Zen Huna: Enlightenment Lessons of Sharkboy and Lavagirl

True, I don’t normally watch a movie like Sharkboy and Lavagirl, but like Spy Kids, things about it caught my attention for their Buddhist significance as my roommate watched it in our dorm. The movie revolves around a boy named Max who invents a dream world which he records in his dream journal. One day, after a particularly bad day of school, people from his dream world, Sharkboy and Lavagirl, find him at school and take him his dream world.

“Life is but a dream.”

               Buddhists have sayings, “Life is a dream,” “Reality is an illusion.” This is often taken to mean that whatever’s going on isn’t real. We’ve just created it with our minds and not being able to get out of it is a sign of weakness. This is not true. On the contrary, Buddhist really believe something more like this, “A dream is reality. The problem is the differences between Western and Buddhist languages, such as Pali, Chinese, or Tibetan. When I took Exploring World Religions, Eastern Civilization, and Religions of the East at Johnson County Community College all with the same teacher summed up the worldview of the Chinese, “Experience vs. Order.” The way these languages work I guess is that the category something belongs in doesn’t precede the thing itself. For example, saying, “I am tall,” is basically the same thing as saying, “Tall is me.”

Buddhists don’t believe reality is an illusion. Rather something starts as an illusion and becomes reality. A Buddhist saying states that, “With our minds, we create the world.” Take a child who’s been told for years that he will misbehave by his parents and he later does. Children learn from elders. 

Another example would be the process of creative visualization made popular in the West by writer Shakti Gawain. One simply visualizes something happening for it to take place. The theory being is that it trains people to do the things that cause these things to happen. Celebrities such as Tiger Woods, Will Smith, and Jim Carrey stated they have all used visualization to help them achieve their goals. Will Smith imagined no longer living in poverty and that became a reality with his film and television successes. Jim Carrey stated once that in 1994, he wrote a check to himself for “services in acting.” In 1995, he received that amount of money he wrote to himself for starring in the movie Dumb and Dumber.

The world we inhabit is more or less a product of our minds. Saying this, it should be noted that it does not mean it is the product we intended. But what goes on in the world is more or less a product of what our mind has believed. When we fear the results of our tests, they may turn out to be unsatisfactory. We may think we’re going to find love, but really we’re only doing it because we think if we don’t, we’ll be miserable, and often times we are. An Eastern axiom states that the world is a projection. Take a social worker whose performance is called unsatisfactory and the social worker believes him and she takes it to be a remark about her personally. She may not be the one who called herself that in the first place, but in believing so, she considers her critic to be making her feel unhappy with her performance, when really the only one making her feel so unhappy with herself is her. Maybe she reacted that way because she is unhappy with herself. Be defining herself as a social worker, her feelings of how other’s perceive her are based on how they see her doing her job. Without this view of herself that she has created, no coworkers comment could be able to hurt her so much inside.

Spy Satori

Spy Kids isn’t normally the kind of movie I would watch. But as I heard the actions and the dialogue as my roommate, Tyler watched it in our dorm, there were some things that caught my attention in it, apart from the brilliant performances of Mike Judge. God, he is great.

                What eventually struck me as significant about this movie is the premise where a menace wrecks chaos by trying and failing to go back in time. At the end of the movie it is said by one of the children that the menace cannot go back in time, merely create different versions of himself that exist in a similar scenario as the past. It’s true. You can’t travel back in time, or forward. The only time that exists is now.

Innocence of Children

             At one point in the movie, the stepmother of the kids tells them that the Spy Kids program was created by the government because adults dawdle in taking action since they over think things. According to Buddhism, unhappiness is created when we don’t participate in this moment. Experiences we have make it much harder to take part in the now as we get older because they shape our views so much. After they occur, we feel like reliving them again when similar things happen. And when different types of situations occur, we reflect on how things used to be. Of course, we can’t just be naïve for the rest of our lives. We have to grow and mature. Present awareness is hard work but once our present situation is lived at this moment, we no longer have to view it with the same feeling we learned from doing it before. Christ, interestingly enough, said to his followers, “You must become children to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.” The Celtic people had a concept of “the Wise Child.” Zen teacher Shunryu Suzuki said that, “Zen minds are like beginner’s minds.” They are very fresh. What’s best is we don’t have to forget all are experiences or start things completely anew to be like “Zen minds.” We simply have to stop lumping old experiences with new ones and transcend the conceptual mind. This is not to say we must stop having names for things, but we need to understand the Buddhist principle of Sunyatta, or emptiness. Look at a picture of a pear and see how you describe it. One might describe it as red and round, but then take a red bouncy ball. You may notice that it is also red and round, and yet you don’t lump a bouncy ball and a pear in the same category. It may be because you don’t define it as “red and round” but that is true of it, as are a number of other things you could notice about it (rubbery, shiny, etc.). Similarly, though we may encounter experiences similar to our old ones, we respect that no two experiences, like snowflakes, are exactly the same, and we no longer have to apply the lessons of old experiences where they can hold us back in life.

