Tomorrow, the Senate will vote on two important pieces of legislation that could end Mr. Bush’s disasterous strategy in Iraq. Here’s what TrueMajority.org says about these bills:
The first bill, S. 2633, would provide for the safe redeployment of US troops from Iraq within 120 days. And the second bill, S. 2634, would require a report on the global strategy of the US to combat and defeat al Qaeda. We need 60 votes to end debate and bring these important pieces of legislation to the Senate floor.
Tell your Senators: There’s nothing left to debate. Bring our troops home!
The 2008 Blogisattva Award winners have been announced. The Blog of the Year prize (as well as three others) went to our friend in the Buddhablogosphere, the late Michael of One Foot in Front of the Other.
I was in awe of the way Michael, who died January 15th at the age of forty-five from a rare form of cancer, shared his experience of dying so honestly and so fearlessly with us at his blog. I said this in a post that I wrote around the time of his death, but it bears repeating: I’m very sad that he’s gone. I was touched by his work–by his life. And I know I wasn’t the only one.
After Michael’s death, his brother added two posts, including this one about the jukai ceremony Michael’s sensei did for him. At the ceremony, Michael was given the name Daiku as well as the following poem:
Do not cling to This small mind, This bag of skin.
Open to the great sky Where there is no birth and there is no death.
Goodbye, Daiku…
In other Blogisattva news, I was very happy to receive one award from my comrades in Buddhist blogging: the award for Best Single Photograph. The honored shot is the one to the right, which I snapped while I was living in Bodh Gaya, India.
Check out the list of winners and acquaint yourself with some wonderful blogs and bloggers.
This past Thursday, I went to the Whitney Humanities Center at Yale for a presentation by Robert Spellman and Joan Anderson. Robert and Joan are both professors at my graduate alma mater Naropa University. I’d never had the pleasure of actually meeting them until their talk this week, and I found them both to be lovely folks.
Their presentation was entitled “Drawing on Chaos – Buddhism & Contemporary Art Practice,” and was sponsored by a grant from the Shelley and Donald Rubin Foundation, the South Asian Studies Council, the Hixon Fund, and the Department of Religious Studies at Yale.
The gist of Robert and Joan’s presentation could be summed up by a comment at Robert’s website:
As time goes by it becomes less relevant to distinguish between the investigation of mind that occurs in meditation and the investigation of perception that occurs in painting. Both require suspending fixed notions; both hold the potential for going beyond habitual mind; both develop accuracy within one’s medium and, in a larger sense, within society.
Do take a look at Robert and Joan’s artwork (just follow the hyperlinks in the first sentence). You’ll be glad you did.
Also, don’t miss Robert’s interviews with Vince Horn over at Buddhist Geeks. (Well, don’t miss Buddhist Geeks in general. It’s good stuff.)
The 80th Annual Academy Awards are this Sunday, the 24th. I’m sure I’ll watch. I usually do. This year, among the Best Picture nominees, I’m rooting for Tony Gilroy’s sublime, moving Michael Clayton, which I wrote about last year in this post. (That said, I’ll be pleased when Joel and Ethan Coen’s bleak but absolutely magnificent No Country for Old Men inevitably wins the prize.) My most favorite film of 2007 was completely ignored by the Academy, however. For me, though, nothing else last year compared with it. It has really stayed with me. The film? Wes Anderson’s “emotional comedy” The Darjeeling Limited.
Starring Owen Wilson, Adrien Brody, and Jason Schwartzman, with an eclectic supporting cast that includes Anjelica Huston, Irfan Khan, Swiss director Barbet Schroeder, Natalie Portman, former Simpsons writer/producer Wallace Wolodarsky, and Bill Murray, the film is co-written (with Schwartzman and Roman Coppola) and directed by Anderson, who also made Bottle Rocket, Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums, and The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. The story of three estranged and self-absorbed brothers on a forced “spiritual journey” through India via the eponymous railway, The Darjeeling Limited plays almost like an elongated short film, if you’ll pardon the oxymoron. (It’s probably no coincidence that Anderson created the actual short film Hotel Chevalier, about one brother’s crumbling relationship, to accompany the film.)
There are many things I love about the movie. I think it’s the best film about siblings that I’ve seen since Kenneth Lonergan’s unmissable You Can Count On Me. The Darjeeling Limited is incredibly insightful about the ways siblings communicate (or don’t) with one another. The film’s performances are also truly spectacular. Brody, Schwarztman, and especially Wilson are extremely affecting; these are sad and often infuriating characters, but you really care about them. And the film is very, very funny, with more heart than any of Anderson’s films since Rushmore. By working smaller than, say, The Royal Tenenbaums, he’s able to go a lot deeper.
At the time of its release, the film received mostly positive reviews, with some detractors here and there. Some complained about the way the movie tells its story (which I see as being like the way short films tend to tell their stories). Roger Ebert offers a thoughtful reply to this line of thinking:
…The movie meanders. It will therefore inspire reviews complaining that it doesn’t fly straight as an arrow at its target. But it doesn’t have a target, either. Why do we have to be the cops and enforce a narrow range of movie requirements? Anderson is like Dave Brubeck, who I’m listening to right now. He knows every note of the original song, but the fun and genius come in the way he noodles around.
Others complain that the film is too much like Anderson’s previous efforts, what with its focus on broken homes and guarded souls. Peter Travers has their number:
The dumb rap against the gifted Wes Anderson is that his comedies all hit on similar themes of broken dreams and shattered families. Damn him. And damn Hitchcock for his obsession with suspense. And what’s with Scorsese and violence? My point is, an artist can spend a satisfying lifetime developing personal themes and deepening their resonance.
