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 Wisdom of Giving UpModerators: Moderators Jump to page : 1 Now viewing page 1 [25 messages per page] | View previous thread :: View next thread |
| Yoga -> Philosophy and Religion | Message format |
GreenJello |
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| Just watched the movie Fight Club again, after having read the book. It's a very interesting approach to things that seems to have it's roots in the "Dark" side of the path. What I mean is that it's much more rooted in running directly into the darkness, the things that scare us, and feeding our own self-destruction. The aim appears to be to cut through all the delusions by experiencing the nitty-gritty of real life. To hit absolute rock bottom, and give up all hope, destroy all the silly games we use to keep ourselves distracted. All this I can agree with, it seems very rooted in solid spiritual principals, which I can quote if anybody's interested in. HOWEVER, I also think that it's very easy to use this as an excuse to cause pain and suffering in other people. In the course of the movie one of the characters is shot, they carry out numerous acts of terrorism and violence, and the main scene is set in a boxing club environment where people spend their time beating each other senseless. It appears to be violence for the sake of violence. Anyway, I think we're back to the mystery of ugly again, but I'll leave it to the rest of the forum to discuss. (BTW, this ones for you neel  ) | |||
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| Tsaklis |
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| GreenJello |
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Tsaklis - 2005-11-14 6:27 PMTo me the movie is not at all about giving up, surrendering control if you will. Well, it's a very very complex movie, with lots going on. I wasn't really sure how to explain it, so that seemed to be an interesting part of it. Through out the movie Tyler Durden makes statements like "Until you give up all hope, you are useless", "At least Marla's trying to hit bottom", "You are not a beautiful and unique snow flake", "You've got to accept that God might not like you. This is not the worst thing that could happen". It all seems very close to the Zen masters throwing their students over walls, and slapping them around in an attempt to get them to wake up. At one point he gives the Narrator a chemical burn to help him concentrate on the present. A very extreme version of meditation, but very effective at the same time. It could be easily also argued that it's the most beautiful love story ever written, because the hero literally splits his personality in half, and destroys himself, and the world in his quest for a woman. It also seems a sort of go through hell to get to heaven, renounce the world, to lean into the sharpened points, to stop avoiding pain, and going towards pleasure. It was about a last-ditch effort to effect some control in a life that he felt was slipping away from him. He had become all too aware of his status as a meaningless cog in a highly inefficient machine. Rather than simply surrending to the machine or trying to fight the machine he simply tried to build a new machine from the spare and spent parts that had, like him, been left behind. Interesting. To truly surrender, in a positive sense, would be to no longer attach yourself to the outcome of your life. To simply comply with your role in the machine would not suffice as it would make you complicit in the endless grinding of humanity. To do as Durden did, to fight the machine, is to attach yourself in every way to the outcome of your actions. The "right" path, if there is one, would be to go through each day trying to make the world a little better while attaching no significance whatsoever to the machine as it is all just illusion anyway. But, it would appear that to nolonger attach yourself to the outcomes, you would also need to destroy the conditioning that makes you do the "right" thing. That makes it such that you're doing "right" because you've been taught that that is the "right" thing to do. In other words, to lose the ego that goes along with being a "good" person, and instead become just a person. I'm also not entirely sure that Tyler wasn't doing exactly as you suggested. Attempting to make the world a little better, without being worried about the results. There's a progression in the movie, starting with the single club, and working up into a huge network of project mayhem cells. All along the way, there doesn't appear to be a plan, and the left hand literally doesn't know what the right hand is doing. The movie itself struck at the heart of the gen X male in my opinion. Of which I am one.Are you familiar with the work of Neil Howe? He is a sociologist / historian who has written a number of books on gen X. I read his first book, 13th Gen, years ago when I was managing the bookstore of a major university. I'll check him out, next time I'm in the store, namaste! | |||
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| GreenJello |
