October 29, 2010

October 28, 2010

Kofu

 Mountains cover themselves with clouds. June 22, 2007.

Buddhist temple. June 23, 2007.

October 26, 2010

Kyoto, no. 2


 
Himeji Castle. June 19, 2007.

Kyoto from Himeji Castle. June 19, 2007.

October 23, 2010

Five underrated Kurosawa films


Drunken Angel (1948). In some ways, Drunken Angel was the first Kurosawa film where everything fell into place. His humanism in this one is a little on the sentimental side, which could be charming or a little wearisome, depending on your tolerance level. It’s like the rough draft of Ikiru.

Record of a Living Being (1955). The English title of this is I Live in Fear, which works, but Kurosawa’s title is better. The ending is haunting, and if anything, more potent now than it was in 1955.

The Lower Depths (1957). Criterion released this coupled with Renoir’s (inferior) version of the same play by Maxim Gorky. Renoir’s version is too romanticized and feels oddly flat, whereas Kurosawa’s version is grimier and acerbic.

Sanjuro (1962). Yojimbo gets most of the attention, but the sequel is every bit as good, if less cinematically revelatory. It’s a lighthearted (but not light) entry in Kurosawa’s canon.

Dreams (1990). Basically, Dreams is eight thematically linked short films, some of which are great. “Crows” is particularly breathtaking, and that’s Chisu Ryu as the old man in “Village of the Watermills.” Think of it as a commentary on Kurosawa’s life and career.

October 22, 2010

Film reviews: Two by Luis Buñuel


Viridiana (1961). After years of exile, Buñuel was allowed to return to his native country to direct the piercing satire Viridiana, a masterful film that only succeeded in getting him kicked out of Spain again. Ironically, however, despite its reception and Buñuel’s own irreligious objective, Viridiana, with its emphasis on human wickedness and depravity, is in many ways actually one of the most effective Catholic films of all time. Viridiana also finally signaled Buñuel’s maturity as an artist and set the pattern for his later work, including Simon of the Desert, a bizarre satire of religion, and the great, taboo shattering Belle de Jour. A.

The Phantom of Liberty (1974). If Buñuel discovered his path with the great Viridiana, his subsequent films became increasingly indistinguishable. While his grasp on the language of cinema prevented boredom, he essentially reworked the same themes with varying degrees of success; his humor, which once so fervently avoided the conventional, became predictable. This is not true for The Phantom of Liberty, where Buñuel’s id runs free in an outrageous confection of tangentially related vignettes. Some of the scenes drag, and the film as a whole suffers from Buñuel’s occasionally tiresome mockery of religion and the bourgeoisie, but Buñuel’s antipathy for logical progression creates a dizzying, unpredictable text full of possibility and surprise. B.

October 21, 2010

Students Discuss Mathematics: A Play


CAST:
Woman 1
Woman 2
Guy

SCENE: Three college students are seated on a bench in a hallway, waiting for their class to begin.

WOMAN 1: Most math teachers here are terrible ‘cause they only let you do things their way, you know?

Guy and Woman 2 voice agreement.

WOMAN 2: The guy I have now for algebra? If you use a faulty method, he’ll still count you off for that, even if you get the right answer on his tests.

WOMAN 1: That’s so stupid! I mean, if you get the right answer, isn’t that all that matters?

GUY: Well, in most math problems, there’s more than one right answer, anyway.

WOMAN 1: Right, so shouldn’t it be based on reasoning? If you can make something up that gets you the right answer, that’s what they should grade you on.

WOMAN 2: Yeah, not on being able to understand formulas.

Guy and Woman 1 voice agreement.

CURTAIN

[NOTE: I wrote this play after overhearing several students between classes at school. As painful as it is to say this, I did not make up a single line of dialogue. Yes, there are actually people who think this way. This is exactly why people in the hard sciences often ridicule humanities majors. And this is exactly why we often deserve it.]

October 20, 2010

Film reviews: Two by Jafar Panahi


Crimson Gold (2003). Crimson Gold is a slow, relentless deconstruction of crime that works as a gripping reflection on humanity and as potent social commentary. Panahi’s long, meditative shots don’t flinch, nor do his detached but intense nonprofessional actors. Interestingly, Panahi splits the climactic scene in two to act as bookends of the film, a conceit that, given the subject matter, works perfectly: despair and crime are cyclical tendencies that depend upon each other for continued existence. A-.

