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Buddhist related films

now with Martin Scorcese's film about to come out,

and Seven Years in Tibet in theatres, there is more

interest in Buddhist or Buddhist related films.

the following exchange appeared on a Buddhist

discussion group:

 

>Does anyone know of any films that have Buddhist

themes, have characters >(as opposed to actors)

who are buddhist, or which are directed by

>Buddhists? > >I'm aware of Siddhartha and 'The

Little Buddha', and vaguely remember a >film about

a Buddhist missionary coming over to London - it

may have been >called something like 'Wild

Cherries'.

 

The Little Buddha was interesting, although

choices for starring roles still make me wonder...

 

For Buddhist films, you gotta go to Buddhist

countries...and countries influenced by Buddhism.

The recent Chinese film Temptation of a Monk is

superb, as is the Korean Why bodhidharma went to

the West.

 

My listing of Buddhist films is mostly from Japan.

Of them, I hear rumors of a subtitled version of

KUKAI; I have it in Japanese only. KUKAI

introduced vajrayana, zen and other things to

Japan in the early 9th century. He remains the

greatest architect, calligrapher, poet,

mystic...in short, you name it...of Japanese

history. Kukai's theme music is by Stomu

Yamashita, available on his album "Iroha"...a pure

tantric tone poem, with choral passages performed

by Shingon monks. This film has to be seen to be

believed; too bad the guy who did Little Buddha

hadn't seen it to understand how to weave myth and

normal reality into a tantric tale...especially

for doing miracles on screen. It's two video

cassettes, roughly three hours long...and not a

yen was spared in telling this tale.

 

On the lighter side is The Funeral, a comedy about

a buddhist funeral. Beth Harrison of University of

Arizona uses this film for teaching a semester's

worth of Japanese culture. By the same director

who does the Taxing Woman series. Having been a

kyoshi of nishi honganji for 25 years, this film

does more for me than others since lots of what

happens happens, isn't explained on screen. Well

worth watching.

 

The Harp of Burma. A Japanese film about the

awakening of a Japanese soldier turned priest in

Burma during World War II.

 

Rikkyu. The famous tea master tormented then

forced to commit seppuku by Hideoyoshi, the war

lord. Fantastic film.

 

Look through the Japanese section of video stores

with healthy foreign sections. Be sure to boycott

Blockbuster since they have punitive policies

towards "pagans". Those Japanese sections will

often yield buddhist film. For example, there's

one I can't remember the name of dealing with a

zen priest who came to kyoto in the 1950's, became

so disgusted with the politics and hierarchy that

he set a very famous temple on fire. again, worth

watching. Lafcadio Hearn's book Kwaidan (strange

stories) was turned into film several decades ago,

and seems to always be in public library

collections. It contains buddhist stories set to

film (like the guy who has the heart sutra painted

all over himself to ward of menacing demons, but

they forget to do his ears!!! always reminds me

to put on sun screen on the ears).

 

If you haven't seen the Silk Road series, look for

it. Filmed as a joint project of the governments

of Japan and the PRC in the seventies (hint:

Kitaro's Silk Road Suite is the theme music),

those magnificent buddhist cave temples of

Dunhuang are featured in about three episodes.

Those caves were hewn from cliff faces between the

3-9th centuries, then sealed over when barbaric

Islam came across the desert then; only in this

century have they been rediscovered. If laid out

linearly, they would extend for thrity miles!!!!

worth seeing.

 

I find buddhist themes in western film, and have

used such film for Dharma gatherings/discussions.

Included are the obvious Ground Hog Day (samsara),

Captain Ron (bodhisattva), and Birdie.

