Best Of
Re: What do you think of modern movies?
I think part of what made it interesting was that it wasn’t a superhero movie, and also hadn’t fallen prey to the ‘Marvel syndrome’ of interchangeable hero’s all with quips and jokes and monologues to camera and poses. It was a heartfelt story told with sincerity, good acting and moments of real tension.
It was really interesting watching Tom’s video about the Marvel syndrome, especially the section about corporate passion and real passion as embodied by the Lord of the Rings films and everyone who had worked on them. I don’t think there has been anything to match the craft and detail as shown by the appendices to those films since then.
In a way, all the TV series that were trying to be the next Game of Thrones were suffering from following in its footsteps and having one eye on potentially huge success and then not honouring their source material. Rings of Power, House of the Dragon, Foundation, Sandman, none of them really blew up to a must-see phenomenon.
Jeroen
Re: Poem for the day
This poem was first published around 1914
Henry Dupre LaBouchere, 'Where Is The Flag Of England?'
Where Is The Flag Of England?
Let the winds of the world make answer!
North, South, East, West,
Wherever there is wealth to covet
Or land to be possessed:
Wherever the savage nations
To coddle, coerce or scare,
You may look for the vaunted emblem
For the Flag of England is there!
Aye, it waves over the blazing hovels
Whence its African victims fly
To be shot by explosive bullets
Or wretchedly starve and die:
Or where the beachcomber hammers
The isles of the southern sea -
From the peak of his hellish vessel
The English flag flies free!
The Maori, full of hate, curses
With his fleeting, dying breath.
And the Arab hath hissed his hatred
As he spat at its folds in death.
The hapless fellah hath feared it
On Tel el Kebir's parched plain.
And the blood of the Zulu hath stained it,
With a deep indelible stain.
It has floated over scenes of pillage
And flaunted over deeds of shame.
It has waved o'er the fell marauder
As he ravished with Sword and flame:
It has looked on ruthless slaughter
And assassination dire and grim.
And has heard the shrieks of its victims
Drown even the jingo hymn.
Where is the flag of England?
Seek the land where the natives rot
And decay, and assured extinction
Must soon be the people's lot.
Go to the once fair island
Where disease and death are rife
And the greed of colossal commerce
Now fattens on human life.
Where is the flag of England?
Go sail where the rich galleons come
With their shoddy and wasted cotton,
And beer and Bibles and rum.
Seek the land where brute force hath triumphed
And hypocrisy hath its lair.
And your question will thus be answered
For the flag of England is there!
Shoshin1
Re: Games that are spiritual
Games that are spiritual
Life is the ultimate spiritual game, unfolding in cycles rather than straight lines. It moves through the ups and downs , attachment and loss, joy and sorrow, each moment passing as it arrives. There are no winners and no losers, only lessons. We all have to play until the very end, and if we do not get it right the first time, we replay it again and again.. Life becomes a teacher, returning us to familiar paths until we learn to walk them with awareness.
Life is like a game of dice...you never know what will come up....
So roll the dice and spice up your life ...
![]
Shoshin1
Re: Experience of mantra practice
I’ve experimented with it, very casually. It struck me as being a kind of hypnotic technique, which is not at all a bad thing.
Jeroen
Re: Experience of mantra practice
I hear in dharma talks often chanting before and after. Like an example people might have heard in the heart sutra "gate, gate, paragete, parasamgati,,,bodhisvaha". There is a meaning to that mantra. Sometimes I find myself spontaneously thinking of a mantra during my ordinary day
Jeffrey
Re: Rebirth as an animal
Seems to me the greater the capacity for abstract thought, the more different ways there are to suffer. With humans, the problem has grown to be so extreme that they have had to invent religion to help counteract the stress.
It has been reported that Chimpanzees, our closest relatives, will sometimes - when the rains go on and on without letup and become very stressful - will conduct a sort of circle dance that resembles a kind of ritual. This is rarely observed, but one is tempted to wonder if this is a nascent form of religion.
The farther down the evolutionary ladder you go, the fewer the potential causes of stress and suffering. Perhaps flies cannot become enlightened because they have no need to do so - they can easily survive and reproduce without it.
But do fewer stressors mean more happiness? It only takes one, in my experience, to toss you off the tracks, but the more of them there are, the harder it is to get back on.
Fosdick
Re: Waking Up and Growing Up
You know, someone once told me that the best place to be a child in is the countryside, the best place to spend one's teenage and young adult years is the city and where one should grow old is about in the middle: in a small town. I think, to some length, that has some spiritual message too. From the peaceful, quiet transitioning to the loud, exciting world of today and perhaps as a fruit of disillusionment, but not with hate, to settle down between the extremes.
RobinH
Re: Games that are spiritual
I can’t think of any… a friend of mine worked on the environmentalist game Fate of the World in which you could see which decisions had a noticeable impact on climate change and the planetary environment.
Jeroen
Books and movies that have soul
Lately I have been reading ‘Meetings with Remarkable Men’ by G. I. Gurdjieff, and in the introduction I came across a long memory of the writer where he cited a speech by a Persian gentleman of his acquaintance. This man told of how literature formed the minds of subsequent generations, and how he felt that modern literature had lost its soul. As an example of an older book that did have soul, he held up ‘A Thousand and One Nights’.
So that made me start thinking about modern works of fiction that did have soul, and I think this is the start of a very interesting discussion about fiction that has soul, versus that which is just entertainment. I did a little research on Goodreads, about what people there consider books that are food for the soul, and I’ve made up a short list of books and movies that may fit the bill.
The Alchemist, book by Paulo Coelho… This is a short book about a shepherd boy who goes on a journey from Spain across North Africa to the Pyramids in order to find treasure. What he finds is not just physical treasure but something of the mysterious.
The Little Prince, book by Antoine St Exupery… This novella follows a young prince who visits various planets, including Earth, and addresses themes of loneliness, friendship, love, and loss. Despite its style as a children's book, The Little Prince makes observations about life, adults, and human nature.
Eat Pray Love, book by Elizabeth Gilbert… This memoir chronicles the author's trip around the world after her divorce and what she discovered during her travels. She rediscovers food in Italy, prayer in India and love in Bali.
The Way, movie… This film follows a physician on a journey along the Camino de Santiago, as he follows in the footsteps of his dead son in order to leave behind his ashes. Along the way he discovers companionship, lightheartedness and diverse communities.
Spirited Away, movie… This animated film follows Chihiro, a young girl who finds herself in the world of the spirits. It is arguably Hayao Miyazaki’s masterwork, speaking visually and emotionally to the soul.
I think these works speak to the sensation of wonder and the mysterious, the sense of being nourished by something extraordinary. I stayed away from things like ‘The Lord of the Rings’ (too much darkness and battle) or ‘The Count of Monte Christo’ (it’s a story about revenge), which although they are great stories do not actually nurture.
Jeroen
Re: Unusual mantra?
I saw you on another thread and I thought I recognized the name, so I went to look at most recent comments. First, welcome back. Second, since we're now living in the future, have you tried google translate with an image search? My phone recognizes this as Tibetan, but I can't get a shot of it without all the other text in the post. I'm kind of curious myself what it could say.
person