A billionaire and a mechanic who meet in a hospital ward for terminally ill patients decide to make an escape and set out on one last trip to fulfill all of their dying wishes.
While the two men wait for news of their flight to Everest, climbing Everest was on their Bucket List, they are shown visiting a Buddhist monastery. It was all gloom, flickering lights and incense smoke. The Jack Nicholson character, ever the skeptic, ponders on the concept of karma and rebirth. I just don’t get it, he says. I mean, what does a slug have to do to get a good rebirth, leave a perfect slime trail? This is fairly typical of the popular view of karma and rebirth. (And of Buddhist monasteries too!) Which runs fairly much along the lines of, be good and you will be reborn into better circumstances. Lead a bad life and you’ll end up a short lived, squashed, fly. Truth is bigger, and more compassionate, than this.
I liked this film. It brought the subject of action (and that’s what karma translates as) into the realm of action, and out of the world of speculation and popular interpretations. There was reflection on past actions and the seeing into the unwisdom’s of those actions. There were scenes depicting the struggle to see those actions for what they were and then scenes which looked at what that means, right now. In short the two men were brought to look at the consequences of their actions and come to an understanding and acceptance of their lives. Find joy in your life, were the dying mans words to the Jack Nicholson character. He could have said, Live life, forget the ideal of perfection, of leaving a perfect trail of slime behind you!
Written for Kevin. This, in part, is my answer to your question. I hope you get the gist of what I’m pointing out. Other teachers in our Order might well see this film and interpret it differently. So be it, there’s no argument.
Our phone conversation was coming to a close. She asked, ‘Is there anything you can suggest I do to help myself during the day’? I asked, ‘Well, is there anything that you can think of? There was a long pause and then the answer came. ‘This might sound strange, given all that I’ve spoken about, however everything is well’.
“Those who, either now or after I am dead, shall be lamps unto themselves, relying upon themselves only and not relying upon any external help, but holding fast to the truth as their lamp, and seeking their salvation in the truth alone, and shall not look for assistance to any one besides themselves,…”
The Buddha’s Farewell.
Seeking help is not a problem, overly ‘relying’ on or depending upon external help is.
Be a lamp unto yourself…because you are that lamp.
Two Jade readers, both called Anne, have articles in the Spring edition of our Order’s Journal. The first Anne speaks of the benefits of staying at Throssel outside of retreat times.
And now, after more times spent there when no retreats are running, the (admittedly, self imposed) lines between Throssel and my home have started to blur as the amount of more ‘ordinary’ experiences at the Abbey interweave with my life in my town, and Throssel seems not only my spiritual home–as it always was–but just like where I live day to day–my home.
The other Anne writes about her journey from the onset of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME) through to her life in Mt. Shasta and her association with Shasta Abbey.
Sometimes I just go over to the Abbey grounds, walk down to the stupa and sit. Or I do some little inconsequential errand that takes me over there, so can feel the difference between the silence of living alone in town and the deep quiet of a spiritual community training together. Underneath my surface unrest, a part of me is deeply content with what is, when self is willing to acknowledge it. “Separate,” one of the monks once said, “but not alone.”
Spare a thought for Anne in America who is having a nasty flare up of symptoms at the moment. A thought for her dog Lily too is appreciated.
…In this place of being, mountains are no longer mountains and rivers are no longer rivers. This is the place in which mountains flow and rivers are as diamond, the place where the life of the river is the mountain, and the expression of the mountain is the river, the place the scriptures describe when they say that the wooden figure sings and the stone maiden dances.
By Rev. Master Daizui McPhillamy, Former Head of The Order of Buddhist Contemplatives.
From an article titled When Mountains are Mountains
More links to O.B.C. Resources. The list of links grows daily.