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YogaGuy - 2005-11-15 10:29 AM I could also totally connect with the sense of freedom that comes from being unemployed and hitting rock bottom. So that movie really struck me hard. Me too. Right after working for 1 1/2 years at the worst job I've ever had. Which was after having left the second worst job I've ever had. Been there, done that, got the company T-Shirt. Unfortunately I've had it fairly soft recently, so I've lost that hunger. Fortunately, I've had a couple of people help me with that feeling on comfort and safety, and I'm looking for more ways to practice living dangerously. Unfortunately, I'm not really sure how to do that w/o involving other people, since people ARE my big fear factor. To some extent, this thread IS my project mayhem. I'm posting a thread on a forum dedicated to a philosophy that teaches non-violence as a core part of it's philosophy, about one of the MOST violent movies made in quite some time. A film that glorifies violence, and promotes it as a form of spiritual growth and development. I'm doing it because I'm afraid of pissing people here off, but I also think this topic has some validity. Frankly, I'm surprised at the positive response I've gotten, but then maybe it says something about yogis. I totally identified with the part of the movie where Tyler talks about how we were promised all these great things and when we grew up we realized that we were not unique and special and that now we were really pi$$3d off. I've been there. Just so everybody knows what the quote is, here it is: Man, I see in fight club the strongest and smartest men who've everlived. I see all this potential, and I see squandering. God **** it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables; slaves with whitecollars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy **** we don't need. We're the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War's a spiritual war... our Great Depression is our lives. We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won't. And we're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off. Edited by GreenJello 2005-11-15 2:14 PM | |||
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Expert Yogi Posts: 8442 | Interesting to see your motivation GJ. I wondered in a way if it was you poking us collectively on the shoulder and saying "so you think you're so calm and centred you yogi-types? What about this, eh? Eh?!"  I do think the current generation as a whole was raised with very high expectations - not that they could wildly succeed at whatever they chose (although there is a great deal of that as well) but that they would have it handed to them on a silver platter. Those of us of the boomer generation who were fortunate enough not to have tons of money had some advantages. Our kids were not raised with those expectations. They look around at the families they grew up with who had all the stuff and see how miserable many of them are now - divorce, drug and alcohol problems etc. Then they go out and work to have really GOOD lives, with goals and ideals that have very little to do with cars and clothes and a lot to do with being good people, doing good and important work. And when I say important work I mean really important - like my aforementioned son is working hard at becoming a rock star  Because music is important to him - and that is good. | ||
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| GreenJello |
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tourist - 2005-11-15 7:18 PMInteresting to see your motivation GJ. I wondered in a way if it was you poking us collectively on the shoulder and saying "so you think you're so calm and centred you yogi-types? What about this, eh? Eh?!" I wondered that too. Sometimes it's hard to say what your motivation is, because people spend lots of time lying to themselves. If I am poking at the nice, centered yogis, it's a good chance for them to practice balance. And if they fail, it will also tell them a little something about themselves, won't it? If we can't have a calm, polite discussion about _anything_, are we really being yogis? Personally, I don't think so. I'm not perfect, and I do take things to extremes, but I also feel I've spent way too much of my time in exactly the situation that the protangonist finds himself. The Nice Guy who lets the world walk all over him. So I ask myself, am I really a Nice Guy, or am I Scared and Submissive? And if it's the latter, I don't think it's really a matter of being nice anymore, it's a matter of not speaking up when you should. It's an interesting balancing act between wimp, assertive, and a$$hole. I'm trying for assertive, but I might be going over the line into a$$hole... but then, maybe I'm due. I also have a very strong love/hate relationship with this movie. It's got some very serious warts, but at the same time there are some very deep truths. I frankly don't know what to make of the whole thing, since I am not there myself. Nor do I know anybody who is, to give any sort of final answer. So I posted this thread, maybe some good will come of it. I do think the current generation as a whole was raised with very high expectations - not that they could wildly succeed at whatever they chose (although there is a great deal of that as well) but that they would have it handed to them on a silver platter. Interestingly enough, my father had the same reaction. Through out my life he has deliberately denighed me things that he could have easily have given me. His attitude was always that it wasn't healthy for me, and I think he's been proven very very right. Edited by GreenJello 2005-11-15 8:21 PM | |||
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Expert Yogi Posts: 8442 | You have a cool dad I don't know if you were on the board when I last posted this story: when someone (an older person) who knew both of my kids through their workplace asked my daughter how I turned out a pair of such great kids, DD reportedly replied, "Say no a lot and don't give them stuff!" I am intensely proud of that statement and also of the fact that she was smart enough to know that and express it while she was still a teenager Of course there was a huge amount of b*tching, whining and kvetching while they were growing up but hey - it was worth it! | ||