Offside (2006). Offside, like Crimson Gold, successfully deals with larger social issues on a human scale. The film takes place during a 2005 soccer match in Tehran, where several women try to sneak in to watch the game, though it is illegal for women to attend football games in Iran. The real-time approach and minimalist aesthetic perfectly articulate without deviating from Panahi’s concerns. Sadly, but perhaps unsurprisingly, the Iranian government banned this film, which is a decidedly critical examination of inconsistent and irrational legal regulations. With Offside, Panahi has sounded a much-needed call for reform. A.

October 18, 2010

Weird synchronicity: Bob Dylan and Madvillain


Bob Dylan:

 “Walk on your tiptoes
Don’t try ‘No-Doz’
Better stay away from those
That carry around a fire hose…

…Better jump down a manhole
Light yourself a candle
Don’t wear sandals
Try to avoid scandals
Don’t wanna be a bum
You better chew gum
The pump don’t work
‘Cause the vandals took the handles”

(“Subterranean Homesick Blues,” ll. 29-32; 64-71)

Madvillain:

“It’s too hot to handle, you got blue sandals
Who shot ya? Ooh got you new spots to vandal?
Do not stand still, both show skills,
Close but no crills, toast for po’ ills, post no bills
Coast to coast Joe Schmoes flows ill, go chill
Not supposed to overdose, No Doz pills…

…Not to be troublesome
But I could sure use a quick shot of rum
No stick of bubblegum”

(“Figaro,” ll. 28-33; 48-50)

October 17, 2010

Death is Not the End: A Review of Soho Machida’s Renegade Monk


[A book review I wrote for a class on East Asian religions, spring 2010.]

Machida, Soho. Renegade Monk: Hōnen and Japanese Pure Land Buddhism. Trans. Ioannis Mentzas. University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles (1999).

Soho Machida’s Renegade Monk is something of an anomaly in Buddhist studies, since, as Machida is careful to point out, not much scholarly attention has been paid to Hōnen or the discreet sect of Buddhism he helped formulate. Therefore, Machida is breaking new ground in his careful reconstruction of the contemporary cultural strands that were crucial in Hōnen’s intellectual development. Additionally, Machida makes another, even more vital accomplishment, for he admirably argues for the intellectual and cultural importance of studying Japanese Pure Land Buddhism and Hōnen. Renegade Monk is not a perfect book; however, despite a few notable shortcomings, Renegade Monk may be the best concise introduction to Hōnen’s exclusive-nembutsu Buddhism and the culture and world behind its development.

Machida’s main ideas sometimes appear vague or difficult to pinpoint because not much academic research has been done in this area of Buddhism. Upon closer examination, however, it is apparent that Machida put much thought into the overall structure of the book. After a brief introduction outlining Hōnen’s major principles and contributions to Japanese culture, Machida begins with an exploration of the world that inspired Hōnen’s retreat into Buddhism. Machida writes, “Exclusive-nembutsu developed out of a feeling of crisis lived by the masses who were surrounded, confronted, and threatened by the abyss of death. In other words, exclusive-nembutsu was not some doctrinal progress in Pure Land thought” (p. 48). This thesis is certainly debatable, but Machida effectively supports it by drawing upon extensive examples from history and Buddhist eschatology in Hōnen’s time.

After spending roughly a third of his book describing the cultural context behind Hōnen’s “conversion” to exclusive-nembutsu, Machida then begins a close examination of Hōnen’s spiritual and philosophical outlook; his best contribution to academia is found within these pages. This section of the book revolves around two major, interlocking themes—the inevitability of death and the supremacy of imagination to overcome death. Instead of propagating the fear of death (the same fear the then-predominant Buddhist schools exploited), Hōnen taught his followers that death was not something to fear; rather, “Hōnen wielded his imagination as a hammer against the mechanism of death that constituted his times” (p. 158).

