Sunshine Through the Rain

I watched the clip of "Sunshine Through the Rain".  In this clip the little boy disobeyed his mother by going somewhere he should not have.  He was told not to go see these people in the woods because they would get mad.  Well he went there anyway and they saw him, basically he got caught.  When he returned home his mother would not let him in the house and gave him an object.  The people in the woods had came to her and said they saw the little boy and that he must kill himself for the honor of the family.  The mom will not even let him go inside, but she told him that he had to kill himself or go find the people and apologize.  So, the boy sets off to find the people under the rainbow. 


Now I believe this relates to Shinto because of the honor that the mother has.  If there is a dishonor the person is expected to commit a ritual suicide.  This ritual suicide is to save the family from being dishonored.  They think that dishonor is worse than death.  This religion also stresses courage.  I think that it takes great courage for the mother to be able to tell her own son that he needs to kill himself or find the men and apologize.  I am not saying that I agree with it at all, but am trying to put it in the perspective of a Shinto person. 

The Tao of Pooh

I really enjoyed reading the Tao of Pooh.  I think that this book is a book of analogies, using Winnie the Pooh.  I happen to really like Winnie the Pooh, in fact it was my favorite thing as a young child.  So, this book was very easy for me to understand.  Putting Taoist perspectives into a children’s book makes it very easy for outsiders to understand (outsiders meaning people outside of the religion).  The thing I liked most was that the author used dialogue between the characters to illustrate a Taoist teaching. 

                The author also describes that Americans are a bunch of busy backsons.  Now this means that we are always so busy all the time.  We never just sit and rest even when we have free time we always feel the need to do something.  Now, I do agree with this, but I disagree that it is a bad thing.  Yes we may be busy all of the time, but our generation has been taught to be this way.  I know that my parents are constantly running around because they want me and my sisters to do the things that they never could.  I have played softball since I was five and they enjoy watching the games.  In our culture we are taught to stay busy to stay out of trouble. 

                I do not really agree that Taoism is the solution to the American problem.  I think that we were given free will so that we could do the things that we want to do.  The thought that Americans do everything wrong is really quite annoying because if we have done so many wrong things why are we still here? There are plenty of people who take things too far, but the majority of people do not.  Yes we could all be more carefree and simple like Pooh, but if everyone was an uncarved block I am not sure how this world would function. 

Buddism in America

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The stereotype here is that Buddhists meditate with incense and flowers and that it is such a fun thing to do.  The truth is that Buddhists are not supposed to use incense or flowers at all when they meditate.  This is one of the ten precepts, which are like rules of Buddhism.  Also meditation is a state of deep concentration.  In this picture they are opening their eyes, in my opinion it is to see if the other is keeping their eyes closed.  So, therefore they are focusing more on each other than there meditation.  When you are meditating you should not be thinking about anything besides your focus, which should be on God.  Another thing is that meditation is hard work.  It is not easy to sit there and breathe right.  It is also very challenging to hold that posture for such a long time.  Meditating is not something that you do for a short time; you meditate for long periods of time and concentrate on your focus, and only your focus. 

First of all, Brad Warner talks about how he moved to Japan to become and became a Zen Master.  When he did this people started to look up to him and worship him; he said “People began to expect me—of all people—to be the thing they envisioned a Buddhist master ought to be.”  From this picture we can see that it is the Simpsons.  This is showing that they are trying to show other people about Buddhism, by making fun of it of course, but in a false manner.  By putting it on television they are making Buddhists seem like “spiritual celebrities” as Brad Warner Says.  You could also look at this in a different light though because they are making fun of Buddhism.  By having the flowers and incense and by opening one eye to look at the other one is making the religion look bad in my opinion.  Buddhist masters and teachers were people that wanted to be detached from the world.  This meant that they did not want to be looked at any higher than a regular person.

