What Dreams May Come

In one of his Dharma lectures to us on the teaching of the Consciousness Only (Weishi) School last October, Venerable Master Hui Zheng introduced to us the movie What Dreams May Come that describes the afterlife.

We bought the DVD from WalMart soon after the lecture and somehow could not get around to watching it until today, it being Jan 14 [the date when the base draft of this blog was first written but only published today with some updates and editing. Procrastination is a great stealer of time. I have to be more vigilant]. What a powerful movie. I may just decide to read the book.

Even though the movie centers around the profound love between two soul mates, who are also husband and wife, spanning from earth to heaven, to hell and back to heaven, some of the concepts explored resonate with the Buddha teachings as well. Examples are heaven and hell, rebirth/reincarnation, and suicide as a cardinal sin.

The movie was adapted from a book with the same name, What Dreams May Come, a 1978 novel by Richard Matheson. The title comes from a famous line in Hamlet's soliloquy in Act 3, scene 1 (To be, or not to be..."), namely, "For in that sleep of death what dreams may come / When we have shuffled off this mortal coil”, according to wikipedia, and the movie tagline reads: After life there is more. The end is just the beginning.

Some of the accolades on the DVD covers:

A visual masterpiece;

Stunning and totally original; and

Awe-inspiring. A visual blast.

The dreamscape was indeed a striking magnificence of vivid color, the denizens locomoting in mid-air gracefully or threading on water effortlessly. The depiction of hell, on the other hand, is expected: somber, gruesome, and downright unpalatable. For these visual impacts, the movie won the 1998 Academy Award for best visual effects, the only award garnered.

Insightful lines sprinkle throughout the movie. Some that I managed to pick up (with some prodding from wikipedia) are excerpted below:

What some folks call impossible, is just stuff they haven't seen before. [or tried. In fact, if you break down the word, it reads “I’m Possible”. I’ve read this somewhere but the source escapes me now (Wayne Dyer, perhaps?).]

Sometimes, when you win, you lose. (in the early part of the movie). [Especially in relation to time frame, i.e., winning in the short-term but losing in the long haul. Or in stratagem, winning the battle but losing the war.]

Thought is real. Physical is the illusion. [The environment affects you the way your inner self perceives it to be. What others do will only get to you if and when you let them. You may not be able to control what they do, but you certainly have the control over how you choose to respond. And that’s a choice.]

Sometimes, when you lose, you win. (toward the end of the movie) [by stepping back, by not craving for the credit.]

Those are some thoughts for the day. Be good, do good, and be at peace.

Our Cherished Values

Previously I’ve blogged about Jimmy Carter’s latest book, Our Endangered Values: America's Moral Crisis (Simon & Schuster, 2005), on his definition of success in life, in 50 words. I spent close to half of morning yesterday finishing reading the book, while my wife was taking part in the Buddhist mantra chanting session. This is not my usual style of reading, which tends to follow a discrete fashion, i.e., a few pages a day. That's why the book had been with me for the past nine weeks (original period plus two extension of 3 weeks each, which expired on the very day). Then again, it is not the only book that I was reading, which typically numbers several and which book gets to be read depends on where I'm in the house when the reading bug hits. But I must admit that reading the book from half way (covered in the above haphazard manner) till the end can be a breeze too. Anyway, back to the book.

I found more gems of thoughts from a well-regarded statesman who is also a devout Christian at heart, that resonate with my (limited) understanding of the Buddha teaching that has been my guiding light in life. Here are some:

1) "All major religious faiths are shaped by prophetic mandates to do justice, love mercy, protect and care for widows and orphans, and exemplify God's compassion for the poor and victimized." [So often the opposite messages are sent when a small group of followers takes upon themselves to wield and exercise the mandates within narrow interpretation, and selectively at that.]

2) What is the World's greatest challenge in the new millennium?
"The growing chasm between the rich and the poor people on earth, and the gap is steadily widening". [This is the proverbial dichotomy of the haves and haves-not, but I would grant that religious strife will take a close second.]

3) What can just one person do?
"When combined, the small individual contributors of caring, friendship, forgiveness, and love, each of us different from our next-door neighbors, can form a phalanx, an army, with great capability". [As I’ve said before, Buddhism stresses the here and now. So a person cared for, befriended, forgiven, or loved, is exactly that, and it is not going to diminish in any way no matter what the sheer number of people uncared for, dumped, avenged, or hated, is.]

