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Oriental
Life is Spirit
In
the second world war the American armed forces when confronted with
Japanese suicide fighters, could not find a way to understand how anyone
would risk certain death for a cause. Recent events seem to mimic this
centuries old incomprehension by westerners.
This
week we finally got to watch the Chinese film "Crouching Tiger,
Hidden Dragon". For me the most striking thing about it was not
the special effects and stunts for which it rightly gained so much applause.
No,
it was the entwining of a peoples spiritual life and their physical
life. What was a spiritual idea was portrayed with just as much realism
as anything that happens to the physical body.
Revisit
other Oriental films that you may have seen and this will strike you.
In a western film if a part of the story is referring to spirits, ghosts,
angels even the thoughts of individuals then you can be sure it has
been portrayed by Hollywood as entertainment and yet it is as natural
to an Oriental mind to portray in film your spiritual boundaries as
it is to portray a martial art.
I
mention Japanese Suicide fighters and Oriental film making together
because they very much portray how most "Western" people's
grasp life and even if they believe in "the other side" it
remains exactly that ... something that happens after we die and occasionally
commune with from Earth!
Yet
many Oriental minds however modern in outlook weave the spirits and
"next life" into the fabric of here and now.
It
strikes me that this is the fundamental difference in outlook that allows
Oriental societies in particular to have such a reverence for all things
regardless of there apparent life and regardless of whether you can
touch see or smell it, everything is real, there is no "other side"
because we are already in it. I admire this Oriental philosophy that
sees so much more than what we Westerners feels is important.
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