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#2223
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This issue
features an article on surfing writing.
Unfortunately I couldn't find links in Amazon.com to
the books mentioned. Surfing is one area where nondual expression
is lacking when it really shouldn't be. There just aren't the
writers. At least according to what I've seen. Some surfing
movies might be nondual. The Endless Summer had
that feel to it but it's been a few years since I've seen it.
Another
article by -- ya love him or ya hate him -- Jed McKenna.
This time its brief movie reviews.
Finally part
of a news story telling about the making of the film On
The Road by Francis Ford Coppola.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/books/authors-paddle-like-mad-to-write-the-latest-literary-wave/2005/08/05/1123125907873.html?oneclick=true
Moving from
her "green room" inside a wave to the writers' green
room of a literary festival, Nike Bourke yesterday joined a wave
of new Australian surfing writing.
At the
Described by Jules Verne in his
book Le Rayon Vert as the colour that green would be in paradise,
the effect is produced by sunlight in sea water when certain
conditions of latitude, weather and humidity coincide with a
sunset or sunrise.
Verne wrote: "Happiness
will be the portion of those who behold this spectacle."
Bourke, now 36 and a creative
writing teacher, searched for the green ray and saw it while
surfing at sunset in
The recent trend of surfing
literature includes a biography of the Australian great Michael
Peterson, an anthology of surf writing published last year and
another coming out this year, an autobiography of Mark Occhilupo
on its way, various how-to books and the Victorian writer Fiona
Capp's Kibble Award-winning memoir That Oceanic Feeling.
http://www.knowledge-finder.com/society/spiritual/movies-themes-enlightenment.html
by Jed McKenna
"Let me tell you why you're
here. You're here because you know something. What you know, you
can't explain. But you feel it. You felt it your entire life.
That there's something wrong with the world. You don't know what
it is, but it's there. Like a splinter in your mind —
driving you mad." -Morpheus, The Matrix
This isn't a movie review list
and it's not comprehensive. It's just some notes about a few
movies I think are useful for the purposes of awakening and why,
or that aren't and why not. With tools of understanding, bad is
often better than good.
Major themes represented on this
list seem to be these:
The only thing I might advise
with regard to movies and books is to raise the material up to
the level where it becomes of value to you. Orwell might have
been writing an anti-communist manifesto, but Nineteen
Eighty-Four is much more interesting viewed as the struggle
between man and his confinement. Apocalypse Now is about
something more than
::: American Beauty
"I feel like I've been in a
coma for the past twenty years. And I'm just now waking up."
I've included American Beauty
mainly for what's wrong with it. Lester's major death/rebirth
transition shows promise, but what does he transition to?
Backward to teenage crap, not forward in any sense. A fear-based
regression. Stupid car, stupid drugs, stupid vanity, stupid skirt
chasing. Not at all redeemed when Lester sees his own folly near
the end or by sappy/smarmy dead guy voice-over.
The movie is slightly redeemed
by the presence of the quasi-mystical neighbor kid and his video
footage of a windblown bag:
"That's the day I realized
that there was this entire life behind things, and this
incredibly benevolent force that wanted me to know there was no
reason to be afraid, ever."
::: Apocalypse Now
"In a war there are many
moments for compassion and tender action. There are many moments
for ruthless action — what is often called ruthless —
what may in many circumstances be only clarity, seeing clearly
what there is to be done and doing it, directly, quickly, awake,
looking at it."
You'd think that Apocalypse Now
Redux, the director's cut, would be the version to watch, but all
the stuff that was rightly cut from the original has been wrongly
replaced. (Raising the interesting point that directors and
authors often don't understand the higher applications of the
stories they're telling.) Stick with the original over both Redux
and Conrad's Heart of Darkness.
Apocalypse Now is all about the
Horror. A journey of discovery, into the heart of darkness,
arriving at this horror. What's the horror? How do you get there?
Why would anyone make such a journey? Should you make such a
journey? Why or why not?