 

source: BUDDHA-L the Buddhist Academic Discussion

Forum

 

here is a comprehensive list of films and shorts

about Tibetan Buddhism

GOVERNMENT GETS INTO "COOKIES" BUSINESS 

The nonprofit organization OMB Watch says that three
federal agencies (Veterans Affairs, FEMA, and NSF)
have been collecting information about online
visitors to their sites by setting "cookies" to
automatically retrieve personal data from a user's
hard drive without letting the user know they were
doing so.  After the release of the draft report
by OMB Watch, all three agencies ceased setting
cookies.  (Government Technology Oct 97)




India Watch

nice story on Varanasi by  FELICIA CLARK for
Wanderlust in Salon and India watchers will also enjoy  
a new zine on India which includes a sendup on the 
contemporary lure of Buddhism by Sylvia Khan 



the four big emitters:

The International Energy Agency reports
that four countries produce almost half of the
Earth's overall carbon dioxide emissions. - the
countries are: the U.S., China, Russia, and Japan.




movie previews on the web

there's a new site on the web that will excite
moviegoers.  from it you can find all the trailers
and electronic press kits of upcoming releases.  i
often download a new trailer while doing my
morning email.  in the case of most movies, the
trailer is sufficient, but when it sizzles, the
film may be worth looking at more deeply.  it
seems the only true way to enjoy being a moviegoer
in this time of record volumes of high budget
schlock is do do your movie homework carefully
beforehand.   check out Trailer Park


-------

also... did u know you can search the web for
pictures?  have fun but don't forget to ask permission 
if you use any images.



infotech is #1 U.S. industry

A study based on Commerce Department data
and sponsored by the American Electronics
Association (AEA) and the Nasdaq stock market says
that the field of information technology
(including both computing and telecommunications)
is now the nation's largest industry, ahead of
construction, food products, and automobile
manufacturing.  And the AEA's president took the
occasion of the study's release to urge lawmakers
to learn more about technology:  "Whether we like
it or not, high-technology issues are going to be
front and center in Washington and in state
capitals during the next few years.  At the state
and national level, policy makers have a lot of
positive impressions about the high-technology
industry, but often very little knowledge of it. 
The biggest public policy threat to the
high-technology field is the ignorance of
technology and of how these industries work." 
(New York Times 18 Nov 97)

from Edupage, written by John Gehl
(gehl@educom.edu) & Suzanne Douglas
(douglas@educom.edu).  Telephone:  770-590-1017. 
To subscribe to Edupage: send mail to:
listproc@educom.unc.edu with the message: 
subscribe edupage your_name



Genetically engineered & organic?

In 1997, a wide variety of genetically engineered

foods will be placed, unlabeled, on supermarket

shelves. Thousands of products-including nearly

all non-organic processed foods-will soon include

some genetically engineered ingredients. Two

dozen biotech foods and crops have already been

approved for use in the US, and millions of acres

of biotech crops will be harvested this fall.

The proposed federal regulations would allow the

NOSB to propose "organic" labeling for certain

individual genetically engineered products on a

case-by-case basis. Those approved would be

passed on to the USDA, which would make the final

decision.

 

But NOSB members are appointed by and

subject to the authority of USDA officials. USDA

Secretary Dan Glickman is a vocal supporter of

genetic engineering as well as factory farming.

"We must fight against an 'unfriendly takeover'

of the organic food movement by Monsanto and the

giant food cartels," says Ben Lilliston of the

Environmental Education Group. "We must not allow

the destruction of organic standards by

Washington bureaucrats and Corporate America."

Every food co-op, natural food store, buying club

and organic farm must become a center for

activism-mobilizing members, workers and customers

to send letters, faxes, emails and phone calls to

elected officials. Unless the USDA and Washington

feel the heat, they could destroy a vital

alternative food system that has been laboriously

built up over the last 30 years.

 

--Ronnie Cummins/Pure Food Campaign

 

WHAT YOU CAN DO:

Contact the Pure Food Campaign, 1130 17th St. NW,

no. 300, Washington, DC 20036 (202) 775-1132,

fax (202) 775-0074

food villain: Hydrogenated oil

BOSTON (AP) - Partially hydrogenated vegetable
oil, the stuff that makes doughnuts and french
fries taste good, has jumped to the top of the
list of dietary evils, beating out even butter in
the bad-for-your-heart category.