Aim #2 & #4

Success:
1. Queen: We Are the Champions, oldies, 1981
2. Nelly: Heart of a Champion, rap, 2004
3. (R rated) Roy Jones Jr.: Can't be Touched, rap, 2004
4. (R rated) Eminem: Not Afraid, rap, 2009

5. Justin Bieber ft. Jaden Smith: Never Say Never, pop?, 2010

Liberation:
1. Common: A Dream, R&B?, 2007
2. Green Day: The Time of Your Life, Rock, 1997
3. Casting Crowns: Set me Free, Christian, 2005
4. Akon: Freedom, R&B, 2008

5. Mercy Me: God With Us, Christian, 2007

I found that success is more prevalent than liberation.  The success aim is more prevalent today because so many Americans focus on succeeding in life.  We all set goals and strive to reach those goals.  I think that we look at success completely differently than the Hindus.  They were concentrated on wealth, fame and power, however they were limited on these things.  They were also competitive and therefore everything is uncertain and not secure.  Hindus eventually will grow out of this stage in life and move on to community service, but most Americans stay in this success stage of life.  We try to be the best we can at everything.  Today the world is all about being competitive, and winning something.  When you have a job you are always competing with your co-workers to impress your boss, but this is for your own pleasure.  I think that we can relate success back to pleasure because we try to reach goals to please ourselves and others.  My interpretation of Liberation is being freed from the cycles of life, so therefore I used freedom themed songs for this category. I found it a little more difficult to find songs related to Liberation.  I can relate this to the Christian understanding of salvation, which is going to be with God after death, which to me means that you are being freed from this material world into the eternal world with God.  I had to use this understanding in order to find songs to relate to the aim.  The Hindu understanding of Liberation is that you are released from the cycles of life, the Karmic bonds.  This means that you become enlightened and can be released from the cycles.  In order to be Liberated you must follow one of the four paths of liberation.  It surprised me that I had such a difficult time finding songs that talked about being free from this world.  American Pop music can relate to these themes of Hindu understanding, but once again we live in a different society where we focus on ourselves.  This is why success and even freedom are more focused on the self.



aim #1 & #3

Pleasure Songs!
1. Taylor Swift: Crazier, country, 2009
2. Keith Urban: I Wanna Be Your Everything, country, 1999
3. Tim Mcgraw: Felt Good on my Lips, country, 2010
4. Jason Aldean: Cowboy Lady, country, year unknown
5. Tim Mcgraw: My Best Friend, country, 2000

Community Service!

1. Black Eyed Peas: Where is the love?, R&B, 2004

2. Demi Lovato, Miley Cyrus, Selena Gomez, Jonas Brothers: Send It On, pop, 2009

3. Demi Lovato, Joe Jonas: Make A Wave, pop, 2010

4. Michael Jackson: We are the World, oldies, 1985

5. Leeland: Follow You, Christian, 2009

                The pleasure aim is more prevalent in today’s society.  I think this is true because I could easily think of five songs off the top of my head, and people like feeling good.  There are tons of songs today that are about love, sex or drugs.  It surprised me how difficult it was to find community service songs.  When I searched on google to find community service songs, nothing really came up.  I also noticed that there were a few songs that claimed to be community service songs that were not.  One example of this was a song about hurricane Katrina.  It was aimed to be a song to let the world know what was going on, when really it was a video to make George W. Bush look bad.  The pleasure aim of Hinduism is about love, alcohol, intoxicants, or anything that pleases you.  The difference between this aim and the pop culture of today’s music is that we do not follow basic laws of morality.  In the Hinduism tradition they give you pointers on how to have pleasure.  In our society they just do whatever they feel like doing.  In the community service aim people are committed to helping others, but this is limited because they will eventually run out of work to do.  In today’s pop culture people will only write and compose songs when there is a disaster.  This is not doing community service in my opinion because we have so many people that are homeless or that are in need of help today, but you don’t hear many songs about that.  The only song I could find that was not about a huge disaster was a Disney channel song about recycling.  Although today’s pop music is very similar to these Hindu aims there are some significant difference such as the pleasure aim where you have to be intelligent about it.  Also with the community service aim you are committed to helping others, and today we only help others when there is a big problem, even though there are millions of small problems that are going on all around us.