Momentary Bliss

Last night I dreamt of a shaman. He was a character I was playing in a game, but I also became him. He seemed to be completely mad, but only because he was so far from sane. He/I hunched down in the dirt, barefoot and with wild unkempt hair, and called out a need to the forest. Something big was coming, a war to be won, and He/I needed all the assistance that Gaia could offer. So up from the dirt crawled a worm and We lifted it to Our ear where it bit down and dangled off the lobe. Up from the soil crawled a little lizard and We lifted it to Our ear where it bit down and dangled next to the worm. Down from the sky came a raven came and We lifted it to Our other ear where it bit down and dangled from the lobe. Creatures of old and deep magic, singing the songs without words, songs of the power that flows behind the veil of matter. With the old secrets pouring into Our ears We stood to face the challenge of a modern world of machines and electronic wizardry. A crooked grin spread across Our face and Our eyes gleamed with the raw intensity of a man who never forgot the old ways. They would think Us mad, but their sanity would be the one thing keeping them from stopping Us.

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My mind has been speaking to me in my dreams about the old ways. Somewhere deep inside there is a bell that tolls long and low. It speaks from a place that is behind the symbols we use to express our world. You may point to a tree and say "that is a tree", but that is a vastly inadequate description. Where is the tree and where are the leaves? Where are the roots and where is the dirt? Where does one end and the other begin?

There is power in the symbols, they can bind experience into defined shapes. We feel we create order when labeling and classifying our world. Language helps us to create commonly agreed upon containers for what we see and feel every day. How would we carry on a conversation without such a system?

Yet underneath and behind and outside these symbols there is something much more powerful, a power beyond conception or description, but not beyond experience. The full weight of the moment-to-moment experience is simply beyond measure. If you look at the tree and allow yourself to really see it, then you realize that there is no tree at all. There are no leaves, there are no roots. These are just words, just membranes we use to separate our world into manageable chunks.

We think this separation makes our experience easier to deal with, but it ends up making everything so much more difficult. Once the world has been filed away and reduced down to measurable bits, we then try to juggle all these bits in our mind and keep them all in the air at once. So many little pebbles bouncing around and colliding with each other. It is a source of great strife.

The other option is to acknowledge that all these little bits are not real, not in the true sense of the word. Surely we all know that the tree is real. We can go up to it and feel the rough grooves of its bark and hear the wind running its fingers through the leaves. We know that it most definitely exists. Yet it is nothing, as in it is no thing. It is not some separate object that exists despite the air around it and the dirt beneath it. It exists because of these containing and intertwining elements. It is convenient for our mind to view the tree as digging its roots into the soil and reaching its branches into the sky, to think of it as its own entity among other distinctly separate elements, but this is just a mental exercise. The tree is only separate in our mind, in our conception of it. If you truly look at the tree you will see that the soil could not exist without the tree and all the trees that had come before it. The wind could not exist without the tree either, without its breathing in and out, cycling the atmosphere through itself. Where does the soil end and the tree begin? Where does the tree end and the sky begin?

This may seem like a pointless statement, a philosophical platitude, and it absolutely is. That's because it's used to describe something that is beyond description, to point to a direct experience that cannot be defined or measured or categorized. If you observe the tree for long enough, you will begin to realize that the tree is the sky is the soil is the earth is you is me is the dog down the street is the ship resting on the bottom of the ocean is the winking star at the far end of the universe whose light is only just now reaching us even though it died in a glorious explosion millions of years ago.

To confuse our world and the direct experience with the symbols we use to describe those experiences is to invite mental death. If we walk down the street every day and think "That's just a building" and "That's just a car" and "That's just a cloud in the sky" then we are lying to ourselves. A great big fat lie. A lie so large that you can't even tell it's there because it entirely obscures your vision. It's as if we've painted a little picture of what we think of the world and then held it up in front of our eyes for so long that we forget that it's just a quaint little painting and there's a whole world going on behind it.

The direct experience is ineffable. It is so heartbreakingly beautiful that it completely defies all means of expressing it. To stand under the obscured moon and breathe deep of the moist night air after a spring rain is just as excruciatingly wonderful as waiting in line at the bank, it's just that one is easier to see than the other. Why is that? Because of that little painting we hold up in front of our eyes.

Every moment is the moment.

Drinking the coffee

It's hard to think when you keep thinking your way through your thoughts. In other words, thinking about thinking is not thinking.

