Zen Movies, Bears And Popcorn

It's the weekend so I thought I might offer up  a list of  my favourite Buddhist movies.  The Buddha's Oscars maybe?  And of course that would mean this little bear is sitting in a bowl of popcorn.  Remember the episode of Seinfeld years ago where someone eats a chocolate bar with a knife and fork.  Well this little Ursus is eating his popcorn with a spoon.  How sophisticated!  It's hard to get that buttery goodness off your paws!

Enough foolishness for now, at least.  One of my all time favourite movies is "Words of My Perfect Teacher" made by Canadian film maker Lesley Ann Patten.  She made the movie about her slightly eccentric  beer drinking, soccer loving, Tibetan Buddhist teacher, Dzongsar Khyentse Norbu who incidentally made another of my favourite Buddhist movies, called "The Cup" about a young soccer loving monk.  (I think there's some autobiography in this movie!)  It's charming and delightful.  One thing that blew me away is that Khyentse Norbu had never made a movie before but acted as the "Buddhist" consultant to Bertolucci on the movie, "The Little Buddha" (also a good watch).  Just hanging around the set and watching, he figured out how to make his own movie!  Khyentse Norbu also made a movie called "Travelers and Magicians" more recently and while it is a bit long and windy, it is still worth the watch.

Another one of my favourites is "I heart Huckabees".  Although Buddhism is never mentioned in the film, it really is all about aspects of the Dharma and Buddhist practice, tucked in there by the Buddhist film maker, David O Russell.  To boot it stars Lily Tomlin, Dustin Hoffman, Isabelle Hupert, and Jason Schwartzman.  I don't generally watch a movie more than once, but this is one I have, and own!

I loved "How to Cook Your Life" with Ed Espe Brown, of Tassajara cookbook and bread book fame.  It's about a Zen and bread baking retreat he leads.  Several people I knew ran home and baked bread the day after they saw this movie.  It's a tasty treat.  Brown is at his best when he sheds a tear over a little cast iron tea pot.  You will want pizza after you see this movie if nothing else!

A truly heart wrenching movie is "What Remains of Us" made by a Tibetan woman, Kalsang Dolma who lives in Montreal.  She smuggled a video recorder with a message from the Dalai Lama into Tibet and filmed the responses of Tibetans, some of them who have never actually seen the Dalai Lama.  It's wonderful and sad all at the same time.  Don't see this when you're looking for light entertainment.

"Milarepa" is  the story of the Tibetan poet and sage  of the same name and is only the first half of Milarepa's life.  Part two is in the works.  It's filled with intrigue and beautiful scenery.   This is well worth seeing, ends as a cliff hanger, but with tons of dharma yet to come.

Other honorable mentions are "Ten Questions for the Dalai Lama" made by Rick Ray.  It is always good to see the Dalai Lama so it's worth the watch and the title kind of says it all.  Also, we saw an unusual little flick called "Zen Noir".  It kind of follows an old detective story theme and is a little odd, but we enjoyed it well enough.  I heard a rumour that a couple of monks found it a bit off colour.  Of course, this intrigued me, and made me really want to see this movie. 

"Call It Karma" made by Vancouverite, Geoff Brown, is the story of Gyalten Rinpoche's  1,000 mile trek and pilgrimage and definitely worth a look.    And the last one I'll mention is called "Enlightenment Guaranteed".  It's a German movie about 2 brothers who go to a Zen monastery in Japan.  One brother loves the idea of Zen and the other brother tags along after being dumped by his wife.  It's a strange little ditty, amusing in some spots.  My daughter watched it with me and her comment was "it looks like someone made it on a super8 camera" so be prepared for it's home movie look, but the dharma is tucked in there.

So get out the corn popper and enjoy!

Are Your Thoughts Real?

In the final scene of the movie "I Heart Huckabees"  one character is talking about a protest meeting and says, "Bring your own chains."  And the  protagonist  quips,  "We always do."  I love that line and I was thinking about it this morning in reference to "thinking".

Yesterday I became aware of the  chain like quality of  my thoughts.  I was all tangled up in those chains and if you'd chucked me off the short end of the pier that would have been the end of me.  In Buddhist terms, it isn't the thinking that is the problem, it's our attachment to our thoughts.  The fact that we believe them. (One of my favourite bumper stickers is "Don't believe everything you think".  When I told my Zen teacher, she replied, " it should be don't believe anything you think")  But I digress.  Such is the nature of thinking, following one thought after another like an unruly puppy.

My thoughts, your thoughts, any thoughts they are only troubling when somehow we buy into them, believe them, make them real and substantial.  I found this a bit hard to get at first because we are so intimate with our thoughts.  And we tend to think the same general thoughts over and over.  How can they not be real?  And in western culture our thoughts are considered as the basis for our being.  "I think, therefore I am."

And we do give substance to our thoughts.  They make us feel afraid, angry.  We might think we are bad because we have certain thoughts.  We give all kinds of power to our thoughts.  In watching some habitual and unpleasant thoughts yesterday I thought about the issue of addiction that I had been contemplating earlier.  I could see how I was drawn to these particular unwholesome thoughts in a very strong way.  .... Old long standing thoughts brought about by some family interactions ....  I could see how the thoughts were based on assumptions and how much I wanted to continue to think in the same, slightly self righteous way.    There was a little soap opera going on in my head.  Of course I was the star in the white hat and others where wearing hats of slightly dimmer shades.  These thoughts were agitating, yet I was drawn to them.  When I kicked those bums out, they kept coming back to do an encore.  So I could see what someone with an addiction must grapple with, the tenacity of the siren's call.  I was just trying to say no thanks to a thought, not a line of coke or a smoky glass of whiskey.

Last night I was reading Uchiyama's "Opening the Hand of Thought" and he talked about thoughts as "secretions".  That seemed a bit creepy.  Hmmm, secretions, it has a bodily fluid, ear waxy kind of ring to it.  I think his point was that thoughts just come out of our mind, the way things like sweat come out of our pores.  We don't have a lot of control over them, they are inevitable, everyone has them.  They are essential and helpful in their proper place.  I always love the quote, "the mind makes a good servant but not a very good master."  which I believe belongs to RM Jiyu Kennett, the founder of the Soto Zen Order of Buddhist Contemplatives at Shasta Abbey.

And while sometimes we may think it is the nature of our thoughts that is the problem, really it is our relationship with our thoughts that really matters.  ....To touch them lightly and let them go, as you might a tiny delicate moth that finds its way in through the open window.