AFTER GOD CREATED the heavens and the earth, he stood back to contemplate creation, like a painter standing back from the canvas. This is the moment we are living in the moment of God standing back. Who knows how long it has been going on for? So begins Sheila Hetis new novel, Pure Colour. Heti has made a habit of starting books with grand, philosophical questions. Her critically acclaimed 2012 novel, How Should a Person Be?, begins by asking the titular question. The Chairs Are Where the People Go (2011), co-written with Misha Glouberman, bears the subtitle How to Live, Work, and Play in the City and features chapters that explore existential questions underpinning daily life. Hetis recent semi-autobiographical novel Motherhood (2018) opens with a description of the I Ching, a method of flipping coins to divine answers a technique she uses to query her creative purpose. That Heti invokes the Book of Genesis on the first page of Pure Colour, then, feels fitting, if ambitious. With each book, her scope seems to widen, and Pure Colour ushers the reader further from roman clefor autobiography and closer to a kind of speculative philosophy or myth.

In narrative terms, Pure Colour tracks the emotional and psychic life of a protagonist named Mira. When the novel opens, Mira is young woman living in Toronto or, rather, familiar street names lead me to assume the story is set in Hetis own hometown. Mira left home, Heti writes in an early passage. Then she got a job at a lamp store. The lamp store sold Tiffany lamps, and other lamps made of coloured glass. Each lamp was extremely expensive. Miras tedious work seems simultaneously to dull and heighten her senses, an aesthetic perspective that is later honed when she is accepted into the American Academy of American Critics. Over the course of the novel, Mira also falls in love with a mysterious woman named Annie and mourns the death of a beloved father. Though her feelings toward Annie and her father form the storys emotional core, Miras focus oscillates between considering the details of her own life and broader questions about art and existence, giving the book a meditative and at times almost spiritual quality.

In many respects, summarizing Pure Colour by describing its plot, which is quite scant in conventional terms, misses the point. The narration shifts between describing Miras experiences and postulating more broadly about Gods intentions in creating the first draft of the world. In the opening pages, readers learn that there are three types of people: birds, fish, and bears. People born from these three different eggs will never completely understand each other, the narrator explains, subsequently confirming that Mira is a bird, Annie a fish, and Miras father a warm bear. Within this tri-species taxonomy,directionalperspective correlates strongly to how individuals literally and figuratively regard the world. Birds observe from a distance and are interested in beauty, order, harmony and meaning; fish are bound in a collective and concerned with fairness and justice here on earth; and bears care most about their immediate surroundings and are turned towards those they can smell and touch. The tensions between these different worldviews are central to the story and Pure Colours meta-subject is how different relationships to art and criticism allow humans to interpret, cope, exalt, and otherwise find meaning in life.

Pure Colours two sections the account of Miras life and the passages considering divine or universal purpose are voiced by similar, if not identical, omniscient narrators. In effect, there is a fable-like quality to the storytelling. Surreal events, such as when Miras spirit enters a leaf with her father after his death, are relayed matter-of-factly. This measured tone is also reflected in the syntax: Heti uses a mixture of short phrases and long sentences broken into multiple clauses to organize stream-of-consciousness ideas into causal observations, as in: The day after her father died, Mira saw that she could abandon her whole life, walk away from it, and it wouldnt matter. The direct prose, as well as the narrators tendency to circle back and reconsider ideas, evokes the process of mulling things over during a long walk or an extended period alone the parallels with isolated thinking during the pandemic are not lost on the reader.

Whether pondering metaphysical or minor topics, Mira often observes patterns and gaps in her own thought processes. In some ways, Miras gestures toward self-reflexivity and self-critique make it easy to read her as a product of the mindfulness era. Shes by no means perfectly self-aware or prophetic; rather, Mira comes across as genuinely curious. At times, drawing connections between seemingly abstract or historical topics and her present-day emotions or realities causes her to become overwhelmed. For instance, reflecting upon the Bronze Age as part of a stream-of-consciousness thought spiral, the narrator suddenly thinks: Because you know what, if we suddenly went back two thousand years, thered be nothing we could do to speed things along. I dont know how to make a steam engine. This rare first-person invocation, and the abrupt introduction of a new subject (on the previous page, Mira was describing her father, not historical progression or steam power), reveals a mind racing to find coherence in the wake of personal disaster. Whats unique about Miras self-reflexivity, at least within Hetis oeuvre, is that she searches for answers without a desire for action. Perhaps typical for a bird person, Hetis narrator seeks understanding, or at least interpretation, for its own sake.

Heti is known for experimenting with form as a means of representing self-awareness. How Should a Person Be?, her breakthrough novel, depicts intimate scenes from Hetis own life and incorporates transcripts from conversations with her friend and collaborator, the painter Margaux Williamson. Similarly based on events from Hetis life, Motherhood chronicles the authors conflicting desire and disinclination toward parenting and employs the I Ching to answer questions like: Will reading help my soul?; Is art at home in the world?; and [C]an a woman who makes books be let off the hook by the universe for not making the living thing we call babies? How Should a Person Be? and Motherhood are both voiced in the first person and feature narrators who learn about themselves through interacting with, and judging, others. Its notable, then, that Heti shifts to using a close third person for most of Pure Colour and that the characterization of the critic Miras voice feels less developed than those of the writer protagonists in Hetis earlier works. In an apt review in 4Columns, Jennifer Kabat observes that the writing is warm, deft, and strange, but the characters are thin and the plot is too. Im inclined to agree and initially struggled to articulate my response to the book. With time, though, Ive found a growing appreciation for Miras resistance to what a recent New Yorker article called main character energy and for Hetis own anti-novelist stance.

