Dancing Girls in Samsara (video)

Dhr. Seven, Amber Larson, Wisdom Quarterly (SEX AND SENSELESS VIOLENCE IN SAMSARA)

"Sucker Punch" (2011, Warner Bros. Pictures) a story by Director Zack Snyder

"Sucker Punch," with a theme song by Bjork and Skunk Anansie, is an epic action allegory that invites viewers into the vivid imagination of Babydoll (Emily Browning), a young girl whose dream-world provides the model for our ultimate escape from a dark reality.

Like us, she is lobotomized (which makes mindfulness difficult) and trapped in a brothel/insane asylum -- a metaphor for our illusory and endlessly cyclical existence in samsara, where we are trapped prior to liberating enlightenment.

 

But Babydoll learns from a Zen master, played by a misplaced Occidental sensei in medieval Japan (Scott Glenn). He instructs her, directing her to find five things:

1. a map (a path, instructions)
2. a fire (zest, passion, energy)
3. a knife (for cutting, detaching)
4. a key (a means of unlocking oneself)
5. and the fifth is a mystery, something for one to discover.

Dance, Babydoll, dance - Blue (Oscar Isaac) and Dr. Gorski (Carla Gugino) demand it! (LOL)

Fighting Nazis, titans, drones, dragons...

If Babydoll completes this journey, it will set her free (moksha, liberation). Otherwise, as the sensei points out, "If you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything." She will simply spin and spin, dancing and cycling, through life after death after life after death.

Unrestrained by the ordinary boundaries of time and place, in accordance with the "Mind Only" (Chittamatra) School of Buddhism, she is able to enter vivid internal states of consciousness.

Samsara (Stephen Shephard)

There she is free to go where she wills or where the universe takes her. Babydoll's incredible adventures blur the lines between what's real and what is imaginary -- with potentially tragic consequences.

She could die, and with her friends like Sweet Pea (Abbie Cornish) and (Jamie Chung) who depend on her as a daring example of leadership. But as Rocket (Jena Malone), a fellow inmate at the asylum, points out: "WE'RE ALREADY DEAD."

"Set Fire to the Rain" (Adele). Also starring Vanessa Hudgens (Blondie) and Jon Hamm

Heedfulness (verses)

Acharya Buddharakkhita, Appamadavagga (Dhp II), edited by Wisdom Quarterly

Garudas guarding treasures of the Dharma in the temple, Thailand (Zennn/flickr.com)

 

VERSE 21. Heedfulness is the path to the deathless. Heedlessness is the path to death. The heedful do not die. The heedless are as if dead already.

• The Deathless (amata) is nirvana, so called because those who attain it are freed from the cycle of birth and death. [The passing of a person is only called "death" when it is sure to be followed by rebirth and more suffering is some high, middling, or lower plane. But the passing of a noble person is called parinirvana, blissful "final liberation" following enlightenment].

22. Clearly understanding this excellence of heedfulness, the wise exult therein and enjoy the resort of the noble ones.

• The "noble" ones (ariya) are those who have reached any of the four stages of supramundane attainment leading irreversibly to nirvana -- stream entry, once returning, non-returning, and arhatship.
  

23. The wise ones, ever meditative and steadfastly persevering, alone experience nirvana, the incomparable freedom from bondage.

24. Ever grows the glory of one who is energetic, mindful, and pure in conduct, wise and self-controlled, harmless and heedful.

25. By effort and heedfulness, discipline and self-mastery, let the wise make an island which no flood can overwhelm.

26. The foolish and ignorant indulge in heedlessness, but a wise person regards heedfulness as one's highest treasure.

27. Do not give in to heedlessness. Do not become intoxicated by sensual craving. Only the heedful and meditative attain great happiness [joy even here and now].

28. Just as one upon the summit of a mountain beholds the groundlings, even so when the wise person casts away heedlessness by heedfulness and ascends the high tower of wisdom, this sorrowless sage beholds the sorrowing and foolish multitude lost below.

29. Heedful among the heedless, wide-awake among the sleep walking, the wise person advances like a swift horse leaving behind a weak mare.

30. By heedfulness did Indra become the overlord of the devas ("shining ones," angelic light beings). Heedfulness is ever praised, and heedlessness ever pitied.

31. The spiritual wanderer who delights in heedfulness and looks with dread upon heedlessness advances like fire, burning all fetters, small and large.

32. The spiritual wanderer who delights in heedfulness and looks with dread upon heedlessness will not fall. That person is close to nirvana.

Using the "Poop" Deck: Ship stuck at sea

Amber Dorrian, Seven, Wisdom Quarterly; Larry Mantle, AirTalk (SCPR.org) UPDATED

A cruise on a Petri dish is like a boat in a bottle being used as a bedpan (wallmay.net)

 

Actual unintended nature sign in Europe

For passengers on the Carnival cruise ship Triumph, their trip can’t end soon enough. What was meant to be a fun vacation got cut short when the engine room caught on fire Sunday morning. Ever since then, the boat has been without electricity and dependent only on generators. 

Water and food have been limited, and passengers are reportedly urinating in bags [and pooping on the deck and in the halls and, presumably, vomiting over the rails]. 

Phuket, Thailand (KueC/flickr.com)

People have taken to sleeping on the boat’s deck to escape the stifling heat inside the cabins without air conditioning. 

  

Tensions are running high, and medical experts are concerned that Triumph is basically a Petri dish of disease and germs just floating in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico. On the bright side, the end is in sight [except that a tug line just broke, so it is sitting stagnant again]. The ship is about 25 miles or so from Mobile, Alabama, where it is being sent to port. The only problem is that it is being pulled by a tugboat against the wind. More

COMMENTARY

Can you imagine taking a romantic cruise in southern climes? I can't. It's not the Ebola and salmonella infections, having the captain run you aground, or even the requisite vomiting and futile fulfillment-seeking. My problem is that the goal of modern cruise ship "travel" is nothing but sensual-distraction. I agree! The point is the ship, not where it's head to. Do this, do that, do anything to distract from everything happening in your life back on land. But we've brought the "land" aboard so you won't miss it. It's a land lover's delight. There's a chlorine/urine filled pool. There's a bar, a movie theater, a backed up toilet. We can't feel or see the water and sand, but we're sunburned. *Trill* Escapism? Give me adventure and/or spiritual tourism any day!

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Prison: Riot in California

Winston Churchill memorably said "the civilization of a society can be judged by the way it treats its prisoners."

"Guards fire rounds during fatal prison riot"

Los Angeles Times (3/19/09)

Prison guards fired live rounds, pepper spray and rubber bullets to quell a riot at Kern Valley State Prison in which one inmate was stabbed to death and 17 others injured, state corrections officials disclosed Thursday.

.

The deadly melee in the maximum-security section of the overcrowded prison involved 38 inmates, four of whom suffered bullet wounds after guards moved in to contain the riot that began at 3:20 p.m. Wednesday, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation reported.

The riot occurred in the general population yard of Kern Valley's Facility B at the prison 180 miles north of Los Angeles. Four inmate-made weapons were recovered from the scene, reported Lt. Xavier Cano of the prison's public information office.

"Correctional officers used lethal munitions, pepper spray and multiple direct impact rubber rounds to quell the incident. A correctional officer also discharged five rounds from the mini-14 rifle," Cano's statement said, referring to a military-style rifle used in some prisons. More>>

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