Last night I kept dreaming that I was perpetually late for work. In the dream I had left work on my lunch break and decided to go to a drive-through to get food. I couldn't decide what I wanted and when I finally did decide it took an eternity for them to prepare the food. Then something went wrong and they couldn't make it after all. All the while I was fretting over being late getting back to work. I woke up and was disoriented. The idea that I was in my own bed didn't seem quite right, but some distant voice called dimly through the fog reminding me that of course that's where I was.

I fell back asleep and dreamt that I had decided to go home for lunch instead of dealing with the drive-through. Once there I wanted to change clothes and somehow got caught up deciding what to wear, nothing seemed right and I took far too long to make a decision. I finally got in my car but in my haste I backed it into some bushes and hit a tree, banging my car up and getting it stuck in the process. At this point I was almost in a panic about being late coming back to work. I awoke to the dim blue light of my alarm clock and felt my hand at the end of my arm like seeing an airplane up in the sky. Sure, I knew what it was, but it seemed so far away. I brought my hand to my face and slowly clenched and unclenched it, individually worked the digits and turned it back and forth. I laughed at myself then, partly out of half-awake delirium, but mostly out of a sense of the sheer absurdity of the situation.

Even in dreaming I can sometimes get so caught up in the mundane worries about life that I forget myself.

I think this is symptomatic of living in the modern world. As members of this society we are encouraged to have a firm grasp on the practical. We are all expected to go to work, pay the bills, cut the grass, walk the dog, balance our checkbooks. So much of life in America is about maintenance. It seems we are taught to be the custodians of our life instead of the person living it. I'm not suggesting that we should stop paying our bills or let the dog shit in the house, I'm saying instead that we are deceiving ourselves if we think of life as separated into that which is a necessary chore or drudgery and that which is "living our life."

I find myself thinking "Alright, I'll wash my clothes, go grocery shopping, wash the car, and clean the bathroom. Then I can relax and enjoy myself. Then my day will really begin." I put myself on auto-pilot to get through these mundane tasks so I can essentially skip ahead to the good stuff. I spend that time thinking about how fun it will be to play video games and watch cartoons (yes, that's what I do in my free time. I may be 27, but I refuse to be an adult.) Once all this is done, I finally sit down with a cup of coffee to enjoy myself. But can you guess what happens as I sit there and drink my coffee? Many times, instead of enjoying the task at hand, I find myself worrying about tomorrow's drudgery. I try to cling to the seemingly fleeting moments of enjoyment I have because I know that, come tomorrow, I'll have to go to work and pay my bills and balance my checkbook.

It is very difficult for us to experience what is happening to us right now, in this moment. We are constantly thinking about what has already happened to us or thinking ahead about what will happen to us. Then the moment passes and we reflect on it and think "I wish I had really been in that moment instead of thinking about other moments" and on and on. We always wish we were somewhere else and then when we get there we wish the same thing again.

It was in this spirit that I began pursuing meditation. I wanted to learn how to truly be in the moment, to let the reflections of the past and expectations for the future fall away. With a happy heart I sat down and tried to clear my mind. All the thoughts of my day ran through my head and tripped over each other and got in the way. I eventually became frustrated with trying to turn these thoughts off. It would take such a long time just to calm my mind. Once this challenge was overcome and my mind was calm I would try to think of nothing. This proved far more difficult than I thought it would be. How does one think of nothing? Nothing isn't something you can think of, such an idea is nonsense. Perhaps I should try instead to not think of anything, as opposed to thinking of nothing. As I was thinking about this, I realized that I was thinking about thinking about it, then I was thinking about thinking about thinking about it. I felt I had hit a wall and didn't know how to get over it.

Meditation became less enjoyable for me. I would sit down and just frustrate myself by trying to think or not to think. I drove myself crazy with it. Eventually I began putting it off. I would tell myself "I'm not in the right state of mind to meditate, I'll do it tomorrow" or "I'd rather meditate outside once the weather improves." At the time I didn't realize it, but meditation had become just another chore on my list. "Alright, I'll pay my bills, vacuum the carpet, and do my meditation. Then I can relax and enjoy myself. Then my day will really begin." Like most other chores I put on my list, I never got around to doing it. Then I felt guilty for not doing it and even if I did get around to meditating I couldn't enjoy it because it just felt like another tedious thing that I had to do. What I didn't realize then and have only recently begun to realize is that meditation isn't something that you do.  In fact it's actually hindered by trying to do anything.