The more the story if we can even call it that develops, the more Pure Colour becomes a tale about grieving during the Anthropocene. The writings alternately rough and delicate slowness reads like a modern benediction. Now the earth is heating up in advance of its destruction by God, who has decided that the first draft of existence contained too many flaws, Heti writes. We learn that God, [r]eady to go at creation a second time, hoping to get it more right this time, [] appears, splits, and manifests as three art critics in the sky: a large bird who critiques from above, a large fish who critiques from the middle, and a large bear who critiques while cradling creation in its arms. For bird-descendent Mira, criticism is a means of apprehending not only culture but also human beings. Looking closely, however, risks opening the door to both beauty and despair. The narrator explains: Its true that the world was failing at its one task of remaining a world. Pieces were breaking off. Seasons were becoming postmodern. In this world, [t]he ice cubes were melting. The species were dying. Though Mira may have drawn on the rhetoric of art criticism to fathom abstract, global loss, her fathers death upsets her very sense of self and renders her unmoored, a bird flying through a storm.

By Hetis own explanation, she didnt set out to write about grief, but her fathers death in 2018 influenced the course of Pure Colour. In 2020, Heti published an essay in The Yale Review titled A Common Seagull: On Making Art and Mourning in which she shares a memory that may well have inspired Mira going into the leaf. Walking in the forest with my dog a few weeks after my father died, I noticed the green of the fir trees; the colors were so muted and beautiful, Heti recalls, continuing:

I felt in that moment as if I had never really looked at colors before, I stood wondering beneath the shadowless sky whether, when my father died, the spirit that had enlivened him passed into me, for I had held him as he died; as perhaps when his father, a painter, died, his spirit went into my father, so that now I had the spirit of my father and the spirit of my grandfather both inside me. And I wondered whether this influence the spirit of my painter grandfather inside me was why I was suddenly noticing colors.

This quotation reads like a map for Pure Colour, in which the father promises the child Mira that one day he will buy her pure colour not something that was coloured, but colour itself! Bird Miras childhood belief in her father, a bear who desires closeness and proximity, eventually gives way to a sense of guilt. As Mira got older, it became harder to love [her father] in the proper dimensions, or even to know what those were, the narrator explains, as any interest she developed in another person felt like it was taking something from him, since he had no one to love but Mira. Nevertheless, when her father dies, it is Mira who wishes to follow and [draw] him halfway back.

Hetis writing is sometimes described as strange, a description most often invoked in the context of praise. Pure Colour extends this fundamental strangeness in new directions, with varied results. At times, the tapestries Heti weaves to relay hyper-imaginative conceits feel overstretched: while reading, I kept picturing a loose mohair knit the kind of delicate, expensive garment often advertised to me on Instagram. The books metaphorical threads are glimmering and attractive, but the wide spaces left between some of its ideas create opportunities for snags. For example, the notion of a second draft of the world, and of God as a critic examining defects in the first draft (the world that Pure Colours characters and readers occupy), is exciting. The notion that arts vitality may no longer be appropriately measured by means of its endurance in this fast-dying world is also poignant. Some of the nuances of Hetis ideas, however, are lost or diminished due to a hazy internal structure. Is God a critic? Are all human beings? Is Annie, the orphan whom Mira claims to adore yet knows so little about, vaguely sketched because of the limits of Miras perspective or because character building is unimportant in Hetis novel-cum-mythology? Because Pure Colour is light on plot, losing the proverbial thread doesnt so much threaten our understanding of the text as our very engagement with it.

Heti is a question asker, and Pure Colour is rich in queries that link the personal with the universal. In the past, the conceptual richness of Hetis questions led critics to speculate about the influence of Judaic mysticism or forms of aesthetic philosophy on her writing. In a 2019 interview in Guernica, the author remarked: I dont think my characters actually make decisions based on what they get from mystical or supernatural sources; looking in that direction indicates a kind of desperation for meaning, but the final answers never come from those places. In Pure Colour, Mira isnt consumed with taking up or disputing specific intellectual or spiritual traditions. Instead she accepts the mutable nature of meaning and strives to hone a personal framework for interpretation. To this end, Pure Colours roving subject matter and looping motifs embody the surrealistic mix of clarity and discombobulation that accompany grieving. As a writer, Heti has a special talent for making the mundane feel magical this is key to the beguiling strangeness of her texts. The most moving parts of Pure Colour arrive when Mira seeks emotional and aesthetic truths in spaces between the profound and the everyday, inviting readers birds, fish, and bears alike to witness the depth of the protagonists (and the authors) mental perambulations.

Esm Hogeveen is an arts and culture writer based in Tkaronto/Toronto. She is a staff writer atAnother Gazeand a Film and ArtSeen contributor atThe Brooklyn Rail. Her work has also appeared inArtforum,Bookforum,The Baffler, BOMB, and Frieze, among other venues.

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Revising the First Draft of the World: On Sheila Heti's Pure Colour - lareviewofbooks

Most of Holly Harpers life seemed pretty traditional. She married at 24, had a baby girl and lived what she called the perfect picket-fence life. But even then, she never considered her approach to life to be conventional.

My personal life story is one of experimentation, travel, dabbling in everything, connecting people and dreaming, Harper shared. For as long as I can remember, Ive brainstormed ways to get my beloved community [and] chosen family to physically be in the same space whether living in the same town or vacationing together or retiring to the same cul de sac or assisted care community when we are Golden Girls.'

As a military spouse, she lived in seven states and Europe. During that time, she cultivated an eclectic group of friends and leaned into her unconventional side.

After 17 years together, Harper and her husband separated and sold their house. After living in an apartment for a year that never felt like home, she decided it was time to look for a place of her own.

Holly Harper

Harper had owned several homes throughout her marriage and was well aware of the expenses and demands of owning a home. Although she had contacted a realtor and started the search for her own home, she knew it would be a challenge to find one that worked with her budget as a self-employed single mom, especially in the Washington, D.C., area where she lived.