Note the powerful epiphanies
that drive the film. The first assassin's letter home,
("Sell the house, sell the car, sell the kids..."),
Dennis Hopper's youthful exuberance, Kurtz's diamond bullet,
Willard's "...I wasn't even in their army any more."
::: Being There
"Spring, summer, autumn,
winter... then spring again."
A lovely film ruined by a
foolish walking-on-water stunt tacked on to the end. Without that
nonsense the viewer would be free to think, to decide, to wonder.
Instead, the movie zips itself up tight with its clever little
dumb-it-down twist. Hit the stop button when Chauncey is
straightening the sapling, before the ruinous denouement, and
it's a fun, lovely film.
::: Blade Runner
"I've seen things you
people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of
Orion. I've watched c-beams glitter in the dark near the
Tannhauser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time like
tears in rain. Time to die."
Were you born five minutes ago?
Of course not, and you have the memories to prove it. You'd know
if they were artificial implants, because, uh...
::: Cast Away
"I couldn't even kill myself the way I wanted to. I had
power over nothing."
If a man screams on a deserted
island and there's no one to hear him, does he make a sound? Is
it enough that he hears it himself? What if not? What's left when
you take away everything?
Self stripped bare.
This movie raises many
intriguing questions about the substance of self, or lack
thereof, and includes a very Zen eulogy.
::: Dead Poets Society
Heresy.
::: Harold and Maude
"Vice, virtue. It's best
not to be too moral... Aim above morality."
American Zen, master and
disciple.
:::
"For years I was smart... I
recommend pleasant."
Elwood P. Dowd, wisefool. A
sweet depiction of a higher order of being misinterpreted as a
lower order of being. Would we know the Superior Man when we saw
him?
::: How to Get Ahead In
Advertising
"Everything I do now makes
perfect sense."
A thwarted bid for freedom. A
failed attempt to overthrow Maya. Enjoy the insanity of the
epiphany.
::: Joe vs the Volcano
"Nobody knows anything,
Joe. We'll take this leap, and we'll see. We'll jump, and we'll
see. That's life, right?"
Death and Rebirth. Unlike
American Beauty, this is all about moving forward, "away
from the things of man."
::: Man Facing Southeast
(Hombre Mirando Al Sudeste)
Watch especially for the visual
poem of a man crumbling a human brain into a sink while looking
for the soul.
::: The Matrix
"Like everyone else, you
were born into bondage, born inside a prison that you cannot
smell, taste, or touch. A prison for your mind."
Plato's Cave for the people. As
allegorically lucid as Joe vs Vocano, Pleasantville and Star
Wars.
::: Monty Python's Life
of Brian
"No, no! It is a sign that,
like Him, we must think not of the things of the body, but of the
face and head!"
Sacred Cow-tipping at its best.
"Meaning of Life" also
belongs on this list.
::: Nineteen Eighty-Four
"If you want a vision of
the future, Winston, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—forever."
This movie is unique in the
sense that it's as good as the book, which is an extremely
intimate portrait of the captor/captive, Maya/man relationship.
Compare this to Moby-Dick or One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
which are superb books but useless movies.
::: One Flew Over the
Cuckoo's Nest
As with Moby-Dick,
::: Pleasantville
"There are some places
where the road doesn't go in a circle. There are some places
where it keeps on going."
A cheerful tale of heresy in
which no one is burned at the stake and the new paradigm is,
eventually, embraced by all.
::: The Razor's Edge
"The dead look so terribly
dead."
The razor's edge is what makes
it interesting; seeing Larry shakily balanced on the fine line
between what he was and what he's becoming. He is walking the
edge between two lives. The Bill Murray version is a bit
unfocused... stick with Tyrone Power or read the book.
Maugham supposedly used Ramana
Maharshi as the model for the novel's holy man.
::: Star Wars
"The force will be with
you, always."
The first one, where Luke makes
the transition from flesh to spirit.
The Hero's Journey.
::: The Thin Red Line
"Maybe all men got one big
soul everybody's a part of, all faces are the same man."