Machida’s work is impressive and important, but it is, unfortunately, not without flaws. One minor but recurrent wrinkle comes from Machida’s insistence in drawing connections to Western culture. While these parallels might make the book more accessible to a lay reader, it is inconsistent with the larger part of his rhetoric, for Machida seems to presuppose a certain amount of erudition of his audience on the subject. Some of these parallels are warranted, particularly in describing Hōnen’s exclusive-nembutsu as a kind of liberation theology, a comparison Machida so persuasively proposes that it actually seems necessary (pp. 4-7). However, comparisons to Western inventions such as Dante’s Divine Comedy (pp. 55-56), Karl Marx’s economic philosophy (pp. 29-30), and even Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal (p. 44) are more problematic, and they cumulatively serve to dilute Machida’s thesis by not allowing his arguments to speak for themselves.

Another oversight Machida makes is that he fails to place Hōnen’s exclusive-nembutsu orthodoxy adequately within a wider context. Machida certainly does justice to Japanese influences, but Machida leaves the reader wondering about how much influence proto-Pure Land practices that had developed in China had on forming Hōnen’s philosophical outlook. On the other hand, this can be countered because Machida clearly states that he has not set out to write the definitive history of Japanese Pure Land Buddhism; instead, he has endeavored to write a simple history of Hōnen and the way Japanese Buddhism is inextricably linked to Hōnen’s legacy (pp. 21-22). Even so, that Machida spends more time connecting Hōnen to Karl Marx than engaging other East Asian material is rather shocking, and it becomes a difficult hurdle for Machida to overcome.

In general, though, Machida’s argument is successful. His grasp on the subject matter is practically unparalleled in Western scholarship, and his book opens new doors for Buddhist cultural studies. Hopefully, Machida’s work is a precursor to a burgeoning movement within scholarship to fully engage Hōnen and one of the most important and influential sects of Buddhism. Assuredly, this is not the final word on Hōnen and his nembutsu; a greater book, one that resolves Renegade Monk’s faults and further advances this field of study, is waiting to be written.

October 16, 2010

Light Within Light: The Gospel of William Blake


[This is a literary analysis I wrote for British Lit, spring 2009.]

It is no coincidence William Blake and Gnosticism found their way to each other. As Gnosticism was influential in the development of early Christianity, so Blake was influential in the development of the Romantic Movement, and as Gnostic thought fell from favor in the growing, centralized Church, so the Romantics misunderstood Blake. In addition to the parallel histories, Blake’s mystic, inner approach to spirituality had more in common with Gnostic thought than traditional Christianity. A comparison of two key Gnostic texts--The Gospel of Thomas and The Book of Thomas--to Blake’s prophetic masterpiece, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, reveals this profound thematic similarity.

The Gnostic worldview remains essentially esoteric and complex. The word “Gnosticism” comes from the Greek root “gnosis,” meaning “knowledge” (Meyer xvi). However, the Gnostics cared little for materialistic knowledge of the physical world and the faith of common people; rather, the Gnostics sought, as Marvin W. Meyer wrote, “…higher knowledge, a more profound insight into the deep and secret things of God” (xvi). The Gnostics believed this true, direct knowledge comes from the “spirit within,” which is synonymous with the Divine (Meyer xvi). The Church eventually succeeded in stamping out the Gnostics and destroying many of their writings (Meyer xvii), but Gnostic thought was echoed by select minds of select generations.

Based on his writings and doings, William Blake obviously found much to love in the Gnostic literature available to him at the time. The sundry personal eccentricities of William Blake are well documented, and they have become anecdotes that require no further relating. Besides, Blake represented his stances on religious and spiritual issues most effectively in his poetry. Blake’s poetic persona is comparable to those who Marvin W. Meyer calls “radical Gnostics,” ones who “flaunted their disdain for conventional human values by disregarding the amenities of polite society and practicing a libertine way of life” (xvii). In The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Blake tears into the Church of England and its strict approach to theology and morality. Blake substitutes this with his beliefs, upon which Gnosticism is a primary influence. Important themes in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell have counterparts in Gnostic writing: Blake’s depiction of the afterlife in the fourth “Memorable Fancy” is similar to the afterlife Jesus speaks of in The Book of Thomas, and the “Proverbs of Hell” find much common ground with Jesus’ sayings in The Gospel of Thomas.