Then, in April 2020, she caught up with her friend Herrin Hopper during the lockdown. During their conversation, the women realized they were both newly single and shopping for homes.

In D.C., its common to have a duplex or condo, so we thought: What if we bought neighboring units? Harper explained.

They agreed to find a multifamily property with (at least) two units of similar size in a kid-friendly neighborhood close to public transportation. Another must was that neither family would sleep in a basement.

Holly Harper

They found a four-unit building and closed on it in late June 2020. Soon after moving in, they sought renters for the remaining units. Single mom of two Leandra Nichola replied and came in on a rent-to-own plan.

In December 2020, Jen Jacobs rented the top-floor studio unit. The single, childless friend of Hopper and Harper was looking for a change from the loneliness she experienced at the height of the pandemic.

The women named the home Siren House as a symbol of female empowerment.

Harper says that her co-housing partners are also unconventional.

We are free spirits, free thinkers, and open to building relationships with one another and others in general with transparency and compassion, she shared. Things are always going faster than we can keep up with, but it is much more like sisterhood than a Real World D.C. situation.

Holly Harper

Self-awareness, self-care and building firm boundaries are top priorities for the women.

We support one another in a number of ways, from one-on-one conversations, meetings, festive occasions and catching each other when we stumble, Harper said.

As with any family or community, issues arise. The group is mindful of handling practicalities, such as home repairs, as a team. They tackle emotional matters that come up head-on, making it a point to meet and talk things out.

The best part about it is we cant run away and hide from our own demons, our own triggers, our own bad behavior, said Harper. We hold each other with trust and empathy, but also hold each other accountable to being mature and healthy humans.

Holly Harper

And it doesnt stop with their cozy living quarters. They also help one another achieve their pursuits and goals. Together, the women opened the Takoma Park, Md. cafe Main Street Pearl in March 2021. Nichola, whose longstanding dream has been to open an eatery, manages the cafe.

The women said they all live as an extended family that genuinely cares for one another. The kids live like cousins, reaping the rewards of being surrounded and influenced by multiple unique, devoted adults.

Harper hopes that Siren House will encourage others to consider unconventional living arrangements no matter what the housing market looks like, citing the continuing decline of the traditional family, longer lifespans and environmental concerns as catalysts for change. In addition, she believes that smart co-housing communities can enable smaller living, less commuting and the advantages of creating your own family support network.

For all of us, the greatest benefit is having your biggest cheerleaders pushing you forward through imposter syndrome, hesitations, self-confidence dips, aging, dating, mom-shame, child-rearing, career growth to truly live a joyous life, Harper shared. We know its possible and we want to help one another so when we need help, we have someone to help us in turn.

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These Single Moms Bought A Group House Together And Created A Community - Simplemost

A recent article by conservative watchdog Campus Reform targeted my collaborative research talk on racial justice work in and as Buddhist practice. The talk traced the multiple ways whiteness has operated in American Buddhism including the erasure of Asian American heritage communities and detailed some of the strategies by which Buddhists of Color and their white allies have been confronting structural racism in their communities for over three decades.

While opponents have dismissed such initiatives as the intrusion of identity politics into the tradition, Joy Brennan, my collaborator, showed how the Yogacara school of Buddhist philosophy provides a framework for recognizing and being liberated from whiteness. Jessica Zu, our respondent, provided historical continuity by linking anti-racist Buddhist work to neglected Asian Buddhist figures such as Lu Cheng, the Chinese Buddhist modernist who forged socially progressive visions of the tradition in the early twentieth century.

Rather than engage with the actual content of the talk, the reporter opted for a website quote from White Awake, one of the anti-racist organizations working with Buddhist communities, and solicited a comment from anti-woke crusader and mathematician James Lindsay in which he linked whiteness to communism and the abolition of private property.

As he put it, Whiteness is the racial repacking of Marxs concept of bourgeois private property. Reposted by Legal Insurrection, another conservative organization, one reader added Critical race theory is more than a delusion, its a disease; another suggested our karmic punishment should be reincarnation as vultures.

The attack on racial justice scholarship by Campus Reform is unsurprising. The conservative organization has an established history of targeting scholars who work on racial justice, with many of my colleagues in religious studies coming under fire.

Research has shown that Campus Reforms so-called attempts to reduce liberal bias have led to professors facing harassment and even being dismissed by their institutions. Such attacks have now become state-sponsored with anti-critical race theory laws being passed for K-12 schools in a number of Republican states and further bills aimed at higher education proposed.

What many will perhaps find more surprising is that the rhetoric being used by Campus Reform and their ilk is far from new to me or fellow researchers working on racial justice in American Buddhism. Rather it echoes some of the white Buddhist backlash to racial justice work. A number of white Buddhists* have adopted the language of invasion and infection in an attempt to discredit long overdue racial justice initiatives in their communities.

Popular Zen teacher Brad Warner, for instance, has declared that racial justice work has nothing to do with Buddhism but is merely a tool of identity politics designed to shame white men. Secular mindfulness teacher Shinzen Young, meanwhile, delivered an explosive rant in which he claimed critical race theory was being used as a hammer to beat half of America to death with and blamed it for the election of a jerk.

Brenna Grace Artinger and I have charted the emergence of a broad spectrum of anti-woke white Buddhists who have attempted to delegitimate and derail racial justice work. We organize these anti-social justice Buddhists into three distinct but overlapping categories: Reactionary Centrists, the Buddhist Right, and alt-Right Buddhists.

We borrow the term reactionary centrist from political theorist Aaron Huertas who defines it as someone who says they are politically neutral but who usually punches left while sympathizing with the right. Reactionary centrism, in other words, is a conservative ideological stance that sees and presents itself as transcendent of ideology.

