Rev. Danny Fisher

Just a Buddhist Minister Trying to Benefit Beings

Month: May, 2011

May 29, 2011

A Gift of Dharma for 5.29.11

Today’s quote is from “Arun,” the author of the much-needed and often discussed blog Angry Asian Buddhist. Arun has been doing great service in this past weeks by focusing on Asian Pacific American Heritage Month 2011, so make sure you take a look. This is it — from a post tonight:

My hope is that, in the future, Buddhist bloggers, editors and journalists will make more of an effort to incorporate the voices of Asian American Buddhists—not merely post about us in the third person or fish up writings off the web that we published years ago. Just as I have to put in a little extra effort to welcome in the voices of Asian American Buddhist women, there will be obstacles for other bloggers who aren’t used to reaching out to Asian American voices. Even so, for those of us who speak out in the name of equality and diversity in the Buddhist community, our actions should follow our words.

May 28, 2011

The Tree of Life

Wardrobe by Jacqueline West from Terrence Malick's "The Tree of Life" on display at the ArcLight Hollywood, Hollywood, CA, May 28th, 2011. Photo by the author.

I went to Hollywood today to see Terrence Malick’s new film The Tree of Life on one of the four (yes, four) screens it is currently being shown on in the United States.

The film, Malick’s fifth in almost forty years, recently received the Palme d’Or at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival.

I’ve video-blogged before about how Malick’s Oscar-nominated The Thin Red Line is my favorite movie. Well, it may just have been eclipsed by this new one.

It’s extraordinary. Truly. It’s breathtaking. One of the most powerful experiences I’ve ever had at the movies, and maybe the most powerful in at least a couple of important regards. Every film should be so astonishing and affecting to its audience, and so deeply felt and beautifully, ambitiously conceived by its maker.

I’ll be writing a review of it for The Journal of Religion and Film, so I’ll have more to say about it soon. In the meantime, I think Roger Ebert, A.O. Scott, and Scott Tobias, and have written the best and most eloquent reviews so far.

I can’t recommend it enough. As I said, it’s in only four theaters nationally right now, but will expand to more (but not that many more) in the coming months. It’s definitely worth trekking out to if it’s not going to be in your city.

May 28, 2011

A Gift of Dharma for 5.28.11

Today’s quote is yet another from our friend and former Naropa University professor Dr. Reginald A. Ray, whom I previously quoted and wrote a little biography for here. This is it — posted recently on the Dharma Ocean Foundation’s Facebook page:

When you worry about your ego, it’s your ego that’s worrying about your ego.

May 28, 2011

Standing Up for Freedom

Join Amnesty International at http://www.amnesty.org.

May 27, 2011

A Gift of Dharma for 5.27.11

Today’s quote is from Mushim (Patricia) Ikeda-Nash, a Buddhist teacher, writer, diversity consultant, and community activist who serves as a core teacher at the East Bay Meditation Center in Oakland, California. Among other things, she is the coeditor of Making the Invisible Visible: Healing Racism in Our Buddhist Communities (which you can download in-full by clicking on the title), and one of the activists whose work is documented in the Pluralism Project at Harvard University’s film Acting on Faith: Women’s New Religious Activism in America. This is it:

Most of the people I see who are drawn to Buddhism are like me in that they want skills, they want to apply those skills, and they want to see incremental positive results. Furthermore, they don’t want to be expected to put up with other forms of oppression or perceived oppression while they’re gaining these skills. If someone in authority says “Jump!” they want to be empowered to say, in a reasonable manner, “Please explain to us why” instead of answering, “How high?” The potential Buddhists I now see are largely wary of abusive authority and occulted governmental processes. Shared power, decision-making by some form of consensus, and transparency of government will mark and are marking both the present and the future of Buddhism.