This is familiar psychological as well as stylistic territory for Anderson after Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums. But there’s a startling new maturity in Darjeeling, a compassion for the larger world that busts the confines of the filmmaker’s miniaturist instincts. (A jolting, unironic plot turn may even shock.)
I confess that I was probably bound to respond strongly to The Darjeeling Limited. I can certainly relate to the young American seekers in India thing. And, as a chaplain, I was delighted by the fact that the film revolves around what Schwarzbaum amusingly (but accurately) refers to as a sort of “rolling family-therapy experiment.” If I have any complaint about the film, it might be the way India is depicted. Carina Chocano is right-on when she says:
The India of the movie is more an idea than a reality, a whimsical Western projection that combines elements from 1930s picture books, films by Jean Renoir and Satyajit Ray, the Beatles’ immersion in Eastern religion in the ’60s, and centuries of Orientalism. Exotic, spiritual and, according to Peter Whitman (Adrien Brody), “spicy”-smelling, it’s a magical mystery place where wayward foreigners can go to get their souls back on track.
Anderson, though, has taken such an approach in past films with other locations, such as private school and New York City. This blending of diverse influences and creation of a more fanciful location is kind of his aesthetic. I’m inclined, then, to give him a pass on the contrived India of The Darjeeling Limited, with the caveat that he might have made just as interesting a film (if not moreso) by meeting India on its own terms.
Anyway, I’ve gone on long enough about this. I think The Darjeeling Limited is a really wonderful film, and I encourage you to check it out if you haven’t already seen it. It comes out on video this Tuesday, the 26th. The trailer is below.
Yesterday, Amnesty International put out an urgent action appeal regarding U Gambira, the 27-year-old Buddhist monk who led last year’s monastic uprising in Myanmar as head of the All-Burma Monks Alliance (A.B.M.A.). Amnesty considers U Gambira and two other protest leaders (including his brother) to be prisoners of conscience in danger of (further) torture and ill-treatment and even death.
Buddhist monk U Gambira and his brother Aung Kyaw Kyaw have recently been charged under a vaguely worded security law. Similar politically motivated charges have also been brought against labour rights activist Su Su Nway, who is in poor health. They are being held in Yangon’s Insein Prison, where they risk being tortured or otherwise ill-treated. Amnesty International considers them to be prisoners of conscience, held solely for exercising their right to freedom of expression and peaceful association.
U Gambira and Aung Kyaw Kyaw were charged at the end of January under Section 17/1 of the Unlawful Associations Act, which carries a maximum sentence of three years’ imprisonment. A hearing on their charges scheduled for 4 February was postponed and no new date has been given by the authorities. U Gambira was earlier reported to have been charged with treason, which carries a sentence of life imprisonment or the death penalty.
[...]
Su Su Nway has reportedly been charged under sections 124, 125 and 505 of the Penal Code. Sections 124 and 505, which relate to sedition and incitement to offences that damage ‘‘public tranquillity’‘, have been used over the years to criminalize peaceful political dissent. Su Su Nway was reportedly due to stand trial on 6 February in Yangon’s Bahan Township, but there is no news of what happened in the proceedings.
Amnesty’s report states that U Gambira has been stripped of his monk’s robes, and that he and his brother have both been tortured in detention. It is not known whether they have been granted access to a lawyer. Su Su Nway suffers from a longstanding heart condition and her health is said to have deteriorated in prison. She has also not been allowed to visit her family or receive parcels from them.
Here’s what you can do: write letters. Amnesty International is asking concerned citizens throughout the world to write letters to Myanmar’s Senior General Than Shwe and its Minister of Foreign Affairs Nyan Win about the situation. You are asked to do the following things in your letters:
welcome the recent release of Min Lwin, father of U Gambira and Aung Kyaw Kyaw;
call for the release of U Gambira, Aung Kyaw Kyaw and Su Su Nway;
state that Amnesty International considers U Gambira, Aung Kyaw Kyaw and Su Su Nway to be prisoners of conscience, held solely for exercising their right to freedom of expression and peaceful association;
call on the authorities to ensure that all detainees are treated humanely, with full respect for their human rights, and that no one is subject at any time to torture or other ill-treatment;
urge the authorities to immediately ensure that while in detention, all detainees are granted regular access to lawyers, families and all necessary medical treatment;
call on the authorities to release all those who were arrested for exercising their right to freedom of expression and assembly during the crackdown, as well as all prisoners of conscience held before the recent events;
call on the authorities to ensure that vaguely worded security laws are not used to prevent the peaceful expression of political opinions.Once you’ve written your letters, send them to the following addresses:
Senior General Than Shwe Chairman State Peace and Development Council c/o Ministry of Defense, Naypyitaw, Union of Myanmar Salutation: Dear General
Nyan Win Minister of Foreign Affairs Ministry of Foreign Affairs Naypyitaw, Union of Myanmar Salutation: Dear Minister
COPIES TO: Mr. Myint Lwin, Counsellor Minister Charge D’Affaires Ad Interim Embassy of the Union of Myanmar 2300 S St. NW Washington DC 20008 Fax: 1 202 332 4351 Email: info@mewashingtondc.com
You can also spread the urgent action around. Email it to your friends. Print out copies and take them to your local dharma center or sitting group. Spread the word.
Time is of the essence, so please send your letters immediately if not sooner.