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| *Fifi* |
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| GreenJello |
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| Tourist- Nice story, I can certainly see my father in that. Yes, he is pretty cool, and I had a mother who was soft when he was hard, who helped out when his severity got to be too much. Somebody accused me of being hard on people recently, and all I could do was smile. My father was very tough, but he always had a very good reason. I'm a difficult person at times, but I'm also my father's son.*Fifi* - 2005-11-15 9:30 PMI thought I was the only person who liked this movie. I felt that way too. I was beginning to wonder after several days w/o reply. It seems a guilty pleasure among yogis, much like Metallica, or Henry Rollins, but I'm finding that the true yogis know better. BP's character is sexy, fearless, raw, ONE WITH THE DAO. Yes, but he does take it a bit too far. The Tao Te Ching also says "Know the masculine, but keep to the feminine". This is what bothers me about this movie, what is too far, and how can you judge that? How much of my saying that X is too far is because I lack the courage to deal with things directly? I've noticed in life that we are supposed to be physically uncomfortable at times. I am convinced that inviting a little discomfort into your life keeps the life lessons away. Any good suggestions on uncomfortable things to do that involve people w/o causing pain? I like GJ's observation of the fight scenes and Zen Masters slapping their students into awareness. I think the whole movie is very Zen. Part of Zen is the idea of facing things as they are, dealing directly with the pain, and the form of no form. Part of what really bothers me about yoga is that it seems to be a little to regimented. It's way too structured, and explained, and it's way to easy to fall into the trap of having things handed to you, instead of working on them yourself. It's way too easy to just do the forms because that's what's expected, and go through the motions, instead of questioning them. There is no raw experience of reality in a direct manner. Zen teaches that often times something like this quickly becomes co-oped by the people who want to play it safe, and pretend to be working towards enlightenment, when what they're really doing is putting themselves back to sleep. The forms become part of the trap, the prison instead of the method of liberation. Most forms of organized religion seem to fall into this trap. Somebody has a divine revelation, achieves enlightenment, and attempts teach the people around him. Since it's essentially ineffiable the teachings begin to lose their meaning over time, as the students begin to mistake the finger pointing to the moon for the actual moon. This is also the reason why so many of the eastern religions stress finding a good teacher, instead of reading a lot of books. | |||
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| tourist |
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Expert Yogi Posts: 8442 | Part of what really bothers me about yoga is that it seems to be a little to regimented. It's way too structured, and explained, and it's way to easy to fall into the trap of having things handed to you, instead of working on them yourself. It's way too easy to just do the forms because that's what's expected, and go through the motions, instead of questioning them. There is no raw experience of reality in a direct manner. Yoga IS like that at the beginning. You do the steps, you learn "wax on, wax off" just like the teacher says. But THEN you find the teacher who lets you do the direct experience.l The one who won't answer "why does Patanjali say x in that sutra?" and tells you "what do you think?" Sometimes that teacher is called a guru | ||
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| GreenJello |
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tourist - 2005-11-16 12:38 AMYoga IS like that at the beginning. You do the steps, you learn "wax on, wax off" just like the teacher says. But THEN you find the teacher who lets you do the direct experience.l The one who won't answer "why does Patanjali say x in that sutra?" and tells you "what do you think?" Sometimes that teacher is called a guru I don't think I've met to many yogis that fall into this category, maybe I've been talking to the wrong people. Way to many of them seem to have fallen into the faux yogi lifestyle, where they do everything they think "real" yogis would do. Or maybe my idea of what a "real" yogi would do is very different from theirs. | |||
