Seven Pounds

Posted on October 30, 2014 by Dorena

Seven Pounds is another movie in my top ten list of Buddhist theme movies. This movie brings to mind the activities of a bodhisattva. A bodhisattva is defined as someone that has bodhichitta. And bodhichitta is the wish to become totally enlightened for the benefit of all sentient beings. One of the activities of a bodhisattva is the perfecting generosity. Generosity is perfected when one gives without self-concern at all.

Although Will Smith is not motivated by bodhichitta, his role in this movie reminds me of the following quote from Master Shantideva’s Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life.

To begin with, Buddha, the Guide, encourages us to practice giving such things as food.

Later, when we become used to this, we can gradually learn to give our own flesh.

This may seem a little startling, but there are many stories of bodhisattva’s being asked to give of themselves and they do so without hesitation. Indeed, one story of Buddha’s past lives has him coming upon a starving tiger and her cubs. He sacrificed himself in order to save their lives. Since the mother was too weak to eat, he first cut himself and fed her his blood so that she would become stronger. Then he offered her his entire body and his life. It is said that the cubs reincarnated and became his first disciples after his enlightenment.

In the movie, Will Smith gives up “seven pounds” of body parts in order to save people in need. It is an interesting movie to stimulate thought regarding the practice of extreme generosity.

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Chenopodium album

Posted on October 29, 2014 by Dorena

Chenopodium album, also know as lamb’s quarters, goosefoot, or pigweed (Hey, but everything is also known as goosefoot or pigweed) is coming in strong in the garden and ready for the table. It tastes a little like spinach due to its similar high oxalic acid content.

Chenopodium Plants - Phoenix AZ Fall 2013

Chenopodium album plants – at TESLI Central Phoenix, Arizona Fall 2013

I just discovered a new trick for harvesting that I’d like to pass on. In Phoenix, the plants go straight from sprouts and into flower. I prefer young tips without flowers, but this just doesn’t seem to occur in our climate. The small tender leaves are best, but they are tedious to harvest. I used to sit outside and either pluck them off one-by-one or I’d use scissors to cut them. I only found time to do this once or twice a season. Such a pity to let all those greens go to waste.

Today I realized that I usually had more plants then I could handle and, since reharvesting was rare, I just cut the whole plant off and brought the stalks inside. Much easier to pluck leaves when I’m working directly over a bowl. Great time saver!

Another thing I would like to share is my trick for washing dirty greens. Chenopodium seems to attract dust, so I always have to clean them. When I was growing up we lived on ice berg lettuce – all clean and cellophane wrapped from the store. It wasn’t until I was in my twenties that I learned an easy way to get sand and dirt off of spinach and lettuce. I was working at a restaurant and we would simply fill up a basin with water and dump the greens in. After dunking the greens a couple times, the dirt effortlessly sank to the bottom and we would pluck the greens out and put them in a large colander, dump the water and dirt and then repeat. Twice was usually enough, but occasionally a batch could use a third rinse for good measure. At home I spread them out on towels to dry for a bit before storing in the fridge.

A pile of freshly cleaned lamb’s quarter’s leaves ready to eat.

Inception

Posted on October 28, 2014 by Dorena

Here is another movie in my series on the top ten Buddhist movies. Inception came out in 2010 and demonstrates nicely the Buddhist concept that the reality we live in is merely a projection of our subconscious.

In the movie, people share dreams together. One person, the architect, sets up the basic framework of the dream (location and environmental features) while the subject populates the dream with projections (people) that are parts of their subconscious. Other dreamers can join the subject in the dream as well. The movie plot focuses on using the dream state to either steal information from the subject (extraction) or to give the subject an idea that they will carry out during their awake time (inception).

My interest is not so much on the plot, which is fascinating in itself, but on how the movie as a whole models the Buddhist concept that the world we find ourselves in is really just a projection of our mind. A school of Buddhist thought called the Mind Only School (Chittamatra or Yogacara) actually purports that the world we live in is just mind only. The people in the movie (aside from the shared dreamers) are actually just projections of the dreamer’s subconscious.

My first reaction to the movie took a couple of days to wear off. When the movie was over, I found myself viewing the world and the people around me with a different lens. Each person I interacted with I saw as an extension of myself. I couldn’t shake the sense that they were just an extension of my subconscious and that my world in a dream.

One of the themes of Inception is that the dreamers have to be on the alert about whether they are dreaming or awake. The dream is so real that discernment regarding their sleep state is nearly impossible. This too is similar to the idea in Buddhism that our awake state is really just a dream state. It is impossible to tell the two apart and like a dream what makes certain things occur or not is not readily apparent. Our awake state seems real, when it it truly a deceptive reality.

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