Such an approach is clearly at work among white Buddhists who claim to be apolitical while mobilizing conservative assumptions and strategies to delegitimate anti-racist work in Buddhism as ideological. A good example here comes from the transnational Buddhist Triratna community.

Given their strong links to the Ambedkar Buddhist Dalit community, an engaged Buddhist lineage that has combatted caste violence and discrimination in India, one might expect to find a similar commitment to justice for other marginalized populations. Indeed, some Triratna practitioners have confronted the legacy of racism within and beyond their communities by consciousness-raising, compiling anti-racist resources, and starting PoC affinity groups and white awareness groups.

In reaction to racial justice efforts, however, seven white male members, an affinity group of its own sort, produced a website called Apramada: Buddhist Perspectives on Society and Culture, whose mission statement declares: The aim of Apramda is to bring Buddhist perspectives to bear on questions facing the world todaya task of urgent importance in an era when public discourse is often clouded by divisive ideologies and partisan animosity. One article title suggests that Buddhists should leave their politics at the temple door. On further reading, however, its clear that its not politics per se but rather a certain type of politics that arent welcome. To give a hint: as the author explains, diversity, like social justice, is one of those words that sounds innocent and good, but is informed by a political ideology that is not so innocent and good.

One wonders why the author sees the call for racial justice in his community as ideological rather than as reflecting the lived experiences of his PoC sangha members. Why did he not include any of the first-person reports by Triratna members of color who have experienced racism within and beyond white dominant Triratna spaces? In fact, in a commonly employed reactionary reverse victim strategy, the only identity group he does name as vulnerable in Triratna are conservatives.

One also wonders how he squares his apolitical call with some of the articles written by his co-editors. Reproducing familiar conservative rhetoric, one of these denounces the postmodern anti-racism of Black Lives Matter and Critical Race Theory but adds a unique twist by comparing the current police racism panic to the ritual panic abuses of the 1980s. Another compares responses to structural racism, climate change, and Covid-19 to mental illness that are wreaking havoc in Western society. Just like Campus Reform, he turns to James Lindsays anti-woke polemics for support.

While Buddhist reactionary centrists seek to naturalize their own conservative political positions as transcendent of ideologies, what we identify as the Buddhist Right explicitly embrace their right-wing positions. In response to a Statement Against Anti-Asian Violence by the Buddhist Churches of America, the oldest Buddhist organization in the U.S., published in the wake of the shootings in Atlanta that left eight people dead, including six women of Asian descent, Jason Manu Rheaume released an article titled Critical Race Theory is Corrupting Buddhism, which claims that critical race theory has not only infiltrated colleges but also Buddhism in America.

Rheaume and two other white Americans, David Reynolds, a former Theravada monk, and Mark Vetanen, a Zen practitioner, have started a new podcast called The Spiritual Right, which reproduces much of Christian conservative anti-woke rhetoric: The West has become a spiritual wasteland of progressive and materialistic forces. Wokeness masquerades as authentic spiritual tradition, gutting and commodifying ancient teachings to fit its values.

Writing under the signifier politically incorrect Dharma, Reynolds had earlier called for an Alt-Buddhism, namely a relatively conservative, non-feminist (in the emasculating, man-hating socialist sense of the word) spiritual system directed mainly by men. One response came in the form of the self-proclaimed alt-right Buddhist group Right-Wing Dharma Squads.

Hiding behind pseudonyms, these four white men have produced a series of podcasts that mock liberal Buddhism and interweave reflections on Buddhist texts with misogyny, antisemitism, and the celebration of Asian Buddhist monastic extremists such as U Wirathu who have incited violence against Muslims.

For those readers who associate Buddhism with progressive liberal values, or hold an ahistorical reading of the tradition as apolitical, the white backlash to racial justice will be a surprise. As within all religious traditions, however, Buddhist doctrine has been used to both support and resist power regimes.

Rather than argue for a real interpretation of the tradition, scholars can illuminate the ways in which reactionary Buddhists attempt to naturalize their own positions while simultaneously claiming progressive positions as distorted by ideology. They can also point out that such a strategy itself performs the operations of whiteness: as African American philosopher George Yancy notes, others have racialized identities but white people are the transcendental norm.

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*Correction: The word teachers was removed in order to clarify that the subsequently mentioned teachers were not the ones who had in fact used the terms invasion and infection.

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This article was made possible in part with support fromSacred Writes, a Henry Luce Foundation-funded project hosted by Northeastern University that promotes public scholarship on religion.

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Reactionary White Buddhists Have Joined The Fight Against Critical Race Theory - Religion Dispatches

Gary Fishkin found himself in a difficult place after a difficult season.

The Lehigh senior tennis player wasnt happy with his play last season, and so he went searching for a change.

He found Buddhism.

I didnt know much about Buddhism, it was all fairly new, but I was excited to take the journey, Fishkin said. Overall, Im happy with my decision, and I will stick to it.

This was his second conversion in three years, having converted from Judaism to Christianity during his sophomore year. Fishkin said his conversion to Buddhism was a mental challenge, and one he welcomed. He had to change his values to something different in order to find light on the other side. He feels that he has emerged stronger through the journey.

According to the National Geographic Society, Buddhism is centered on the belief that human life is a cycle of suffering and rebirth, where an individuals soul is born again into a different body based on how they lived their past life, which is called karma. However, through techniques such as meditation, good behavior, and spiritual and physical labor, one can achieve nirvana. Nirvana is Buddhists term for a state of enlightenment.

I found myself again, and its clearly showing in my tennis game this season, and I hope it continues, Fishkin said.

