enjoy the show or how to learn from what is fake

[Taigu]

The BBC.

Great institution. Wonderful documentaries.
Sorry, I could not resist it. This is so cheap, so fake ,so staged, so false, so stupid, so wrong...that it becomes so inspiring.
All the cliches, the Oxford empty professor with his empty mind, the great stupas and Zen alive in Hong Kong, the would be monks sitting under nets to avoid insects, the water bowl meditation when they avoid rain the head protected by plastic condoms in order to achieve empty mind and bring a bowl without letting a single drop out ...
A journalist drunk with her own voice who speaks Bullshit nonstop.
and of course, the biggest achievements of all, the Big Buildings and golden statues.
all of this around a single tooth...

Wow.

Had a good laugh. Hope you will. And even if some good guys get caugh in this parody like R. Thurman, well , it is a real feast of stupidity.

Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7ZIpVKZaI4

gassho


Taigu

[Kokuu]

Ah, that is Bettany Hughes. She is very good when it comes to Ancient Greek history but is not known as an expert on religious thought. I imagine this was an ill-conceived follow-up to her (much better) Seven Wonders of the Ancient World programme.

Even the BBC has off days.

Gassho
Andy

[Hans]

Hello,

one of my favourtie proverbs:
"Cobbler, stick to your last!"

Gassho,

Hans Chudo Mongen

[Shokai]

Very colorful and sparkly; thanks Taigu. Had a quick peek, will watch later. At
tractive lady with soothing voice and pictures of sub-Asia.

Sent from my Note 2 using Tapatalk4

[Mp]

Wonderful Taigu, thank you ... am enjoying while I have my morning coffee. =)

Gassho
Shingen

** Now that I have finished my coffee and the video ... I always wonder what the intention is behind media and the glamorization of the content? I do have to say there was some beautiful imagery. =)

Gassho
Shingen

[Joyo]

Thank you, Taigu, much appreciated

Gassho,
Treena

[Jundo]

Hmmm. I wonder if I would call this "so cheap, so fake ,so staged, so false, so stupid, so wrong". These kinds of worship and veneration are vital and important to so many Buddhists, and have been for centuries. From the earliest days of Buddhism, for example, stupas (not stupid ) have been places of worship and pilgrimage, as they still are for millions of folks today. I feel the documentary is a pretty good, realistic picture of how many people in Asia practice their Buddhism. Am I wrong?

Worship of the relics of the Buddha, by both his lay followers and
monks, has been a widespread feature of Buddhist devotional practice since
very early times if not right from the day on which the Buddha died and was
cremated (possibly in 483 B.C.). When the great Emperor Aśoka (ca. 269-232
B.C.) embraced the Dharma, he built many stūpas all over his realm (the
legend speaks of 84,000 of them) and enshrined in them splinters of relics
from the original eight stūpas in which portions of the Buddha’s relics were
supposedly placed after his cremation. Later, when relics were no longer
available, manuscripts of sūtras were substituted indicating the presence of the
Dharma and eventually stūpas came to be venerated as symbols of the
presence of the Buddha or of the eternal Dharma even if they did not contain
anything.

http://ftp.buddhism.org/Publications/IABTC/Vol12_Karel%20Werner_The%20Place%20of%20Relic%20Worship%20in%20Buddhism.pdf

Most Zen folks like their pagodas and relics too.

Gassho, J

PS - Here is the mummy of the Sixth Ancestor Hui-Neng which Zen Folks have preserved (more or less in tact) for 1000 years and worshiped as a relic. I had the pleasure to see him when I sat a short Sesshin at the "Sixth Ancestor" temple in China a couple of years ago. Lots of "silly to somebody" stuff in Buddhism, but it means something to someone too.

[Jinyo]

Hi there - I've watched this documentary before and 'am half-way through watching it again.

I can't see what's wrong with it - it's an historical take on Buddhism and I'd say fairly accurate - Buddhism with all the bling and ritual that's
been erased by modernism and the West.

Sure it has a strong Theravada/Tibetan flavour - but I found that interesting to compare with pared down Zen.

