Five Films You Might Want To Watch With The Buddha Before Killing Him

To thine own self be... ouch! Via.

"If you meet the Buddha, kill the Buddha."

Linji Yixuan, Ch'an Master (? – 866)

Zen practices help people achieve serenity, better focus and greater understanding of the self. But as with everything in life, light must co-exist with darkness.

Enter Japan Society’s Zen & Its Opposite [watch the trailer], five classic films that show the relationship between Zen and violence, often overlooked when discussing Zen philosophy. Historically we can look to samurai meditating in order to center themselves before violent combat. Metaphysically, we can look at the constant battle between our spiritual selves and earthly desires.

A good example of the latter is the 1964 supernatural Japanese fantasy/horror film Kwaidan, which launches Zen & Its Opposite tonight. Each film illustrates one or several of the "Six Planes of Existence" in Buddhism's realm of birth and death. Kwaidan is four ghost stories elegantly strewn together, but at its core represents "The Realm of Humans", where beings are both good and evil--enlightenment within their grasp, yet blinded and consumed by their desires.Each of the short stories that comprise Kwaidan creates worlds where one must be on constant alert – something Zen Buddhism strives to improve upon – and nothing is as it seems.

Though the film was made by Japanese people, who might readily understand these Eastern concepts, the book on which the film was based was actually written by noted 19th century Japanologist Lafcadio Hearn, who was British-born and naturalized as a Japanese citizen in 1895, taking the name Yakumo Koizumi. So great was Hearn’s affinity for Japanese culture that his stories read like a born and bred native Japanese who has never stepped foot in the West.

After Kwaidan Zen & Its Opposite continues through February with screenings of Onibaba, Fires on the Plain, Hell  and Sword of Doom. Tickets are $12 or $9 Japan Society members, students and seniors.

For those who can’t get enough ghost stories before Halloween, Japan Society invites you to check out OBAKE! on October 29 for an evening of fun with ghosts, costumes and one of the most insane Japanese horror films of all time. More on that later!

T.D.

Zen Again & Again

Hakuin Ekaku, 1685-1768, Two Blind Men on a Bridge. Ink on paper, 11 x 33 in. Man’yo-an Collection.

October is Zen Month here at Japan Society! Starting on October 1st, and continuing until January, the new exhibit, The Sound of One Hand: Paintings and Calligraphy by Zen Master Hakuin, opens with a veritable onslaught of Zen-related events following. The "Here & Zen" series includes lectures on art and lifestyle, performances, film screenings, workshops, as well as a second, free-of-charge exhibition.

On Saturday October 2nd, Stephen Addiss heads the symposium Hear the Sound of One Hand: Reflections on the Art of Zen Master Hakuin about the influence of Zen on artistic expression in Japan. Addiss is a co-curator of the exhibition with his wife Audrey Yoshiko Seo. Both are respected and prolific writers on Zen and art, and they wrote the exhibition catalogue. They are joined by Matthew Welch, Curator of Japanese and Korean Art at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts and David Rosand, Meyer Schapiro Professor of Art History at Columbia University.

The next weekend, on October 8th and 9th, actor-director Yoshi Oida brings his one man show, Interrogations: Words of the Zen Masters to Japan Society. Interrogations is a comical play about a Zen master addressing several koans to a student to test him, and to see if he has reached enlightenment. The play is accompanied with live music by Berlin-based experimental musician Dieter Trüstedt. Interrogations premiered in 1979 and has been performed by Oida and Trüstedt throughout the world (this summer it stopped in Barcelona). It’s a true classic of the genre, and offers something for Zen novices, adepts, and masters alike!

On October 15th, Japan Society screens Masaki Kobayashi's epic ghost-film omnibus Kwaidan. It’s made up of four separate, thematically related, traditional Japanese ghost stories, and is by turns hypnotic, jarring, and meditative.

Field to Table: the Role of Vegetables in the Japanese Diet, is a lecture by Elizabeth Andoh, a Japanese food expert and cookbook author, as well as Masato Nishihara, head chef at Kijitsu Restaurant. Japanese cuisine boasts an impressive vegetarian tradition, because Buddhist doctrine limits, and sometimes prohibits, the consumption of meat.

In addition to the main gallery exhibit an additional show entitled oxherding features ink paintings by Max Gimblett and poems by Lewis Hyde. Together they examine similar themes to Hakuin, but from a contemporary perspective. As inspiration, the exhibition takes the famous Zen parable, "The Ten Ox Herding Pictures", about tending and maintaining discipline in the mind for gaining enlightenment. Hyde as well as psychiatrist and author Mark Epstein present a lecture as well: Mindful Living, examining the ox herding parable and describing ways to map its Zen ideas onto Western lives.

A number of workshops are held as well. oxherding artist Max Gimblett leads four sumi ink painting workshops from October to January, Lewis Hyde offers a writing workshop, and world-famous shakuhachi musician Akikazu Nakamura teaches missoku Zen breathing meditation in October.

Ticket sales for the lectures, performances and workshops have just been released online, so get them while they’re hot, and get ready to expand your minds!

This cow is maditating on the ancient koan, "nothingness" 

N.O.