Lehigh Mountain Hawks Gary Fishkin, left, and Marc Blekhman speak during their No. 2 doubles match Sunday, March 27, 2022, at Lewis Tennis Center. Fishkin and Blekhman lost, 7-6 (7-5), against Colgates Nick Potter and Rohan Gupta. (Sophie Baraker/B&W Staff)

Being one of two seniors on the team, Fishkin is a leader to his teammates. Last season, Fishkin went 2-0 in singles at the No.6 spot and was the one who delivered the teams walk-off win in the Patriot League quarterfinals against Boston University. This season, Fishkin is 5-4 in doubles and 9-3 in singles after Sundays 7-1 dual win against Colgate.

Fiskin notes a change in his on-court performance and said he has noticed a steady change in his off-court mentality, as well, specifically in the classroom.

I have seen a change, especially from last season to this season, Fiskin said. Im finding a better rhythm, and Im thinking clearer on the court.

Lehigh senior Gary Fishkin, right, and first-year Marc Blekhman adjust the score during their doubles match against Colgate on Sunday, March 27, 2022, at Lewis Tennis Center. They were defeated, 7-6 (7-5). (Katie McNulty/B&W Staff)

This change in Fishkins play has not gone unnoticed.

He is definitely more calm and collected on the court and thinks through problems much better than before, junior teammate Matt Kleiman said. I also think he has had a much more positive mindset in the way he acts on and off the court.

Sophomore teammate David Missry says converting has helped Fishkin find an inner peace, and rather than having a negative outlook when he plays poorly, it has become more neutral, which then allows positive thoughts back in.

I think it was a very good change for him, Missry said. I know we all support him and are happy for him making that decision for himself.

Fishkin is known to be the clutch player for the team. Against Colgate, he won his No. 4 singles match for Lehigh, which ultimately sealed the Mountain Hawks win, as he defeated Benito Vlassis, 5-7, 6-2, 6-1.

He is a very positive player who makes sure that his teammates are also staying positive, Missry said. He just comes through when we need him.

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Journey toward change leads men's tennis player to Buddhism - The Brown and White

After Buddhism was founded by Siddhartha Gautama more than 2,500 years ago in India, it branched off into three different sects: Theravada, Mahayana and Vajrayana.

In Japan, Zen Buddhism is mostly practiced, which falls under the school of Mahayana Buddhism. Throughout Japan, however, there is a mixture of Buddhism, Shintoism and Taoism, which are easily recognized within the culture.

Respect for nature, as well as reverence for bodhisattvas those who direct their attention, their lives, to practicing the way of life of a Buddha can even be seen in Japanese animations, teaching children and even adults.

With the Academy Awards taking place on March 27, a Bhutanese film Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom offers a Buddhist lesson in fulfillment. It is nominated for Best Picture in the foreign film category.

READ: 5 Things You Didn't Know About The Feast Of St. Patrick

READ: Tricycle's Western Buddhism Essay Shows How Religions Adapt To New Environs

With a movie about Buddhism at the forefront of so much recent attention, below are five animations films of a different sort and within the world of anime that have Buddhist themes and references:

First up and most obvious on the list would be the anime movie Buddha: The Great Departure. It was adapted from the 1972 manga drawn by Osamu Tezuka, who is known for his notable mangas Astro Boy and Kimba the White Lion.

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5 Films That Show How Buddhism Has Influenced Japanese Animation - Religion Unplugged

Buddhist monk, make-up artist, and LGBTQIA+ activist Kodo Nishimura on self-acceptance and the meaning of beauty

Kodo Nishimura talks to us about make-up, meditation, and more

There is an easy metaphor in the fact that Kodo Nishimuras kimono is made out of Uniqlo shirts. The Buddhist monk, make-up artist, and LGBTQIA+ activist has made a career out of combining centuries-old traditions with modern sensibilities. Now, he has published his first book, This Monk Wears Heels, and has just finished celebrating its launch with a series of events at Londons fashionableoutlet for Nordic andJapanese food, clothes and knickknacks,Pantechnicon.

Im speaking to Nishimura in one of Pantechnicons Japanese-style dining rooms. Weve reached the end of our interview but we hang back so that Nishimura can talk me through what hes wearing that day and show me the outfit pictures he regularly posts on his Instagram. The kimono-shirt is the creation of his stylist who bleached, dyed and sewed new buttons onto two button-up shirts. Button the two shirts together, Nishimura tells me, slip the shirt on backwards and tie the sleeves around your waist like a belt.

It might seem contradictory that a Buddhist monk is so fascinated with clothes and make-up, and that he documents these interests on Instagram, or even has an Instagram account at all. There was a point when it seemed that way to Nishimura too, who was born into a family of Buddhist priests and grew up in a temple. In adolescence, he struggled to understand how he could reconcile his LGBTQIA+ identity with his Buddhist upbringing, and it wasnt until he moved to New York at 18that he began to fully embrace his homosexuality.

When I was in New York, or when I was travelling in Europe, I felt that religious values are one of the biggest hindrances for people to be themselves. When I studied Buddhism I used to hate it because how can you be liberated by chanting? But my mother, who is a pianist, told me that before you say you dont like Mozart, you have to study his music. You have to analyse the composition, play it, and then you can have a valid opinion.

I didnt have that valid opinion about Buddhism, so I decided to go into monk training, to see what its like and if it could help me evolve as a person. Returning to Japan and embarking on two-year monk training made Nishimura realise that Buddhism actually supports LGBTQ people and that it says that everybody and anybody can be liberated equally. The essence of Buddhist teaching is not to maintain and preserve a traditional image but to help people. So I thought, why dont I apply that teaching to what people are interested in today, such as make-up or fashion, in order to make Buddhism more relevant and approachable?

Nishimura believes that beauty is the ability to find beauty and make-up is a tool that can be used to enlighten that discovery. His make-up tutorials are designed for all genders with a particular focus on men and trans women. The tutorials encourage them to embrace bold make-up looks that they have admired but might have been too nervous to try themselves; or offer tips like how to use an orange-hued concealer to cancel out the blue-shades of beard shadow.