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GreenJello - 2005-11-15 10:23 PM BP's character is sexy, fearless, raw, ONE WITH THE DAO. Yes, but he does take it a bit too far. The Tao Te Ching also says "Know the masculine, but keep to the feminine". This is what bothers me about this movie, what is too far, and how can you judge that? Yes, yes yes! Excellent observation! Brad and Ed (oh what are their character's names?) Had a complete separation of Yin and Yang - causing psychosis. In Chinese Medicine terms separation of Yin and Yang in the body leads to death - fairly quickly. I think the movie producers did that on purpose - to make it extreme and uncomfortable to watch. GJ - You're also right on the money about people today making sure they don't get too uncomfortable (ie abused, hit, slapped) during their Zen training. I can just imagine an adult student of Zen calling his personal injury attorney because some old-time Zen Master swapped him up-side the head. I think one way to experience discomfort in order to get "out of yourself" is to take care of someone - I mean really take care of someone. Parenting is a good example of this. Human children are so dependent on their parents for everything! I often think religious people that do not marry and have children are out of touch with the rest of humanity. It does seem like a luxury to spend 8 hours a day in meditation and not have to deal with the grittier part of humanity, like screaming children. | |||
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| GreenJello |
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| Ed Norton's character doesn't have a name, he's refered to as Narrator in the script. I think this is deliberate to give him an everyman feel. Brad Pitt's character is Tyler Durden, as referenced in the quote. As far as the abuse thing goes, it's an interesting question of what's really abusive. Some of the people who would cry the loudest that they were being abused or misused are probably the people who could use it the most. They're the ones who have been coddled and protected all their lives. It would be such a shock to the system that they would have no choice but to see things as they were for a while. I also agree on the modern masters all being householders. So much of what used to be esoteric is now commonly available at Barnes and Noble. There also seems to be a deterioration of the monastery system in the Catholic church as well, so it's not just the east that's rejecting the idea of ascetism, and meditation for 6-8 hours per day. And the West, in particular, is pretty resistant to ideas that comefrom "ivory towers" since our faith beliefs are so strongly based onindividual experience. I think this is much more true now that it used to be. I would argue that a lot of christianity is faith based beliefs involving a sort of ivory tower/divine revelation approach. It also appears to be waning, though I haven't been in church in years, so it's hard for me to say. I have heard numerous stories about declining attendence, and gentrifying attendies. Can anybody see a movie like this being done 20-40 years ago? (Ignoring all the fighting and violence of course) So these yoga-practitioners who only put on the outward appearance of yogi are simply at that stage in their learning. Well, I think they think that's all there is to it. Everything else is just silly bunk. Maybe I'm being too hard on them, I don't know. For everyone this is different. For me, attending baby showers causesme great discomfort and pain while not harming anyone else I have a similar reaction to weddings. A friend of mine actually end-up encouraging me to go to his, I was more nervous about it than he was. I like you quote BTW. | |||
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*Fifi* - 2005-11-18 3:52 PM This sounds like depression. Sorry, I don't think I'm depressed. Far from it. I'm attempting to describe something akin to the effort/no-effort that I think is necessary to progress along this path. Unfortunate I'm not there yet, and I don't know anybody who is, so it's a lot of theory on my part. I've been reading "The Dark Night of the Soul", which I haven't even completed yet, but I think it also deals with the similar issue of pushing through the darkness/lack of progress/lack of peace from the practice. In other words some of the spiritual turmoil that surrounds dealing with our own impurities, distractions, and games. The crucible of fire into which we are thrust as we attempt to grapple with our inner deamons. Of not getting what we want/expect, yet continuing to practice despite it. I think this movie has a similar approach because it cuts through the BS with a blow torch. Instead of untying the Gordian knot, the hero cuts it in half with a chain saw. Instead of doing a guided chakra meditation he inflicts a chemical burn. His approach is not all sweetness and light, and yet it works because it attempts to deal with things AS THEY ARE. Nothing more, nothing less. Yet, I am seriously distrubed by the graphic violence, and self-destructive message of this movie. So I think it may also be a lure over to the dark side of the force if you will. I also think that as it is a movie, you obviously can't accept it as being real, so the question is what's Hollywood, and what's directly applicable to our own situation? I don't know, I certainly don't want to seem like I'm telling you what to think or how to feel but I felt I should comment on this post b/c it's one of your more serious-sounding posts. I hope I'm not being too nosey or know-it-all... You may say or ask anything you wish. I appreciate your concern, and I appologize if I'm giving anybody the impression that I'm giving up, or having anything more than my usual share of problems. I'm doing fine, thanks! I'm obviously posting this in a public forum, for anybody to comment on. Part of the reason this post is here is because I'm seriously struggling with the messages in this movie, and I'm hoping that somebody here is further along than I am has some insight into it. I feel this movie has had a profound effect on me, and most of the people who has seen yet. Yet, I'm not sure that this is necessarily a good thing, it's very confusing. | |||
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