The fourth “Memorable Fancy” depicts the fate of the damned with striking similarity to The Book of Thomas. The section begins with an angel chastising Blake for his loose living and warning Blake of his impending fate. Blake takes the angel at his word, and he slyly asks the angel to show him the torment waiting in the next life. However, the terrible, wicked creatures and reptilian beasts Blake finds there are only a projection of the angel; when the angel leaves, Blake realizes he is only on a bank beside a river, surrounded by harp music (117-118). Blake adds, “…and [the harpist’s] theme was, The man who never alters his opinion is like standing water, & breeds reptiles of the mind” (118). This is not a subtle attack on the orthodox teachings of the Church; given that Blake places this “hell” under a church’s vault, he makes his drift more than apparent. Blake believed the Church disguised the greatest mystical experiences available in physical form as the greatest sins. By stripping the Church of its tools of manipulation, he stripped the Church of its power to control people with what he perceived to be false morality.

Blake gives an alternate vision of hell for the angel’s torment. First, Blake sends the angel through the sun and into the far reaches of the solar system, into a void (118-119). The sun represents the warmth, light, and truth of God, which this angel, a tool of the Church, passes through, only to end up in emptiness. The Book of Thomas contains a similar statement of illusory truth, where Jesus says, “…the fire that leads them will give an illusion of truth, and will shine on them with transitory beauty. It will make them prisoners of the delights of darkness, and capture them in sweet-smelling pleasures” (Chapter 4:6-7). Blake continues and takes the angel back to the church. He opens the Bible, and the two descend into the pages, seeing “…a number of monkeys, baboons, & all of that species chained by the middle, grinning and snatching at one another, but withheld by the shortness of their chains” (119). The Book of Thomas brings up an image of chained beasts receiving a comparable punishment: “The fire has bound these people with its chains, and tied all their limbs with the bitter bond of desire for visible things, which change, and decay, and fluctuate impulsively. Such people are always dragged downward. When they are put to death, they join all the filthy animals” (Chapter 4:10-11). Only seekers of God’s truth gain salvation in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell and The Book of Thomas.

Eschewing the narrative of the memorable fancies, The “Proverbs of Hell” sometimes sound like heretical inversions of biblical proverbs, and sometimes they sound like Zen kōans. The Gospel of Thomas, a collection of mystical teachings of Christ, reads similarly, and it includes parallel sayings to those in Blake’s poem. In the “Proverbs of Hell,” Blake writes, “Brothels [are built] with bricks of religion” (l. 21), and, “Prayers plow not! Praises reap not!” (l. 59). This is purposefully repellant from a traditional standpoint, but Blake also hides a deeper spiritualism beneath these words, just as Jesus hides a deeper spiritualism in this saying from The Gospel of Thomas: “If you fast, you will bring sin upon yourselves. If you pray, you will be condemned. If you give to charity, you will harm your spirits” (Saying 14). Beneath the surface of these proverbs, Blake and Jesus say that monkish severity does not necessarily lead to God--not when one does not fully grasp the teachings he or she professes. The proverbs say that avoiding the physical pleasures in life is as potentially harmful to the human spirit as unbridled indulgence is, and it is best to get the craving for some sense-experience out of one’s system rather than letting it go unrequited for long.

Blake uses the “Proverbs of Hell” section not only to shock, but also to look at death and impermanence from a mystical perspective, as does The Gospel of Thomas. Blake wrote, “Drive your cart and your plow over the bones of the dead” (l. 2). Here, he acknowledges the impossibility of accomplishing any task without the work and toil of many prior men and women. However, in a world built upon death, life exists. In The Gospel of Thomas, Jesus says, “Whoever has come to know the world has discovered a carcass, and whoever has discovered a carcass is worth more than the world” (Saying 56). In both texts, people must recognize death to gain wisdom. In two similar proverbs, Blake wrote, “Truth can never be told so as to be understood, and not believ’d” (l. 69), and, “A fool sees not the same tree a wise man sees” (l. 8). The “truth” in the former line is the same as the “tree” in the latter line, and Blake says real understanding implicates a total amendment of the way one approaches reality and the world of the senses.