The case against this kitchen staple has been
building for several years. But new research from
the Harvard School of Public Health, published
today in the New England Journal of Medicine,
offers some of the clearest evidence yet, calling
it the worst artery clogger of all.

The real villain is something called trans fat,
which makes up as much as 10 percent of the
calories in a typical diet. While ordinary stick
margarine is probably the most obvious example,
people actually consume most of it hidden in
crackers, cookies, pastries and deep-fried fast
foods.

The most common source of trans fat is partially
hydrogenated vegetable oil, such as margarine,
shortening and the hardened fats used for deep
frying. Hydrogenation is a process used to make
liquid vegetable oils turn solid and resist
spoiling.

Generally, the harder a margarine or cooking fat
is, the more trans fat it contains. Researchers
said it's even worse for the heart than saturated
fat, though both should be avoided.

``The worst type of fat appears to be trans fat,''
said Dr. Walter Willett of the Harvard school.
``That's still unknown to most consumers.''



CitiVision is coming!

Slamming the homogeneity of network news, media
maverick Barry Diller last week sketched a plan
for a loose nationwide network of alternative TV
news. Eleven new stations - currently referred to
as CitiVision - would aim to unravel the
conventions of TV, fashioning a more woolly
variation with homegrown talent, opinionated news,
and programming organized like sporting events,
sprawling out of its time slots as necessary.

"Hopefully, what we'll do is aggressively get
what's going on in that community," said Diller.
"It wonít appeal to 78 percent of the audience,
but we'll get 10 percent of true, real audience."

In the spirit of public access with a professional
gloss, the stations will be a direct attack on the
conformity of most programming.

"Most TV is McTV - pre-processed fast food coming
out of national networks from 3,000 miles away,"
said Doug Binzak, executive vice president of
broadcasting for Home Shopping Network subsidiary
Silver King Broadcasting, which is producing the
channels. "Weíll be doing true local broadcasting
with a sense of place."

CitiVision will debut in Miami in March, with a
roll-out in 10 other markets, including Chicago,
New York, Dallas, and Boston, every other month
thereafter. The channel will be available without
cable and will bump the Home Shopping Network,
which currently runs in the broadcast spectrum,
into cable. The Miami pilot will feature eight to
12 hours of original programming, including news,
talk shows, sporting events, and even some forays
into semi-dramatic series.

from: ''Diller Plans War on Perfectly Coiffed TV
News'', by Austin Bunn for Wired News, Wired
Ventures, September 15, 1997



paper survives the net

Recalling a 1967 Forbes magazine article that
predicted the paperless society ("Gone forever
will be the boring task of writing and mailing
checks to pay monthly bills"), economist Robert J.
Samuelson notes that in 1966 Americans wrote about
20 billion checks, whereas 30 years later they
wrote roughly 64 billion.  "Paper's obituaries
proved wrong for two reasons.  The first is
technology and economics.  Over the years, paper
has become cheaper, easier to use and more
versatile.  Therefore, people use more of it.  The
check survived because it adapted.  Even in the
1960s, many checks were sorted by hand.  What
prevented terminal choking was the
machine-readable check, with magnetic coding. 
Processing machines sort 50,000 to 80,000 checks
an hour."  And the second reason?  Paper imposes
"a crude order on the information glut.  Paper
helps distinguish between information that's
important, relevant and durable and information
that isn't."  (Washington Post 26 Nov 97)

from Educom To subscribe to Edupage: send mail to:
listproc@educom.unc.edu with the message: 
subscribe edupage Sigmund Freud (if your name is
Sigmund Freud




ATM reads your eyes

Reporter Gordon Fairclough for THE WALL STREET
JOURNAL recently reported that a bank card company
has just released a program for using photos of
the iris in people's eyes as a biometric ID to
replace people's PIN codes for ATM / credit cards.
 
