The Mandalorian goes Seven Samurai

Episode 3 showed The Mandalorian has a heart for the vulnerable and the courage to help them; in episode 4 he gets another stab at being a saviour. From the opening scene, in which a poor farming community is attacked and their harvest stolen, we enter the world of The Seven Samurai and its Western remake, The Magnificent Seven. 

As usual, the poor farmers have little to offer mercenaries but our hero has his own agenda and agrees. There aren't seven, mind you, just two and a child, but they are enough.

One of the reasons The Mandalorian is such a strong show is that it doesn't try to reinvent the history of cinema, but taps into it: everywhere we look we see echoes of what has already become iconic. Star Wars is already informed by Japanese cinema and zen (think The Force, Jedi Warriors, and light sabres aka Samurai swords) so an episode modelled on Akira Kurosawa's 1954 masterpiece is an inspired choice. 

The lie of romantic love

https://medium.com/@kenrowley/when-the-elephants-fight-the-grass-suffers-the-lie-of-romantic-love-7615cb5b86d4#.54by6uznn

I See Hawks in LA: 'Mystery Drug' Review

I See Hawks In LA Mystery Drug:

I first came across I See Hawks when they released their second album, years ago, but because I live in Swaziland, all I could get hold of were a few songs on the band's website including I See Hawks In LA and Humboldt. I thought they were a neo-Flying Burrito Brothers and told them so. More recently I was in London and found a copy of last year's New Kind of Lonely. I'll be honest; I'm a fan. But, like the Burritos, they're still likely to appeal more to musicians than the general public. (I bought two copies of the Burrito's Gilded Palace of Sin when it was first released and gave one to my brother. He appreciated the gesture but was bemused by the music.) But how can I not like a band who releases songs with lyrics like these:

“Stop driving like an asshole/ You know who you are/ Did you think when you cut me off it would help you go farther? / You’re an accident waiting to happen, a flipped over SUV/ On the 405, at six o’clock, your carcass on TV…. The angels will sing/ sha-la-la, sha-la-la/ he drove like an asshole"?

That's on Mystery Drug. For many bands it might be seen as a cheap throwaway, but it's typical of the band's leftfield approach. The Hawks are listed as Alt. Country, or hippie country and it's rare for a reviewer not to mention the Burritos, but they have this whole other dimension that I call Zen Country, an off-the-wall insight or irreverent comment that lingers long after you've heard it. 

Already I love this album. And when some other driver cuts me off...

Kaena avatar

Oh, and the CGI of Avatar reminds me of Kaena. I suppose everything builds on what has gone before. Anyway, despite its borrnwings~ a bit of zen here, a splat of green movement there~ Avatar is big enough and complex enough to entertain n ponder on for many viewings.

Duality, Non-Duality & Zen Satori

Perhaps Zen is really all about turning duality into non-duality or maybe realising that the meaning of life is life. My moment of sudden enlightenment (satori) came when I noticed an ugly woman and kind of asking the universe why a woman could be so ugly. The answer came that ugliness is a necessary part of beauty--that the two come together; each needs the other; neither can exist independently. The ugly woman allows me to see beautiful ones; without ugliness beauty could not exist:


Fleas, lice,
The horse pissing
By my pillow.

Giving the breast,
While counting
The flea-bites.

There is nothing intrinsically more beautiful or poetical about
the moon than about a dunghill; if anything, the contrary, for
the latter is full of life and warmth and energy.

Just get rid of
The mind that thinks
"This is good, that is bad",
And without any special effort,
Wherever we live is good to live in.

More Zen Poems

How I wish to kill!
How I wish
Not to kill!
The thief I have caught
Is my own son.

There is no one
Who dyes them,
But of themselves
The willow is green,
The flowers red.

Were I a king, pensively
Would I pace the corridors of the palace.
The path I walk goes through the pine-trees;
The sea is blue, a butterfly flits by.

A Beautiful Zen Poem

I found this in a commentary on an ancient Zen treatise: isn't it beautiful?

Spring rains.
A letter thrown away,
Blown along in the grove.