Damnocracy: Discrimination That Undermines America’s Way of Live

Despite public “awareness” on autism, nothing really has changed. In schools autistic people sit in different classrooms from their neurotypical peers, apart from the mainstream of the school, turning them into outcasts, because typical public school classrooms are not equipped to teach them, despite it being perfectly possible, which in turn, damages their chances of reaching their full potential rather than only being able to be a UPS driver, while their neurotypical peers go off to exciting careers of their own. The “cost” of autism cannot be used to justify the status quo. According to Time Magazine’s 100 New Scientific Discoveries asthma, cancer, lead poisoning, and developmentally disabilities combined account for only 2.8% of our national health care budget meaning autism accounts for only a fraction of that cost.  The fact is, discrimination is unconstitutional, and does not fit a legal exception to this rule. But you, unless you have autism yourself, are maybe wondering, ‘What does this have to do with me?’ Valid question.

                The fact is, only educated people vote. Education affects voting because it teaches people about the issues in our country. Without a universally relevant and equally accessible public education system, democracy is compromised. Of course you may be thinking, it doesn’t affect me. I mean it’s not like the price of gas is going up. Ok, good point. But what does cause the price of gas to go up? The Arab Spring, right? And what is the Arab Spring about? Ding, ding: democracy! And what country is looked to by the rest of the world to model democracy? Well, us.

                The Economist ranks countries according to four levels of democracy: Full democracy (That’s us), flawed democracy (India, Mexico), hybrid regimes (Venezuela, Kenya), and authoritarian regime (China, Russia, North Korea, Myanmar, etc.,). South Africa, currently a flawed democracy, still experiences huge setbacks, even after three decades of the apartheid being over. Miners protests, much like the Arab Spring protests, have caused inflation to rise significantly. South Africa modeled much of their post-Apartheid democracy after ours just like they modeled their Apartheid after our segregation. Whenever there is a patterned inconsistency in democracy, there seems to be in varying degrees, large amounts of social unrest. Whenever the Arab World seems to suffer this, oil prices tend to go up. You might want to consider how we integrate autistics and other people with cognitive differences if you want to go to your job or see a long-distance partner.

Autism: Why Prevention is Not Better than Cure

Autism rates have been seen as going up in the past few years in the United States, or if not at least being recognized more. The people who want to cure it are often rebuffed by activists, particularly autistic people, who say they don’t want to be “cured” because they deserve to be respected for the content of their character, rather than their abilities. One group of people in on all this is the people who want to prevent autism, rather than cure it. While they do not exactly seem one hundred percent in the same class as the curebies, most autistics, including myself, would not consider their views to be any better. Both seem to believe in a world where there are no autistic people, whether in the future or in the present. How would it be for a group of people to imagine the world with no gays or no blacks? Some may say that prevention is wished for as a result of compassion, wishing autistic people not to suffer discrimination. But we also cannot overlook the fact that the people advocating prevention, like the curebies, seem to hold autistic people accountable for their suffering, rather than the people who discriminate against them. Real respect for any group of people would mean giving them the same rights as any other group and respecting its individuals for the content of their character, not their abilities, or lack of thereof, in both present and future. Real respect for a group of people such as people with autism means they can be on this earth for the rest of time and don’t have to change to be respected while others can do so and remain the same. Anything else would be only partial respect or a total lack of it. Did Rosa Parks risk going to jail so that black Americans would all be partially equal? Did Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X risk their lives so black Americans would be partially integrated? No. It seems all these individuals put themselves at great risk so others good know real genuine equality and integrity, even if it did not occur in their lifetimes, which means respect for the rights of people that is not dependent on them becoming more like their societies majority, or minority for that matter, at all times. You have only two choices. You either have un-fake respect for people with autism, or you don’t.

