Shinto Blog

Kurosawa’s film titled Dreams is based on several dreams the director had throughout his life. The part of the film I watched was “The Peach Orchard”. The Peach Orchard begins with a young boy bringing a tray of food into the other room where his sister and four of her friends are. Upon entering the room, the young boy stares at all the dolls that are on display up against the wall. He then has an argument with his sister about how many friends she has over. He insists that she had five friends over while she is very adamant to the fact that she only has four friends over.  The younger brother then looks out the door and sees another girl standing there. Trying to prove his sister wrong he opens up the door all the way to show her that there was in fact another friend over at the house. When he does this the girl has then disappeared.  He then goes around the house in search of this girl. He sees her run out of the front door, so he runs out after her. The girl runs out through and forest and then out into an empty field, all while the young boy follows her. As soon as they get to the empty field a large group of people appear and the young girl disappears again. The group tells the boy that they will not come to his house again. The reason being the boy’s family has chopped down all the peach blossoms in the orchard. The large group of people are essentially the dolls who he had previously been staring at come to live. The dolls are used in a festival each year celebrating the arrival of the peach blossoms.  They are the spirits of the trees.  They accuse him of not caring, and he begins to cry. At first they are not sympathetic to him but then realize that he was upset that all the peach blossoms were gone. They said he was just upset because he likes peaches. The boy argues that you can buy peaches but you can’t buy a whole orchard in bloom.  They then realize that he is just a good boy and decide to let him see the orchard in bloom one last time.

The Peach Orchard can be related to Shinto in few ways.  One of the Shinto ethics is an emphasis on actions that create harmonious relationships in home and society. By the boy’s family cutting down the peach blossoms, it did not make for a harmonious relationship within society.  Another way that this can be related to Shinto is that everything is spiritual and there is a continuity between humanity, nature, and the spirits/gods. The spirits of the peach blossoms were communicating with the boy (humanity) their displeasure with what his family has done. In Shinto they also believe that what is powerful or amazing in nature is kami. The boy believed that the peach blossoms were kami because he felt that they were amazing. 

The Tao of Pooh

I was actually pleasantly surprised by reading Benjamin Hoff’s “The Tao of Pooh”. I was very happy that it did not seem like your typical religious studies book. By having it not be the typical religious studies book, it made it very easy to understand. I was also very happy that it was a fast read! I thought it was a great idea to relate religion to something that generally most people have heard of, Winnie the Pooh. Relating Taoism to Winnie the Pooh made the concepts of Taoism very easy to understand. For the most part I really enjoyed this book, but in some parts towards to end I felt a little bored while reading it and kept zoning out.

My reaction to the critique of America as a culture of “Busy Backsons”, was that I can definitely see Hoff’s point of view with his argument. “Let’s put it this way: if you want to be healthy, relaxed, and content, just watch what a Bisy Backson does and then do the opposite…he makes you feel tired just looking at him. The chronic Backson always seems to have to be going somewhere, at least on a superficial, physical level. He doesn’t go for a walk, though; he doesn’t have time.”(Hoff 95-96) This quote can definitely be used to describe many Americans. Our culture is very materialistic and superficial. We want others thing think that we are a certain way or live life as upper class citizens. A lot of Americans are constantly working and keeping busy that they do not take the time to enjoy the little things in life. Another quote from the book I found interesting was how he says that the “Bisy Backson Society” is obsessed with youth, which our culture is. “Now one thing that seems rather odd to us is that the Bisy Backson Society, which practically worships youthful energy, appearance, and attitudes have developed no effective methods of retaining them, a lack testified to by an ever-increasing reliance on the unnatural False Front approach of cosmetics and plastic surgery.”(Hoff 106) Americans tend to think that being more youthful is always better, when that is not always the case. In Taosim it is a good thing to be old. It means you are wiser. In other cultures there is a lot of emphasis on respecting their elders.

        

    Having Taoism be a “solution” to the “problem” of American culture and Americans as individuals in theory sounds like it could work. However, I do not think that this would ever happen. If we truly wanted to change and practice the principles of Taoism, then I think we could solve many of the problems in our culture. Everyone would need to realize that being a “Bisy Backson” isn’t always better. 