How do they planto implement it?
As people use the ATM, they are photographed. 
(Every ATM has a security camera.) 
Over time, as people use the ATM, the security
camera images are composited to produce a
high-quality image of their irises, which is coded
and placed in their account information.  Once
this is accomplished, when a card is inserted into
the ATM and the securi ty camera gets an iris
image that matches the account sufficiently
closely, the user can conduct transactions without
entering the PIN code.

If Mr. Drury, chief executive officer of Sensar
Corp., and his colleagues have their way, this
eye-scanning technology will become standard
equipment on ATMs around the world. It is being
tested by NCR Corp. and Citicorp, among others. Of
course, given the fact that ATMs have had cameras
from the start, this theoretical eyeprint database
could already be under construction [in many
banking systems].

--from cypherpunks listserv via the e$pam mailing list

------

also this just in from Wired News (12/3/97):

Iris scanner verifies ATM customers' ID: Consumers
will soon be offered a greater variety of ATM
services, such as check cashing and
loan-application processing, thanks to
iris-scanning verification technology.

Sensar says the system will scan customer's eyes
with a standard video camera and special lighting,
and compare their digitized iris to a record kept
on file.

Iris scanning is currently used in corporate
security and corrections, but has not been widely
used in the consumer marketplace. Sensar claims
that the technology is "virtually fraud-proof,"
and expects that it will eventually replace PIN
numbers altogether.


Bill Zimmerman and medical marijuana

interesting story on Bill Zimmerman, the
campaigner behind California's new medical
marijuana laws in the new Rolling Stone site.



U.S. screws up on landmine ban

over 120 nations are signed the international
treaty to ban land mines. The catch is that the
signatures of major powers China, Russia, and the
US are conspicuously absent.



PGP: not so private anymore

PGP encryption software, has been bought for $35
million by Network Associates (NA), a company
which actively promotes key recovery. Privacy
advocates and cryptophiles, a paranoid bunch at
the best of times, are now worried that future
versions of PGP will no longer be trustworthy
should NA make secret deals with law enforcement
to incorporate stealthy key recovery



the NYT and food irradiation

THe NYT trumpeted the FDA approval of food
irradiation for meat as if it were spoon fed the
story by the radiation industry.  here's our letter
to the NYT (which they will not print, of course):

To the Editor: 

Carol Tucker Foreman's exhortation
that nuking meat is no substitute for better
sanitation in the meat industry, like the coverage
before it in the front pages of NYT in the past
week, adequately waves only one of the red flags
to the newly FDA approved practice of radiating
red meat(Op-Ed, Dec 5).  I'm surprised that your
coverage has not revealed numerous others, NOT
including the possible myth that eating radiated
food isn't healthy.  In fact, the tone of the NYT
coverage to date has sounded more like a press
release from the radiation industry than a
balanced and critical look at a very complex
issue.  Nowhere do we read of concerns about how
the transportation of radioactive materials across
the nation on a regular basis to support this
practice might raise the risks of being on the
nations highways.  Nowhere do we read about how
nuclear facilities, suddenly having buyers for hot
storage, may be released from promises to clean up
their potent messes.  Nowhere do we read about the
possibility that in these new ways of making
legitimate eternally dangerous wastes, we may be
slowly making their production more acceptable and
reversing the healthy trend away from reliance on
nuclear industries.  It's possible that the damage
done by radiating food will have less to do with
the dinner plate, and more with the added burden
it may create in the struggle to live lightly and
sustainably on the Earth in the years ahead.



Nintendo on TV causes seizures

Officials in Japan say almost 600 children in
Japan suffered epileptic-like seizures last night
while watching a scene in a television cartoon. -
the scene contained an explosion followed by a the
strobe- light-like flashing of a character's eyes.