4) The Declaration of Independence, among other things, decrees “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” [I’ve to plead ignorance for not realizing that the pursuit of happiness is explicitly stated as an unalienable right, despite having visited the Independence Hall at Philadelphia twice, the more recent trip made in June 2005 as per the picture taken in front of the Independence Visitor Center with the Liberty Bell in the background, through the glass wall. Just learned that the movie, Pursuit of Happyness (note that it’s spelt with a y) by Will Smith, topped the box office last week. So this shall be our next movie in the theatre after Happy Feet, unless we succumb to watching Night in the Museum by Ben Stiller and Robin Williams in the IMAX theatre first.]

5) What is a Superpower?
Size does matter, but it is not in terms of physical prowess, but rather the size of the heart as evinced through “a demonstrable commitment to truth, justice, peace, freedom, humility, human rights, generosity and the upholding of other moral values.” [such as compassion, giving, and lending a helping hand or a shoulder to cry on.]

6) OK, this last bit has more to do with economics and earning power, but in a way it’s also a viable means towards averting that yawning chasm listed above (2). In an earlier blog, I’ve stated that the minimum wage for Florida will be at $6.67 in 2007 while "Democrats have pledged to use their new control of Congress to raise the federal minimum wage to $7.25 an hour over two years from the current $5.15, the first increase in a decade”, according to an MSNBC online story entitled Small businesses brace for minimum wage hike. In comparison, the book provided the following minimum wage figures in US dollars and based on currency values in April 2005:

• Australia, $8.66


• France, $8.88


• Italy, $9.18


• England, $9.20


• Germany, $12.74

Sobering news indeed.

Success in Life

“I believe that anyone can be successful in life, regardless of natural talent or the environment within which we live. This is not based on measuring success by human competitiveness for wealth, possessions, influence, and fame, but adhering to God’s standards of truth, justice, humility, service, compassion, forgiveness, and love.”

This is what Jimmy Carter defined as “success in life”, in 50 words. And where did I find that? It’s in his book, Our Endangered Values, with the tagline American’s Moral Crisis (Simon and Schuster, 2005, p. 28).

A similar set of values also permeates the Buddhist teachings, each cherished and to be practiced in our humanistic interactions with one another. So often we only pay lip service to this gold standard of moral behavior, while sidestepping it when it is inconvenient or expeditious.

At other times, we view ourselves as the only purveyor of truth, dispensing justice as we deem fit in the most dogmatic fashion. Those in high places put their needs, or rather wants, before those of the people they were elected to serve in the first place.

Then there is the NIMBY syndrome, out of sight, out of mind. We grow accustomed to the daily doses of life’s travesty spanning the newspaper pages, the atrocities flashing across the TV screens/computer monitors, the mental images vanished at the stroke of a switch.

Then we rationalize our apathy on having to make a living, preferring not to be overwhelmed by the enormity of it all by preoccupying ourselves within our confines. Oftentimes there is a lack of empathy, a failure to feel for the victims, for the vanquished, for the disenfranchised. It’s as if we are watching a movie, the human suffering occurring in a make-believe world on a two-dimensional rendering that is the celluloid.

But, does it have to be that way? For how long do we want to keep leaving to others to save the world, while unabashedly enjoying the fruits of their labor and sacrifice?

Sure, the effort of an individual seems almost pathetic or laughable, if you so inclined, in the face of the onslaught exacted by the crushing wheels of life’s injustice. But one human helped is, one human less to be helped who in turns is able to help another. And that reduces the suffering humans geometrically, much like a compound interest building up the capital (the humans able to help).

I think we need to start believing in ourselves, that what we do in our own way by adhering to the gold standard of moral living as espoused by Jimmy Carter, no matter how small our sphere of reach may seem, does matter, at the minimum to the ones we have helped directly. And let the power of compounding help spread like a progressive wave that radiates in all directions.

‘Think Globally, Act Locally.” That’s a slogan bandied about a long time ago. But that’s the paradigm that we need to imbue in ourselves, to reinforce our already frail psyche that the good deeds we do shall not be in vain.

A Chinese Buddhist adage that I’ve come across and that I’ve adopted as my motto in conducting my daily life, reads, literally translated:

“Do not neglect doing a good deed because it seems petty;
Nor commit an infraction because it is inconsequential.”

So it is not enough merely abstaining from doing the bad, we must also proactively do the good.

Let’s start/continue to do a good deed, at least once a day, be it giving way to another road user, donating to a worthy cause, greeting a stranger, doing more than your share of the work, volunteering in caring for the needy, be magnanimous in victory, and graceful in defeat.

And that is my humble recipe for being successful in life, in 50 words, or thereabout, straight from the gut.