At our December Movie Night, we will be viewing Halving the Bones, a documentary by novelist and Buddhist nun Ruth Ozeki. Halving the Bones provides a spirited exploration of the meaning of family, history and memory, cultural identity and what it means to have been named after Babe Ruth! Read more »
Unprecedented access and intimate knowledge inform this richly detailed and beautifully filmed portrait of a secret Tibetan Buddhist ritual, the Mani Rimdu festival, and the remarkable spiritual teacher, Trulshik Rinpoche, who leads and preserves this centuries-old tradition.
This Friday's movie night will feature "Old Plum Mountain: The Berkeley Zen Center- Life Inside the Gate", a film suggested to us by Kaz Tanahashi.“Old Plum Mountain” is a documentary film by Ed Herzog that shows how these Buddhist pioneers created a new practice of Buddhism that has widened Buddhism’s appeal in the Bay Area and around the country, helping to popularize eastern spiritual practices in the West. Read more »
We have had a series of really depressing movies lately, so this month we will be viewing I Heart Huckabees. Co-written and directed by David O. Russell, a former student of Eido Roshi, I Heart Huckabees is one of the most Buddhist movies in the English language, despite (or because of) never using the B word. It is also one of the funniest movies ever made. A screwball comedy about existential angst, I Heart Huckabees has an all star cast, and lots of insight in between the belly laughs.
May Movie Night will feature Secret Sunshine, a film by the director of Poetry which we greatly enjoyed a few months ago. A master of intensely emotional human dramas, director Lee Chang-dong is a luminary of contemporary Korean cinema, and his place on the international stage was cemented by this stirring and unpredictable work examining grief and deliverance. Read more »
At Shinge Roshi's request, we again watch Cherry Blossoms, a film by Doris Dorrie, who also made Enlightenment Guaranteed. Doris Dorrie is a spiritually sensitive German film director who has made a remarkable and touching film about impermanence, death, grief, and the healing power of creativity. Read more »
There is a revolution going on in science, a genuine paradigm shift. While mainstream science remains materialist, a substantial number of scientists are supporting and developing a paradigm based on the primacy of consciousness.Read more »