As Nishimura sees it, the desire to look beautiful can be a positive force rather than a hindrance in your life.

Desire can be the source of suffering, if you are addicted to something that can choke you in the long run, he says. But completely detaching yourself from any kind of desire, whether that is wanting to look beautiful or wanting to have more things, or whatever it is, is not necessarily right. As long as we are human, we must want to live, we must want to eat and sleep, and have sexual desires. So denying desire is not the goal, but eliminating certain desire is the solution.

For instance, if you suffer from a hopeless situation, like losing someone you cant get back, then youneed to give up that desire and move on. If you are so addicted to buying nice clothing that its causing you to run out of money, then giving up the desire and realising that you actually dont need those things is the solution. But becoming entirely free of desire itself is not the goal.

Nishimuras approach to mediation is equally inclusive. He recognises that the idea of emptying your mind might not appeal to everyone, in fact, it doesnt even appeal to him.

I prefer to sort of vomit all the emotions and thoughts onto paper or talk to people about it, he says. Thoughts are like ghosts. Unless you make them tangible, they are going to haunt you. If you write down your thoughts, make them something you can see, then they cant scare you anymore. Its like turning on the lights of the haunted mansion at Disneyland; youre suddenly not scared anymore because you know the why and how.

Another thing Buddhism talks about is how everything has a reason. No one is really trying to make you feel angry or sad, rather [their behaviour towards you] is a reflection of what theyre going through. Being able to see from a distance by writing thoughts and experiences out, and analysing them makes it easier to see how a person is just reflecting their current situation onto us and ultimately makes us feel more chill.

Is there one piece of advice he finds himself thinking about all the time, I ask Nishimura? Its a sin to lie to your heart, he says without missing a beat. Which means finding a way to be in sync with the world around you and not lying to yourself. I keep telling myself because its hard, but thats the only way to make everybody happy, even if it means going against the expectations of your society or community.

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Buddhist monk, make-up artist, and LGBTQIA+ activist Kodo Nishimura on self-acceptance and the meaning of beauty - Wallpaper*

Japan art andGoshun: Flow of Buddhism, China, Confucianism, and Kansai

Lee Jay Walker

Modern Tokyo Times

Matsumura Goshun (1752-1811) was a Japanese artist. He belongs to the Edo Period and within a class that adored the rich cultural traits of the Middle Kingdom (China). Hence, from a very early age, the path of Goshun was planned by his wealthy family.

The region of Kansai also enriched the soul of Goshun. This concerns the amazing cultural and religious traits of Kyoto, Koyasan, Nara (the cradle of high culture in Japan), and other esteemed places.

One can easily imagine the early life of Goshun concerning classical history, calligraphy, literature, painting, poetry, and other areas related to the rich cultural traits of his native country and the Middle Kingdom. Equally important, the ties of religion and philosophy emanating from the plethora of Buddhist temples where he lived to the indigenous connection of Shinto and the natural world.

The Met Museum says, Goshun is one of the most important painters of late eighteenth-early nineteenth-century Japan. He is renowned as the founder of the Shij school, itself generally allied with the Maruyama school established by the realist painter Maruyama kyo (17331795). Goshun began his career as an artist when he left his prestigious job as an official at the government mint to study painting; the artists who influenced his development included his teacher Yosa Buson (17161783), one of the great masters of the Nanga school, and kyo, whose studio he joined in 1787.

Goshun first seriously studied painting in the rich cultural settings of Kyoto. His teacher, Onishi Suigetsu, provided a firm foundation for Goshun. In time, he would study the world of poetry and painting under the esteemed Yosa Buson.

The early 1780s were a time of deep anxiety and pain for Goshun. This concerns the death of his wife, his father, and Buson also departed from this world. However, from this tremendous adversity, Goshun would re-emerge and start on a new artistic path.

https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/816216

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Japan art and Goshun: Flow of Buddhism, China, Confucianism, and Kansai - Modern Tokyo Times

Posted on: March 24, 2022, 08:35h.

Last updated on: March 24, 2022, 09:36h.

A Buddhist monk tasted what its like to have a huge cache of money after winning the lottery. As quickly as it came, the money went, as the monk decided to give away his fortune.

Many people dream of hitting it big in the lottery. They fantasize about what they would do with their newfound fortune. For most, the money means trips, paying off bills, and shopping sprees.

One man in Thailand tasted wealth earlier this month, but only for a fleeting moment. Surprised that he won, a Buddhist monk gave away his fortune to villagers. $500,000 goes a long way in Thailand.

Late last month, a Buddhist monk in the Thai city of Nakhon Phanom purchased three lottery tickets, according to media outlet Thairat. He bought the tickets, not in search of fame and fortune, but, as he tells the story, to help out a lottery vendor who was going through a rough patch.

The lottery draw took place on March 1, and after learning he had won 18 million Thai baht (US$500,000), the unidentified 47-year-old monk suddenly found himself in a quandary. He likely didnt expect to win, but quickly realized that he could make others lives better.

The monk began giving away his fortune, which he called money that belonged to the angels. Initially, according to the media outlet, he donated to his temple, local schools, and civic organizations. In just the first week after receiving his winnings, he had donated 1.5 million baht (US$45,000).

He then decided to give to the locals, in a community where the average monthly wage is 14,053 baht (US$419), 500 baht (US$15) each. However, as word spread, people began lining up for handouts. After giving away $15,000, he reduced the amount to 200 baht (US$6) per person.

The scene, at one point, got out of hand. Local police arrived to control the crowds and make sure the charitable initiative didnt get too wild.

In 2018, a trio of Thai monks pitched in to buy a lottery ticket. They won 18 million baht. However, that lucky draw had a different outcome.

As news outlets reported at the time, the monks decided to drop out of sight in order to meditate. No further details emerged after that.