The “Proverbs of Hell” section also features some puzzling, not easily explicated moments. One proverb in particular defies swift interpretation: “Let man wear the fell of the lion. woman the fleece of the sheep” (l. 30). In The Gospel of Thomas, a similar saying reads, “Blessed is the lion that the human eats, so that the lion becomes human. Cursed is the human that the lion eats, so that the lion becomes human” (Saying 7). Each saying emphasizes the importance of humanity and spirituality in overcoming animal nature. To Blake, man and woman must kill the animal within and, by wearing the skin, show dominance and superiority over their animal self. As long as man and woman ultimately have control over their instinct, no craving will endanger the spirit. Jesus’ teaching is much the same, but His saying also reveals the opposite outcome. If humans senselessly indulge in the world of the senses, they lose the attributes that make them human, and the animal that “eats” them takes their place.

The simplest proverb in Blake’s text reads, “Exuberance is Beauty” (l. 64). The straightforwardness, however, understates a vast theological statement. The Gospel of Thomas contains a parallel saying: “When you strip and are not embarrassed, and you take your clothes and throw them down under your feet like little children and trample them, then you will see the Child of the Living One and you will not be afraid” (Saying 37). Both statements speak of the indescribable joy that comes from union with God. While the church of Blake’s time might have preferred austerity when it came to religious matters, the remarkable followers of the world’s religions have principally been men and women of ecstatic happiness. To Blake, exuberance provides the easiest, shortest path to God. As Blake shows his readers through his poetry, he cared little for a strict obedience to stifling morality, instead placing emphasis on the enrapturing beauty of music, nature, and the light within his soul. Thus, the last words of The Marriage of Heaven and Hell read, “For every thing that lives is Holy.”

Blake placed the spiritual side of humanity beside the carnal, using each to facilitate the growth of the other, toward a purer, closer relationship with God. Instead of following a definite path, he followed his impulse, his passion, his light. Like the Gnostics before him, he embraced the God within and without his soul instead of a God only found behind chapel doors. If poetry is scripture, as the Romantics insisted, Blake’s poetry has the quality and the light and the wisdom of the mystics, and his poetry finds a home in the texts of the Gnostics.

Works Cited

Blake, William. The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Vol. 2. Ed. Stephen Greenblatt. 8th ed. New York City: W. W. Norton and Company, 2006. Print.

Meyer, Marvin W., ed. and trans. The Secret Teachings of Jesus: Four Gnostic  Gospels. New York City: Random House, 1984. Print.

October 15, 2010

Film reviews no. 1

To Live (dir. Zhang Yimou, 1994). To Live is an ambitious film. The narrative takes place over several decades of Chinese history, from the 1940s to the Cultural Revolution. The film, like life, flits effortlessly back and forth between comedy and tragedy, and its representation of family dynamics is both honest and deeply felt. However, the film's aesthetic does not allow the viewer to experience time passing, relying on events to tell the story instead of moments and bracketing time with title cards. In essence, it is like reading an atlas instead of driving down a road--a beautiful atlas, granted. B.

Hero (dir. Zhang Yimou, 2002). Hero is visually stunning--it is rare for modern color films to make the audience aware of the fact that they are watching a color film. However, the political message of unification and conformity is problematic at best, especially considering events in recent Chinese history involving its ethnic minorities and political dissidents. Zhang's eye, once sharply critical of his government (see especially Raise the Red Lanterns), has been dulled by too many years of working in the system. He has become a safe, middle of the road filmmaker with a still noteworthy sense of composition but little else to offer. C-.

Caché (dir. Michael Haneke, 2005). Haneke's use of negative space and static, empty composition calls to mind Michelangelo Antonioni. But whereas Antonioni's best work was essentially existential, Caché is political polemics disguised as an innocuous psychological thriller. The film deals with how the French have a hidden (hence the title) history of colonization (Algeria) that haunts their subconscious (note the dream sequence), but through their everyday lives, they build a facade of innocence and ignorance. Haneke is less successful when dealing with more fundamental questions about art, media, and privacy--perhaps because these questions were less important to him than his political statement. A-.