1/1/2024 0 Comments K.i.s.s. keep it simple stupid![]() Through Guanyin I began Buddhist devotional practices, beginning with learning how to chant the Da Bei Zhou, the great compassion mantra to Guanyin, which I still chant almost every day. Before I saw this movie, I had become interested in Buddhism as a philosophy. King of Masks is now available for streaming on Amazon Prime. We also see scenes from the classic Chinese opera of Avalokiteśvara’s descent into hell and follow the life of the androgynous singer who plays that role and who ultimately helps Gou Wa save the old man. At first it seems as if the bodhisattva has not done her job when Biàn Liǎn discovers that he really bought a girl, who bears the marks of beatings after previous deceptive sales were uncovered. The old man Biàn Liǎn buys a statue of Guanyin/Avalokiteśvara to bless his search for a son to whom he can pass on the secrets of his trade as a performer. Even if not, there are traces of Guanyin throughout the film. Such is the vision of the director Wu Tianming in his 1996 film The King of Masks.Įast Asians probably recognize the Guanyin trope very quickly in the story of the little girl Gou Wa (“doggy”). In my blog post about compassion, I summarized the movie as follows:Īlthough some of the Mahayana texts, such as the Lotus Sutra and Flower-Ornament Sutra imagine Avalokiteśvara as an all-powerful being encompassing universes, there are many stories of Guanyin as a weak, powerless little girl who brings compassion into the world. The myth of the bodhisattva of compassion, Guanyin, When I first saw it in 2005, the movie King of Masks brought home the power of Guanyin through its story of an old man and an orphan Chinese girl (sound familiar?). My speculations on “now” have been distracting me from two experiences that are really what I’ve been processing through the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice.įirst, there’s another myth about a descent into Hell to save lost souls. What I’ve been doing is much simpler to explain. Later that year, when I read Joan Didion’s reflections on the death of her husband, I understood that this was my form of “magical thinking.” As I turned to follow up on the last post, I realized that I didn’t need some pseudo-philosophical rumination on death-time-meditation to explain my fascination with Orpheus and Eurydice. In the month after Laura’s death in January 2010, I began to wonder whether it might be possible to comfort her again at the moment of her death by becoming fully present in the moment, in the now. Hence, the two weeks to face the simple truths that had been staring me in the face. It turns out that the connection is much simpler than I’d been making it and than what I’d been intending to write. At the end of my last blog post, I said that I would focus next on how the dramatic moment of Orpheus’ looking back tied in with my magical thinking after Laura died.
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