Emptiness in the Age of Oil

Think the United States has never invaded another place for oil?

Ogoni State, Nigeria

The Ogoni people of Nigeria have recently been forced off their land for the last forty years. Big oil companies such as Shell have been the chief sponsors of the Nigerian government’s human rights abuses. The cause, of course, is the oil rich fields on the Ogoni territory.

So can we stop this human atrocity? Some would say we can’t because we need to drive to get from one place to another. True, but is oil the only source of fuel we can use? If we truly tried, don’t you think we could find a way to transport from one place to another without oil? Well, according to the Buddhist notion of Sunyata (emptiness), as explained by quantum theory, all things in this world can be reduced to particles. They have no real existence from their own side and do not become real until the mind interacts with them and gives them meaning. They have no inherent existence of their own and are filled with limitless potentialities. A chariot is not merely a chariot but several pieces of wood and nails holding them together. Thus we could find a new thing with the same potential to allow us to commute and change our world?

Equanemity After My Friend's Loss

Jack’s mother died on September 4. Emily, one of Jack’s close friend’s cried and I put my arm around her.  I had a friend loss a parent before now. My friend Elizabeth lost her father in a lawn-mowing accident. After I heard about it, I kept looking at a little Ganesh pendant my uncle gave my for my high school graduation present. Ganesh, I believe, symbolizes impermanence. It’s the nature of all things. When things go, you just know the world hasn’t.

                I knew Jack’s father, since he got a terminal diagnosis, stopped eating as much. I understood this yet was wishing he wouldn’t for the sake of his health. I realized however that this kind of behavior, according to the Dalai Lama, like all behaviors good and bad, are done for seeking happiness. It made me realize since we seem to seek happiness, all of us in some way, believe it’s possible.

                I went to Jack’s mom’s funeral and afterwards Mom and I got a card from Jack’s father thanking us for our support. I started carrying my little Ganesh in my coat pocket but found it a little uncomfortable. I didn’t have a good space for it though but then I remembered learning on-line how to make little “jewelry boxes” with origami. I made one for that pendant and several other necklaces I acquired over the years but I liked having something to carry around with me to symbolize the nature of impermanence. Then I found a pebble someone I knew gave me one time, knowing I collect pebbles, and remembered the “Shiva’s egg” stones in the store It’s A Beautiful Day in Westport and carried it around in my coat pocket. It was also rather relaxing to carry.

                I had the card on my desk for a while though and it was just taking up space. But at the same time, I didn’t want to get rid of it because of the things it symbolized. Then I remembered about how the Buddha said about letting go and I recycled it. I also knew that the card is just a symbol for something, not the thing itself.

Six Lessons Mitt Romney Could Learn From Hank Hill

After failing to get the presidency for a second time (though nothing compared to Nadar, truthfully), maybe Mitt Romney should think about do some more inner pursuits, than outer ones. There are, for starters, six good lessons, the Six Paramitas, the Buddha could teach him that could change his life.

Wisdom: Prajna Paramita. May I gain wisdom and give the benefit of my wisdom to others.

Meditation: Dhyani Paramita. May I practice meditation and attain the oneness to serve all beings.

Diligence: Virya Paramita. May I be strenuous, energetic, and persevering.

Patience: Kshanti Paramita. May I be patient and forebear the wrongs of others.

Morality: Shila Paramita. May I be pure and virtuous.

Generosity: Dana Paramita. May I be generous and helpful.

                Of course, I think, these words sound a little bit Sunday schoolish and even a bit Mitt Romneyish, so why don’t we consider someone, who happens to be one of my favorite people, Mike Judge’s loveable cartoon character from his beloved show, Hank Hill. If we put these virtues into Hank’s down-to-earth, street smart, Texan way of speaking, I think they would sound a little more meaningful to people’s daily lives, like this.

Wisdom: Quit bein’ a jackass!

Meditation: Ya can’t pick and choose, Bobby.

Diligence: The great ones practice the basics.

Patience: Wait your turn, Bobby.

Morality: You do it because it’s the right thing to do!

Generosity: We all got to do our part, Bobby.

                You can see that there’s a lot of great wisdom Mitt Romney could learn from Hank Hill.