--from 12-17-97 THE DAILY BRIEF from INTELLIGENT
NETWORK CONCEPTS, INC.

follow up in Wired News: 

NINTENDO: SALES WON'T BESTRICKEN BY SEIZURES 
Reports that a cartoon based
on the Pocket Monsters videogame triggered
seizures in hundreds of children in Japan isn't
expected to slow holiday sales, the gamemaker
says

--from Japan broadcaster NHK:

"It gave me a headache. Lights kept flickering in
my eyes, then I felt sick,'' Hiroshi Kobari, 14,
was quoted by the national Mainichi newspaper as
saying. "It was like getting a carsick.''

729 people had been taken to hospitals, with about 200 
remaining hospitalized.

The show, "Pokemon,''  a Japanese rendering of
"pocket monsters''  is based on characters in a
game produced by Nintendo Co. The weekly show has
been broadcast on 37 TV stations nationwide since
April and has the highest ratings in the Tokyo
area in its 6:30 p.m. slot.



choose your energy provider

From: "VitaminB"<VitaminB@bionomics.org>

 

Vitamin B: Your Daily Dose of Bionomics

 

As of January 1st, California energy customers

will be able to choose their energy provider. In

the coming years, however, we might even be able

to choose not to have an energy provider at all,

and instead provide ourselves with our own energy.

No, we aren't talking about cold fusion, we're

talking about microturbine generators.

 

Companies such as Sundstrand Corporations's Allied

Signal Aerospace unit, Elliot Energy Systems and

Capstone Turbine Corporation will be introducing

commercial microturbine generators in 1998 or

early 1999. What makes microturbines special is

that they promise to be safe, efficient, quiet,

reliable, low-maintenance and low-cost generators

of electricity at the point of use (i.e. at your

place of business or residence). They're also

designed for a variety of fuels, including diesel,

unleaded gasoline, natural gas and, something that

will make environmentalists happier, alcohol. Oh

and did we mention they were innovative? The

Allied Signal model employs a lubricating system

of air, not oil, and has only one moving part.

 

These microturbine generators will initially be

targeted at a wide range of businesses, from

restaurants to dry cleaners, but the home market

will soon follow. And considering the high cost of

power in places like Hawaii, Alaska, New York,

California, Arizona, and Maryland, promise to be

more than competitive price-wise in those areas.

As with all innovations, these early years are

just the tip of the iceberg and we are really

looking forward to the future of this fledgling

industry.

 

Source: Investors Business Daily, December 15,

1997

Greenpeace vs PVC toys

ROME, Italy, December 16, 1997 (ENS) - Solvay and
European Vinyls Corporation, two giant chemical
corporations have accused Greenpeace of slander,
boycott and economic damage. On Monday the
companies filed suit for 45 thousand million Lire
(US$27 million) damage compensation. The lawsuit
is an attempt to prevent Greenpeace from carrying
on its international campaign against PVC in toys
what are soft. Greenpeace claims that the PVC
leaches out of the toys when children suck on
them, and the children ingest harmful polyvinyl
chloride (PVC).

Despite the industry action, Monday morning bright
and early, Father Christmas accompanied by ten
Greenpeace activists entered the Ministry of
Health carrying boxes full of PVC toys and singing
Jingle Bells. Four other activists climbed on the
balcony of the building and displayed an Italian
and English banner reading "Bindi (the Minister of
Health): Stop PVC toys!"

The demonstration came as a result of the Italian
government not taking action to ban soft PVC toys.

Last September, Greenpeace released a report
showing that soft PVC toys for children, such as
teethers, contain up to 40% by weight of softening
chemical additives known as phthalates. Laboratory
tests conducted on animals show that phthalates
are toxic, with health effects ranging from liver
and kidney damage to reproductive abnormalities.

12/17/97 -- EnviroLink News Service
<newsdesk@envirolink.org>




Greenwash Award!

The new Corporate Watch's GREENWASH AWARD goes to
the U.S.-based chemical company, Monsanto.