I had always thought meditation was sitting down in a quiet room and calming your mind. While it's true that this is a form of meditation, it is just that - a form. It is not the only way. In Zen Buddhism this is called zazen - sitting meditation. However, there are other types of Zen meditation such as standing meditation, lying meditation, even walking meditation. When I learned about these I was amazed. "You can meditate while walking?" I thought to myself. The concept was completely foreign to me because I thought that meditation took such concentration and focus that it could be easily broken. How could you be walking around and still meditating at the same time? This is possible because meditation is not an activity, it is a state of being.

If you go for a long run, at first your mind is occupied. You think of how long the run will be, or perhaps what you need to do after the run. You think about your legs moving beneath you, you think about the strain on them, you think about the sweat beading up on your body. If you keep running you start to feel your muscles burn and you try to ignore the pain or push it away. Eventually you break through this and get your second wind and delight in the ease of it. Sometimes you even reach a point where you don't really think about anything. You feel your feet pounding rhythmically against the ground, you feel your breath go in and out of your lungs, you feel the sweat run down your body. You are intimately aware of every single detail, but you aren't trying to do anything. You aren't trying to breathe, you aren't trying to run, you're just doing it. That is meditation.

If you want some coffee you may get up and get the coffee maker ready. As you pour in the water and grind the beans you think about the coffee. You think about how the smell of the brewing coffee will fill the house. Once the coffee is finished brewing you pour it and think about how it will taste. You finish the coffee and think about how it tasted and the way it made you feel. Then you wonder if maybe you'd like another cup of coffee and what that one will taste like. All the while you were thinking about drinking the coffee instead of just drinking it. Meditation is about fully experiencing the moment, not thinking about it. Meditation is drinking the coffee.

When you do sitting meditation, the goal is just to sit. When you do standing meditation, the goal is just to stand. These are exercises designed to make you focus on what you are doing while you are doing it. You don't need to join a monastery to learn about meditation. You don't need to fundamentally alter your life in order to meditate properly. All it takes is a full acceptance of the moment you are in, every moment, the continuous moment. It is an unbroken awareness. It is not viewing life through a glass darkly, it is not viewing life through any glass, it is not viewing life at all. It is living. It is being right here, right now. It is not separating yourself from the experience. You are the experience.

The practice of meditation and the spirit of Zen seems to me to be about not grasping things, not trying to hold onto them with your mind, but just letting them flow through you. Be here now, in this moment, and fully experience every single thing as it happens. When you do this you will find that even the most mundane thing is full of the light of the divine. Even something as simple as drinking a cup of coffee becomes a sublime pleasure beyond the capacity for expression.

Drink the coffee.

Sucker Punch and the hate bandwagon

***Warning: Strong language and spoilers ahead!***



Yesterday some friends and I went to see the film Sucker Punch. I really enjoyed it and I recommend others go and see it while it's in theaters.

However, this film has apparently received a lot of bad press. For example this, this, and this. Just do a google search for "Sucker Punch film review" and you'll be inundated with a seemingly endless parade of negative reviews that seem more like an effort to wring new synonyms for the word "horrible" out of the english language than serious critiques of the film itself. I don't know what Zack Snyder did to piss off every film critic in the business, but it is definitely working.

I find this whole phenomenon very interesting and it's certainly not a new development. This type of thing has been going on for a very long time, though it sometimes wears a different mask.

It starts with someone saying something is objectively terrible. For one reason or another this idea catches on and soon everyone is singing the same song, shouting it from the rooftops that [X] is an awful, irredeemable, dream-raping shit sandwich. This judgment gains momentum and soon takes on a life of its own and before long even people who have no first hand knowledge of the quality or nature of [X] are speaking about it as if it personally broke into their home and raped their entire family.

Sucker Punch is the latest victim of this trend. The three main complaints about this movie seem to be 1) It has a nonsensical and ridiculous plot, 2) This shaky plot is used as a flimsy pretext to engage in on-screen CGI masturbation and over-the-top action sequences, and 3) Since all of these action sequences occur in a "dream state" or are otherwise "not real" there is no sense of actual danger and thus no emotional investment in them.

After watching the film I can see what these reviews are getting at, but it seems to me that they are entirely missing the point. For starters, the plot actually made a lot of sense, it was just told in such a way that it could be confusing for people who weren't paying close attention or those who aren't comfortable with blending fantasy and reality. Some people expect a film to take them by the hand and carefully lead them through the story, explaining every single detail fully so there is absolutely no question as to what is happening. Other people perhaps think that films should have certain ground rules and adhere to them strictly. Personally, I enjoy movies (or songs, books, comics, paintings, etc.) that take the conventional rules and warp them in an effort to show you something about yourself or the world.