Two years later, another monk, Montri Samajjo, won 18 million baht after he purchased three tickets. As with the latest winner, he, too, made the purchase in order to help out a vendor going through a difficult time.

He gave each of his three children one million baht (US$29,820), while a part of the money went to the temple and to charity. The rest, according to media outlets, became part of a future charity fund.

Nothing in Buddhism prevents monks from recreational gambling. On the other hand, in strict Buddhism, theyre not allowed to hold money. Therefore, participation in gambling isnt a common activity.

There have been some exceptions that have called into question Buddhist practices. Over the years, a number of incidents involving Buddhist monks caught gambling and partying have made headlines. However, the decision of the Nakhon Phanom monk shows what the religion is all about.

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Thai Monk Hits Big Lottery Win, Gives It All... - Casino.Org News

Ill begin with a story: One day, the venerable Ananda, the Buddhas first cousin and beloved attendant, sat by the Buddhas side beholding all that was before them. Ananda said to the Blessed One, This is half of the holy life, lord: admirable friendship, admirable companionship, admirable camaraderie.The Buddha replied, Dont say that, Ananda. Dont say that. Admirable friendship, admirable companionship, admirable camaraderie is actually the whole of the holy life. When one has admirable people as friends, companions, & colleagues, they can be expected to develop & pursue the noble eightfold path the path leading to the release from suffering.

From the Buddhas perspective, spiritual friendship is the whole of the holy life. What are the implications of this?

First off, I want to take a moment to tease myself about the images that come to mind when I hear the word holy. It has no doubt been shaped by many Christian influences the word can evoke images of angels, halos, priests, monks, & nuns in prayer, the clouds parting and a beam of sunlight shining down upon a particularly pious person Its interesting to notice how foreign it can feel to me to even consider my own life as holy.

I mean, come on I like to swear. I fart. I am not pure. I can have mean and sometimes violent thoughts. Mother Teresa, I aint.

But in writing this talk and reflecting on the automatic associations I have with the word, my understanding of the holy life shifted. To me, all life is sacred. It is also messy and painful. Perhaps living a holy life is more about a commitment to trying to recognize and remember the sacredness, the emptiness, the Buddha nature that pervades the whole universe, existing right here and now in ourselves and all beings. And of course, falling short, again and again. And then returning, again and again, to that commitment.

From this perspective, its easier for me to think that yeah, maybe this very Mo, this very life, as messy and imperfect as it might be as many mistakes as I make maybe this is a holy life, farts and all.

And maintaining this aspiration and commitment to living in an upright and compassionate way definitely requires help. No one else can do it for us, but we also cant do it alone.

According to the Buddha, spiritual friendship is the whole of the holy life. Friendships like these are regularly seen in sanghas. Sangha is a Sanskrit term that means community, and originally referred to the Buddhas ordained followers. In fact, the Sutra of the Wheel of Dharma tells us that after the Buddhas enlightenment, his very first public teaching about the four noble truths was to 5 former friends ascetics he had studied alongside for many years, who then became the first Buddhist monks and members of the first sangha.

As Buddhism has spread to the west, the word sangha has evolved to refer to Buddhist communities as a whole, lay and ordained alike. Fellow walkers of The Way, now with vastly more householders, forming communities of spiritual friends.

This is where we can find people who are learning and studying and practicing the Buddhas teachings people who have perhaps clarified some things in their lives, who continually seek a deeper and more intimate understanding, and who can help guide others.

Fellow walkers of The Way who make compassion and ethical living an active and intentional practice.

And while this can sound somewhat ideal, much like my original associations with the word holy, do not be fooled every sangha filled with great people is still very much human, still 100% subject to grappling with greed, anger, ignorance, distraction, ego, miscommunication, and mistakes. Good people who can still fuck up and hurt each other.

And it is for this very reason that I believe the Buddhas words to be true: Admirable friendship, companionship, and camaraderie is actually the whole of the holy life. Because its not just about our relationships when things seem to be going well importantly, critically, its also about how we navigate conflict and difficulty.

I used to collect rocks growing up, and one year I got a rock tumbler as a birthday gift. It was this small drum-like bucket that I put some of the stones Id collected into; added a bit of water, closed the bucket, turned on the little motor, and the tumbler would turn the drum round and round, knocking the rocks into each other over and over again. In time, the rocks eventually became smoother and more polished; they were still very much the same ol rocks, but through the process different qualities were brought forth. This was only possible because they tumbled together, knocking into one another and helping to smooth out each others rough edges.

I did not grow up with a strong understanding of community. While I was very close with my immediate family, we lived over 500 miles away from our nearest relatives; 800 miles away from my nearest grandparents; and almost 1,200 miles from my nearest cousins. I had friends in my neighborhood, but there was no real sense of community. I went to an Episcopal church and Sunday school as a child, but there was no strong sense of community there either it was just something my parents made us do on Sundays until middle school, when they got divorced. The closest experience I had to feeling like part of a community back then was at my high school.

Thankfully I learned about Buddhism during these years, and met people who claimed to be Buddhist, but really Zen was just conceptual at the time. Lots of fascinating ideas, but it was definitely not a verb not something I understood or knew how to do. It wasnt until I met Tom our freshman year of college (and who is now my husband, also a senior dharma teacher in Empty Moon), that I first encountered an authentic practitioner who studied and sat zazen. I didnt at all understand the scope or importance at the time, but among many other things, meeting Tom completely altered the course of my spiritual life. Hes the one who really introduced me to the Buddhadharma and Zen practice one of many things I am endlessly grateful to him for.

So to become a Zen Buddhist, one must receive and uphold the precepts, and take refuge in the three jewels: Buddha, Dharma, Sangha. Tom really introduced me to the first two, and of these three jewels, I came to sangha last many years later.

I want to pause here and unpack what it means to take refuge for a moment.