I don't feel the presenter is talking bullshit - she has quite a calm manner and is clearly interested in what she's presenting. She also admits that she doesn't feel all the opulence reflects the 'middle path'.

As for the Oxford professor - he's not pretending to be anything other than an academic historian - and just seems a bit tense and awkward speaking on camera.

Perhaps I'm missing something but the programme seemed to stay within it's remit. 'Seven Wonders of the Buddhist World' is exactly what we were shown and these places are sacred to many whether we credit it or not.

Gassho

Willow

[Jundo]

Just a bit of Trivia, but I have located one purported tooth and some ashes from the Buddha, each at two Stupa within 20 minutes in opposite directions by car from Treeleaf Tsukuba.

The one that touches me most is this, which I stumbled into (literally) on a hike just a few weeks ago. It is a Burmese Pagoda in the next town, Ishige, built by some local businessmen to memorialize all the young men of Ishige who died in Burma in WWII. What is most impressive is the number written on the monument: Of the 138 young boys sent to war in Burma from Ishige, 110 died, and of the returnees, all but 6 were wounded. It is based on Buddhist Pagoda in Burma, and a famous Burmese temple sent along some of what purports to be the Buddha's cremation ashes to enclose in the tower. It is now a Japan-Burma Peace symbol.



I sometimes joke that, with all the hundreds of purported "teeth of the Buddha" that one finds all across Asia, he must have had quite a smile!

At Treeleaf Tsukuba we happen to have a pagoda in the garden that contains a leaf from the Bodhi Tree where the Buddha is said to have been Enlightened in India. A friend gave the leaf (THE Treeleaf! ) to me when I was in China. We sat our weekly Zazenkai there a few weeks ago, when the weather was warm.



Gassho, J

[RichardH]

Too much world-beat guff at the intro.. did not watch much. I've watched her narrate some ancient history shows. Kinda had a crush on her.

gassho
Daizan

[Myozan Kodo]

Taigu, Jundo,
If you ever have a tooth pulled at the dentists, keep it. After you're both gone we could use it...

...enjoyed the film. Thanks.

Gassho
Myozan

[Oheso]

Screen Shot 2013-11-28 at 3.10.15 PM.jpg

some portions of the middle way are better carpeted than others!

gassho,

Robt

[Taigu]

You are right Jundo it is a fair picture of Asian worship. But that was not my point.

It boils down to ability to analyse and identify cliche, rhetorics, deconstruct fake narratives and see through multiple layers of an illusion: religion as a way to control masses, concentrate wealth and worship gold and gods, to offer fear and hope; cheap journalism as a way to play with the expected, throw a bit of glamour for good measure, and choose words that are just picked up to make the viewer happy, would be specialist talking nonsense because they have to put in a nutshell what would take a bit longer and also because some of them are just plain ignorant ( Oxford won't save the day), music and the way it is cut ( just watch this eyes closed, you will see), the whole show is poorly documented an appeals to a audience keen on glittering and shining bedtime stories. Yes, popular religion, if Dogen wanted that he would have stayed on Mount Hei. And throw the last and even harder layer of this has been scholar and University lecturer, a French arrogant frog, namely Pierre Turlur, my other name, whose job is to understand and study literature, language and philosophy.

Seven Wonders of Buddhism? As I was walking in the cool morning Osaka made of steels and crowds moving, I was contemplating how I am moved by mountains, high towers and simple things, not at all moved by temples, cathedrals or places of worship, in love with the ineffable and formless which freely flows beyond power games and institutions. In this you have it all: the brick and mortar of belief systems, the grip of would be science, the media staging and wrapping it up. Spiritual materialism .

But of course, you might pick up an ice cream and enjoy a walk in Buddhadisneyland...

I don't.

[RichardH]

Thank you for this piss and vinegar, Taigu!

Gassho
Daizan

[Jundo]

Hmmm.

Many intellectuals (such as your fellow countryman and Zen Historian Bernard Faure) have pointed out that, in a sense, Buddhism since the beginning, Zen ... even Dogen ... were dependent on "cheap shows", song and dance, tacky art, packaging and simplified messaging in order to get the "real messages" across. What matters is that some people will then be attracted to delve deeper, while other people need the simplified messaging as the best way they can relate and approach some pretty difficult stuff. It is really the same for all religions.