Secondly, the plot didn't seem to me to be simply an excuse for all of the CGI-heavy action sequences. The story and the fight scenes are integral pieces of a whole. One of the themes that I see in this film is fantasy-as-reality. The premise of the movie allows for these flights of fancy and they didn't seem out of place within the context of the story. I think it's kind of funny that some people sit in front of the silver screen to see a two hour work of fantastical fiction and then criticize it for being simply an exploration of the fantastical fiction occurring in someone's mind.

Lastly, I felt that the dreamy representation of the main characters' conflicts in the film was a neat narrative device. Those who say that there was no "real" threat to any of the characters in the action sequences obviously weren't paying attention. In fact, at one point in the film the dream breaks for a moment because of something that occurs in the "waking" world and it shows both the dream world and real world impact of that event. The dream/action sequences are just an internal representation of what is going on in the external world. In fact, the entire movie is really about our perception of our world and how we deal internally with the things that happen to us.

Now, let's view a different film through the same critical lens which so many people have viewed Sucker Punch. To review: 1) Nonsensical and ridiculous plot, 2) Flimsy pretext for CGI and excessive action sequences, and 3) No sense of danger because all threats to characters are not "real". I think this describes another big-budget film that came out somewhat recently. I'm referring, of course, to Avatar. In James Cameron's ham-fisted attempt at a moral message ("Don't kill Native Americans!" or perhaps "Fern Gully fucking rocks!") he is blatantly guilty of all 3 of the above-listed trespasses.

The plot seemed to lose track of itself almost immediately. In the exposition it is explained that the avatars have been created in order to facilitate communication with the natives. In this way they hope to establish a rapport with them and thus learn about their culture and perhaps convince them to give up their land. This makes, if I may say so, no goddamn fucking sense. At no point in the film do the N'avi give any indication that they think these avatars are actually members of the same species as them. The avatars look more human, have 5 fingers instead of 4, and have trouble speaking the native language. The N'avi even refer to the avatars as "sky people" and chastise one of their own for bringing an avatar to their home tree (yes, they call it a "home tree"). Furthermore, it's pretty counter-productive and even insulting to use this method. Imagine if an alien race came to our planet and instead of engaging us in their normal bodies they instead spent a vast amount of time and resources to create alien-human hybrids with giant eyes and 4 fingers, then used those disgusting abominations to start an interaction with our race and learn about our culture. That would be horrifying and also kind of idiotic.

This nonsensical premise was then used as a flimsy pretext for James Cameron to shoot his CGI spooge all over the screen. He started writing this movie over 15 years ago and didn't start filming it then because the technology to bring his vision to life didn't exist yet. After waiting for digital effects to catch up with his idea, he then spent over $300 million to turn people into CGI cat monsters so they could fight CGI robots and helicopters in a CGI forest. Yeah, totally worth it.

Added to this is the fact that when Jake Sully is doing all of this badass stuff in his avatar body (such as wrangling dragons and banging cat ladies) he's never in any real danger! If his avatar gets sliced in half by a space puma or whatever the fuck was in that jungle, he'll just wake back up in his normal human body. The only real threat is that the military - who've already been established at this point to be soulless demons that eat kittens for breakfast - will lose a lot of money. How's that for emotional investment?

However, Metacritic (a site that compiles all major ratings of movies, games, and music into one overall score) shows Avatar as having a rating of 84 out of 100. Critics seemed to eat this shit up and this movie was hailed as an epic that set the bar for future film makers. Meanwhile Sucker Punch has a rating of 36 out of 100. Yet all of the main criticisms of Sucker Punch can be directly applied to Avatar. Even the inane dialogue that shows up in Sucker Punch is vastly overpowered by James Cameron's complete parody of conversation that occurs in Avatar. For fuck's sake, the main resource they were trying to obtain was called Unobtanium. Unobtanium?! Are you fucking serious?! Fifteen years and that's what he came up with?

So, what's the point that I'm trying to make? It's simply this: make up your own fucking mind. Critics are paid to be critical, it's what they do. They are also human and are just as susceptible to having their opinions influenced as anyone else. Just because a bunch of people tell you that [X] movie is a steaming pile of shit and the director should be euthanized, or just because everyone you know thinks that [Y] album is the utmost pinnacle of human achievement, doesn't make it true. Art is in the eye of the beholder. So go out there and fucking behold it, then make up your own damn mind about it.

For example, I don't like The Goonies. There, I said it.