Wednesday, September 7, 2016

From US Marine to Zen Monk (video)

米海兵隊から禅僧へ [ドキュメンタリー]. A Tofu Media (tofu.media) Production, Krzysztof Gonciarz and Kasia Mecinski.

Scott Mangis is a former United States Marine who now lives life as a Zen Buddhist monk near Tokyo, Japan. Viewers are given a chance to explore Ven. Scott's life story and the path that lead him to completely change his way of living for the better.

COMMENT
Shodo Ji Shin(Shodo Ji Shin) I'm also a Zen priest and will be moving to a temple in Japan in a few days. I look at this film and see my life as very similar -- although I have been a university lecturer and not a Marine. I enjoyed the video very much. Bowing, Shodo

Learn a meditation technique. Work on dropping ego; this is the difficult part. Learn about ego (atta), what it is, how to drop it, and so on, on the Internet. And finally, do what you can to help others, human and non-human (animals, etc.) -- this is key and also will help in letting go of ego. I don't know how easy or difficult it is to be vegan [completely vegetarian] in the Navy, but I can see no way to practice compassion if one goes along with contributing to the suffering and killing of innocent beings. Best of luck in the Navy.

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