A sublime inquiry into the
spiritual nature of man. More a sad/sweet song than a narrative
film.
::: The Thirteenth Floor
"So what're you saying?
You're saying that there's another world on top of this
one?"
Layer after layer. Turtles on
top of turtles.
::: Vanilla Sky/Abre Los
Ojos
"Open your eyes."
If you like Vanilla Sky, check
out the original, the Spanish film Abre Los Ojos (Open Your
Eyes). These two films may be the best of the bunch for our
purposes; the closest to an enlightenment allegory.
Of course, the interesting thing
about enlightenment is getting there, not being there, and that's
what these films are about; awakening from a false reality,
opening your eyes. They're not so much about what's real as
what's not.
It's the story of the journey
one takes to get to the place where anything, even jumping off a
tall building, would be better than continuing to live a lie,
even a beautiful, blissful lie.
Note the presence of the true
guru, explaining in clear terms why leaping off the building is
the best thing to do, and waiting patiently for it to be done.
::: Waking Life
"They say that dreams are
only real as long as they last. Couldn't you say the same thing
about life?"
Wide-ranging philosophical
inquiry. Provocative. Amusing. Potentially disruptive.
::: Wings of Desire
"When the child was a
child, it was the time of these questions: Why am I me, and why
not you? Why am I here, and why not there? When did time begin
and where does space end?"
A lovely, intelligent,
thought-provoking film. Can the awakened being return to the
dreamstate? Would he want to?
::: Others
Some
other films that reward thoughtful viewing are The Wizard of Oz,
About Schmidt, What Dreams May Come, Total Recall, All the
Mornings Of the World (Tous les Matins du Monde), and, of course,
many more.
Jed McKenna (www.WisefoolPress.com) is the
author of "Spiritual Enlightenment: The Damnedest
Thing" and "Spiritually Incorrect Enlightenment",
published by Wisefool Press. Coming in 2005: "Spirituality
X" and "Jed McKenna's Notebook". Visit Jed's
website to learn more. "Jed McKenna is an American
original." -Lama Surya Das.
Spiritual
Autolysis
If you want to
connect with the method of inquiry invented by Jed McKenna
called Spiritual Autolysis, this is one place:
http://www.spiritualautolysis.com/Home.htm
Beat
classic gets on the road at last
By Hugh Davies
(Filed: 03/08/2005)
Francis Ford
Coppola is finally to produce a film of On The Road, Jack
Kerouac's Beat generation classic, 37 years after he bought the
movie rights.
A
script is being prepared by Walter Salles and Jose Riviera, who
made The Motorcycle Diaries, a road film about the trip through
South America by the revolutionary Ernesto "Che"
Guevara in the early 1950s.
Kerouac's 1957
novel has a similar theme, the story of a sleep-deprived,
hitch-hiking journey across America.
The writer, who
died at 47 with $91 in his bank account, depicted himself as Sal
Paradise, who links up with Dean Moriarty, a fast-talking
womaniser he idolises for his zest for life.
Billy Crudup is to
play the Kerouac character, possibly with Colin Farrell as
Moriarty. But the roles of Carlo Marx, based on Allen Ginsberg,
and Old Bull Lee, the William Burroughs character, are yet to be
filled.
The original
manuscript of the book, on a scroll 120ft long, was sold at
auction for $2.4 million. Coppola secured the film rights in 1968
as a rising young director, before making The Godfather and
Apocalpyse Now.
He initially
wanted to shoot it in black and white on 16mm film. Michael Herr,
who wrote the narration for Apocalypse Now, worked on a
screenplay.
Barry Gifford, who
wrote Wild at Heart, tried to complete another script.
Then Russell
Banks, author of The Sweet Thereafter, said during a visit to the
With Salles
aboard, the project finally looks ready for production. The
Brazilian-born director is seen as an ideal choice for the
picture.
Focus Films, a
unit of Universal Pictures, is expected to be involved in the
creation.
~ ~ ~
Read the entire
article: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/08/03/wkero03.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/08/03/ixnewstop.html