In a sense, that is the meaning of any colorful and dramatic Buddhist art ...



Something like the "Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch" is a work of fiction never actually spoken by the "Sixth Zen Patriarch Hui-Neng" (himself half a work of fiction), gradually made more elaborate and fantastic over time in its retelling with ever more magical drama added, itself containing descriptions of rather corny scenes in which great drama is played out in unbelievable ways ...

In front of the monastery’s [Buddha] hall was a deep pool, where a dragon constantly went in and out, deforming the trees. One day he manifested a form that was extremely large, roiling up waves and obscuring [the sky with] clouds and mists. [Sixth Patriarch Huineng’s] followers were all afraid, but the master scolded [the dragon], “You’re only able to manifest a large body—you can’t manifest a small body. If you were a divine dragon, your abilities at transformation would include the manifestation of the large with the small and the manifestation of the small with the large!” The dragon suddenly disappeared and then instantly reappeared in a small body, jumping around the surface of the pool. The master held out his bowl, testing [the dragon] by saying, “But I’ll bet you don’t dare enter this old monk’s bowl!” The dragon then swam up in front of him, and the master scooped him up in the bowl. The dragon could not move. The master carried the bowl to the [monks’] hall and preached the Dharma for the dragon, who then shed his skeleton and went away. His skeleton is about seven inches long and was complete with head and tail, horns and feet. It is kept at the monastery. The master later had the pool filled up with earth and rocks. The iron stupa that now exists in front of the hall on the left side guards the location.

http://www.bdkamerica.org/digital/dB...Sutra_2000.pdf

Pixar Animation or Steven Spielberg could not cook up a better scene. The Lotus and most of the Mahayana Sutras are much the same.

In a sense, the inside of any Zen Temple is a riot of colors and gold and costumes to put on a kind of show for the senses ... and that was as true for Dogen as for the BBC. What matters is how one views the spectacle with Wisdom, not being taken in simply by the surface. At the same time, Dogen and Keizan and many folks put on these shows to communicate something to folks who had no real interest or ability to "go beyond the surface." Rituals such as "Tendoku" readings of the Sutra existed in Dogen's time as they do now ... and must have been very impressive to folks who could only get into their heads that "some kind of merit was being earned by my making a donation to the Temple to have all these monks wave these pages around" ... Dogen, part P.T Barnum of his day ... (from the 9:00 mark here, recorded at one of the Soto head temples in Japan) ... a great Fancy Dance Show ...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBF2q0p9pdg

The "tendoku" ritual reading of the 600-fascicle Large Prajña Paramita Sutra involves shouting the title and volume number of the Sutra, then quickly flipping through the Sutra book itself, a rather esoteric way of reading the entire Sutra much as Tibetans turn their "Prayer Wheels".

When Dogen told a little personal story in the Shobogenzo, he sometimes knew how to spice it up ... and had a sense for how a Zen Master sometimes needs a bit of "Sacred Theatre" to get a good message across ...

Dogen relates how his Chinese mentor Ju-ching, who was once asked to read a lengthy sutra and deliver a sermon, drew a big circle in the air with his fly whisk and said, ‘‘Now I have read it for you!’’ Then he cast away the fly whisk and descended from the dais.

http://books.google.co.jp/books?id=R...circle&f=false

Bravo!

We also have the recent Dogen biopic movie in which they took a little pudgy guy who looked like this (already somewhat idealized in the portrait because it is an artist's portrait) ...



... and turned him into a handsome actor like this ...



So, in a sense there would be no "Buddhism" ... no "Zen" ... today without a lot of bad art, corny narration, stereotyped and idealized romantic images and gold dipped Buddha statues. All Painted Rice Cakes.

I hope that, as Taigu cautions, we also learn to laugh and see through all that cliche, rhetoric, and fake narrative too ... to the True Gold.

I sometimes joke that if Taigu and me were handsomer, with smoother moves and charming banter without all the "piss and vinegar" ... we would get a lot more folks interested in Zen!

Gassho, J