Taking refuge means to find a place of shelter and protection from some kind of danger. In Zen, we seek refuge from the many passions that jerk us around; from our cravings and aversions; from feeling distressed, broken, fearful from suffering at large. We seek shelter from the wheel of samsara, the endless cycle of death and rebirth.

But how can we find any measure of safety and security in this inherently unsafe and unstable world? What solid ground is there to be found?

You might recognize this from chanting The Three Refuges: Buddham Saranam Gacchmi, which means I take refuge in Buddha. The literal translation of those Pali words is not I take refuge in Buddha however the literal translation is, I will undertake to find my home in the Buddha.

To take refuge in Buddha is to accept that we can realize and awaken to our true buddha-nature, just as the man Siddhartha Gautama did. Buddha was not his name, after all; it was a title he received after his enlightenment, meaning One who is awake or the Awakened One.

Taking refuge in Buddha means we will undertake to find our home in Awakening.

To take refuge in the Dharma is to undertake finding our home in the teachings the Four Noble Truths, and practicing the Eightfold Path. Its a commitment to seeing things as they really are, an intricate web of connections beyond all concepts of Self and Other; an awakened way of seeing the world that leads us out of suffering and to the opening of the heart.

And taking refuge in Sangha, the jewel that I came to last? Here, we undertake to find our home among spiritual friends. Here, we vow to look for and offer support, inspiration, and guidance among those who practice the Eightfold Path fellow walkers of The Way.

When we practice living our lives like this an aspirational way of living that we are sure to fail in, again and again what were really saying is, I promise to do all I can to uphold and embody these teachings, to live with an open heart.

Tom was my first true spiritual friend in Zen, and for many years I studied and practiced with few others. My spiritual life was very much a personal practice, not one that I wanted to share with a wider community.

Years later this completely changed when I was introduced first to the Zen Peacemakers, then to the Boundless Way sangha (where we first met James, Jan, and Ed), and now these past 6 years with Empty Moon, meeting Janine and Chris, and practicing with all of you in this vibrant sangha. These communities have had a profound impact on my life, shaking the ground of a practice that at first Id held quite close to my chest.

In a way, discovering the jewel of Sangha has been like moving into technicolor the experience of regularly sitting zazen with other people; having interviews with teachers; engaging in koan practice; participating in precept and study groups; learning how to chant and do kinhin; the humbling experience of learning how to bow; finding opportunities to contribute and learning to receive (not easy); joining and serving in retreats, both in-person and virtual; and above all, forming friendships with other beautifully flawed practitioners.

Ive been continually gobsmacked by the ways that Sangha breathes life into the other jewels, Buddha and Dharma. This has brought a wholeness to my practice that I didnt even know I was missing in those early years. And not because its all sunshine and lollipops even among spiritual friends, people are still people: they can be as encouraging and inspiring as they are frustrating and disappointing. But thats part of our agreement as a community to lean into discomfort and difficulty together, and to support each other in our mutual aspiration and commitment to living in an upright and compassionate way.

Practicing together, in this community of spiritual friends, is precious. And pretty incredible that weve achieved this while anchoring ourselves as a primarily virtual community these past couple of years. Each one of us contributes to the life of our sangha in a meaningful way. We are mirrors, encouraging and challenging each other, always aiming to deepen our practice and our intimacy with just this even when just this aint so pretty. We explore what it means to be human together, returning again and again to curiosity, compassion, and to our breath.

No one else can do this for us, yet we cannot do it alone. Please, reflect on the implications of this; do not take it, or each other, for granted. Together, we seek to find the perfection of the wise heart. We make our way through this one continuous mistake, tumbling together and smoothing out each others rough edges, while navigating the many passions that jerk us around. Together, we practice.

Our sangha, our spiritual friendships it is here that we find not half, but the whole of this sacred and holy life, farts and all where we undertake to find our home in Awakening. How can we be anything but grateful?

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The Holy Life, Farts & All | James Ford - Patheos

BEIJING (Reuters) - Chinese streaming platforms including Tencent Video and iQiyi have taken down films and video content starring Canadian actor Keanu Reeves after he participated in a Tibet-related concert organised by a non-profit founded by the Dalai Lama.

Checks by Reuters showed his acclaimed works, the Matrix and John Wick franchises, as well as Speed, were among the films that have been removed. Reuters could not determine when the films were taken down.

The Los Angeles Times, which first reported the content removal on Thursday said at least 19 of his movies were pulled from Tencent Video.

While content related to the Matrix films and some of Reeves's other work were still searchable on WeChat, China's ubiquitous messaging service, searches for his English name and its Chinese translation yielded no results.

iQiyi and Tencent Holdings, the parent company that owns Tencent Video and WeChat, did not immediately respond to requests for comment. A representative for Reeves was not immediately available for comment.

In late January, Reeves received heavy criticism from Chinese social media users, some of whom called for a boycott of his work in China, after it emerged that he planned to appear in a March 3 concert organised by Tibet House US, a New York-based nonprofit founded at the request of the Dalai Lama, Tibetan Buddhism's spiritual leader.

Reeves participated in the concert, which was held virtually due to restrictions aimed at curbing the spread of COVID-19, prompting more criticism online.

Beijing has accused the Dalai Lama, exiled in neighbouring India, of fomenting separatism in the Tibet region and instead recognises the current Panchen Lama, put in place by the Communist Party, as the highest religious figure in Tibet.

China has ruled the remote western region since 1951, after its People's Liberation Army marched in and took control in what it calls a "peaceful liberation".

Other high-profile Western figures that have been blocked from Chinese social media and video platforms after making comments criticising China's actions in Tibet include former NBA player Enes Kanter who at the time played for the Boston Celtics.

(Reporting by Eduardo Baptista)

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Keanu Reeves axed by Chinese video platforms after Tibet concert - Yahoo Finance