Hammer Museum and to lead a three-hour meditation retreat at InsightLA. Kornfield, a psychologist and former Thai monk, has written extensively about Western psychology and Buddhist mindfulness practice. Trudy Goodman, LAInsight’s lead teacher, tells the Times, “I feel that Jack has changed Buddhism by being a pioneer for the inclusion of our emotional lives in the practice.”
“More and more, we’re teaching meditation not as a religious activity but as a support for living a wise and healthy and compassionate inner life,” Kornfield said recently. “A number of the people I teach don’t consider themselves Buddhists, which is absolutely fine with me. It’s much better to become a Buddha than a Buddhist.”
“Less religion, more practice,” is how the Times puts it. Here’s an interview I conducted with Jack in 2008. I’ll soon be posting an earlier interview with him that Tricycle founder Helen Tworkov conducted in 2000—interesting to see the progression in thought and practice.
Photo: Christine Alicino, 2008
How many candles on the Buddha’s birthday cake?
Posted by Sam Mowe in : Buddha, Buddhism, General, Random Notes , 1 comment so far
… Or how many lamps in the Buddha’s birthday tree?
Either way, yesterday’s post about Vesak got me wondering: when was the Buddha born?
As it turns out, there is a long scholarly discussion on the date of the Buddha’s birth (is anybody surprised?). The traditional date given in most Southeast Asian countries is 624 BCE. Scholars in the West and Asia have long rejected this date and, until recently, have placed the date somewhere between 567-563 BCE. These days, however, and increasing number of scholars place the date of the Buddha’s birth later—some even arguing that it could be up to one hundred years later than previously believed (463 BCE).
Professor Heinz Bechert organized a major symposium addressing this topic at the University of Göttingen in 1988. The three main arguments typically discussed for calculating his birth are:
—The question of dates for Emperor Asoka (especially his coronation date)
—The differences in sources and traditions about the years between the Buddha’s death and Asoka’s coronation
—Various lists of kings and Vinaya masters said to have lived in the years between the Buddha’s death and Asoka’s coronation
Generally, the later dates come from Indian sources and earlier dates come from Sri Lankan Pali texts. All traditions agree that the Buddha lived 80 years.
Personally, I don’t think that it matters to find or agree upon an exact date—but it’s interesting nonetheless. Many of the specific details about the Buddha’s life may or may not have happened at all. The important thing, in my humble opinion, is not the historical truth of these events, but their spiritual truth—their power to inspire. Stories about the Buddha’s life have been meaningfully told and listened to by countless numbers of people for many years. OK, maybe 2,473 years, if you want to get exact about it.
Read more on the historical dating of the Buddha here. (Originally published in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, Series 3, 6.1 (1996): 57-63.)
Image: Oceandesetoiles on Flickr.