Post Category → Film/Movies

Prajnaparamita

The mind can no more grasp transcendent philosophy than the eye can see music.

– Diane Fortune

Talking about “That” tathata:

How can one begin to talk about Tathata (That)? What can one say? Where does one begin? How does one describe color to a blind man or music to the deaf? It is said, the closer to the truth one gets the more insane one will sound. On top of that, I haven’t written in a long while, but I suppose I never really wrote and all I ever done was only translated what was around me. So, to begin again, this time, I listened, really listened and I found tathata I am beginning to understand some truths about this game of life, at least to me. Before I share anything, I will let Diane Fortune explain how futile it is to talk about tathata:

The esotericist, when endeavouring to formulate his philosophy for communication to others, is confronted by the fact that his knowledge of the higher forms of existence is obtained by a process other than thought; and this process only commences when thought is left behind. Consequently it is only in that region of consciousness which transcends thought that the highest form of transcendental ideas is known and understood; and it is only to those who are able to use this aspect of consciousness that he can communicate his ideas in their original form. When he wants to communicate these ideas to those who have had no experience of this mode of consciousness, he must either crystallise them into form or fail to convey any adequate impression. Mystics have used every imaginable simile in the endeavour to convey their impressions; philosophers have lost themselves in a maze of words; and all to no purpose so far as the unilluminated soul is concerned.

There is nothing I or anyone can say or describe that would be of any practical help for anyone trying to discover their own truth, but to quote Chairman Mao, “The need to shit after eating does not make eating a waste of time.” With that in mind, there is no need to beat around the bush. I will try and summarize what all tathata really means to me along with sharing some ideas about philosophy and movies with you along the way. To begin I will start with the first story that pointed me in the right direction by Bruce Lee:

A learned man once went to visit a Zen teacher to inquire about Zen. As the Zen teacher talked, the learned man frequently interrupted to express his own opinion about this or that. Finally, the Zen teacher stopped talking and began to serve tea to the learned man. He poured the cup full, then kept pouring until the cup overflowed.

“Stop,” said the learned man. “The cup is full, no more can be poured in.” “Like this cup, you are full of your own opinions,” replied the Zen teacher.

“If you do not first empty your cup, how can you taste my cup of tea?”

Here, I am just another finger pointing at the moon; another blind man leading the blind… Hence I humbly apologize for the path here is a long and winding one. I just hope you would permit me your time/patience and approach all of these following words ‘with an empty cup’ and withhold judgement until you reach the very end, perhaps in doing so be rewarded in return with what little that these words can provide…

Continue reading →

Mamihlapinatapai

 

“Do not think that I came to bring peace on earth; I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I came to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and man’s enemies will be the members of his household.” – Matthew 10:34-9

I am writing this post as I desperately search through the BBC world news website to find a recent article (perhaps 1 week, max 2) on the ensuing peace talks of a two state solution between Israel and Palestine in the Paris summit and how Israel refuses to attend the talks. How can the keyword Palestine not link to the article? How is it easier to find something written years ago and not find something that literally happened NOW? It is precisely such reasons that so much confusion and violence can continue to be perpetuated without end. Perhaps, one might not even know what the significance of Palestine and its role is in the general unrest in the Middle East. Palestine is only one of the giant pink elephants that Western goggles fails to see. Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s Heretic perfectly captures this paradoxical nature of our current political times. In trying to open up discussion on the topic of Islam’s need for a reformation, Ali inadvertently creates further confusion and extreme viewpoints which further obscures the systematic violence enacted on a global scale. In removing social and historical context of modern history from her arguments, Ali’s proposition, regardless of how sound and rational it maybe, becomes distorted, contradictory, hypocritical even perverse to the point which one can consider her view points to be racist and islamophobic.

Continue reading →

You Always Already Have

You-Always-Alread-Have

Purple is the Color of Love:

Love, authentic love in the Lacanian sense, is event in its purest form according to Zizek. Love in this instance is an important precedence to understanding the very perception of truth within the realm of ideology. To begin one just has to believe that true love does exist and it is an event which ruptures and reconfigures the very world that one lives in. It is precisely this power that makes love so revolutionary and often times extremely terrible as Zizek would say. Continue reading →

In Search for Causality (part 1)

Min-Jungyeon-Jalousie-combo-final

Jesus isn’t saving us from the Devil. He’s saving us from God. – J. Karlin

Preamble

This begins with an in depth analysis of the film Antichrist 2009 by Lars von Trier. The question that was being addressed was where the antichrist can be found in the film, in other words, where is the devil and how was it portrayed? In order to answer that, a thorough analysis of the “devil” must be made. This point is crucial to understand the futility of representing the very aspect of the unrepresentable or irrepresentable. A quest that is fully within the devil’s domain so speak, yet extremely rewarding as it unravels and confronts the very inverse of irrepresentability with complete representation, the impossibility of a thing fully signified. That is to say the very search for the irrepresentable is the same search for the transcendental signified, it is from the point of  the irrepresentable that the transcendental signified can be imagined, conceived; to be deceived that there is a movement towards something that has been signified. This leap is not as inconceivable as it first appears if one is willing to follow the very movements of representation within the film and the current paradoxes of modern philosophy. Continue reading →

TMNT: Part 2B (end)

“GO NINJA GO NINJA GO”
– indeed, go, viva la revolution!

The series concludes with the third movie one which completes their self-realization by breaking the diachronic limitations through the act of time travel. From receiving the signs from the future the turtles’ reaches a state of self-realization, in confronting their revolutionary core of the past, they can choose their fates in the future.

Continue reading →

TMNT: Part 2A

Signs from the Future

The three movies can be seen as the turtles’ journey to self-realization in becoming true agents of revolution. The first movie represents their birth and their creation; the setting in which revolution will be staged with the formation of the next generation of revolutionaries, the youths that were redeemed through the turtles’ accidental struggle with the invisible forces of capital society. Continue reading →

TMNT: Part 1B

Romance and Interpersonal relationships:

The interpersonal relationships between April and the turtles in which one first assumes should be inverted. It is not the turtles that desire April; it is April who desires the turtles’ affections, to be their object of desire. April who is both sexually frustrated and confused (much like the female protagonist of Max mon amour, how does one explain the concept of a mature woman being sexually interested in a bunch of under aged “teenage” giant mutant reptiles?), is forced to conform with the normalcies of accepted societal standards even though she herself is the best radical field reporter of NYC. Continue reading →