Buddhism

                There are many TV shows, movies, pictures, etc. in American culture that stereotypes Buddhist practitioners. They are generally perceived as very tranquil and carefree individuals.

 The first stereotype that I thought of was one from a TV show I remember watching when I was in elementary school.  Hopefully it’s a show most of you guys remember, Rocko’s Modern Life.  The clip I have chosen is the episode “Wimp on the Barbie”. It is about how the main character, Rocko, had been bullied when he was in elementary school by his classmate named Dingo. Dingo then tormented him all throughout school all the way until he moved from Australia to the United States. Rocko receives a phone call from his mother telling him that Dingo is coming to visit him. Still being terrified of him, Rocko begins to prepare himself for his arrival by gaining the courage to finally stand up to him by having his two friends teach him to fight. Around 9 and a half minutes into the clip Dingo makes his first appearance as he is now. He shows up a completely changed person and is there to seek Rocko’s forgiveness and to earn his eternal friendship. He is there to seek his forgiveness so he can “become one with the unicorn.” He then asks Rocko to punch him in the face in order for them to be even for all the pain he has caused him over the years. Rocko finally gets to punch him and Dingo was given what he came there for.

                The stereotype that I think is being portrayed here can be seen as positive and negative because the sole purpose of this character is for entertainment.  It is depicting Buddhist practitioners as very calm. Although Dingo is concerned with the past he is more concerned with what is going on right now. In Brad Warner’s Zen Wrapped in Karma Dipped in Chocolate he discusses that Buddhists are only concerned with the present. He states the following on page 54, “…the only real time as far as Buddhism is concerned is right now. Right now there is no old age or death because old age and death are descriptions of things as they are no when we compare things to how they used to be.”

Liberation and Success

Success

Kevin Rudolf “I Made It”

Lupe Fiasco “Superstar”

Kanye West “Good Life”

Survivor “Eye of the Tiger”

Drake “Successful”

Liberation

Chris Brown “Deuces”

Madonna “Like a Virgin”

Mr. Mister “Broken Wings”

Britney Spears “Stronger ”

TI “Dead and Gone”

To me the aim that was definitely more prevalent was success. It was so much easier finding songs for success. The majority of rap songs that aren’t about pleasure are about success. A lot of songs, once again mostly rap, are about how much money they have earned and want you to see how successful they are. An observation I made while doing this second assignment was that for me it was somewhat difficult finding songs for liberation. Once again I did try to only use my itunes library so this might be why I found it so difficult.  I thought it would be easier when you could consider songs about break ups liberating in a way. The only song at first that came to mind for liberation was “Deuces”. On the other hand while I was going through my library to find songs for success, I just had to go through my list of songs and easily picked five out. The Hindu perspective of success I feel is much different from that of what people in American believe success is. Hindu’s believe that being successful is having enough money to support your family. Whereas in American begin successful would mean more of becoming wealthy.  

Assignment 1

Pleasure 

Story of the Year- “Until the Day I Die”

Drake-“Best I Ever Had” 

      Finch- “Stay With Me”

Gym Class Heroes- “Cookie Jar”  

 Lil Wayne- “Lollipop”  (Rated R) 

Community Service

Jimmy Eat World “A Praise Chorus”

John Lennon” Imagine”

Michael Jackson “They don't really care about us”

Christina Aguilera “Beautiful”

Matchbox 20 “How far we've come”

 This assignment actually surprised me at how easy and enjoyable it would be! I decided to try to use as many songs off my itunes as I could to make it as easy as possible. I feel like the aim that is more prevalent is pleasure especially in music that is popular today. I had such an easier time finding songs for pleasure verses finding songs for community service. An observation I made is that many songs are about pleasure in the sense that they are about sex because sex sells---this didn’t surprise me. And of course songs about pleasure are about things everyone likes.  I was actually surprised at how relatively easy it would be finding community service songs. I tried to find songs that were about being positive or accepting yourself.  I definitely think that the Hindu understanding of the four aims differs from what is expressed in American pop music. In the Hindu understanding things are taken somewhat seriously and they follow basic laws of morality and they seek pleasure intelligently. Most American pop songs are about anything from sex to drugs and more often than not they are not done in an intelligent way.