[Buddha-l] Re: speaking of sick societies

[Richard Hayes]

On Wednesday 27 June 2007 20:17, Joanna Kirkpatrick wrote:

> ======================
> Interview with Michael Moore (excerpt):

Thanks for sending that, Joanna. It's a great interview. (I heard the whole 
thing, or something much like it, on Democracy Now.)

I'd like to see Michael Moore do a movie about religion in the modern world. 
He might start with a shot of a Buddhist temple in Japan onto which placards 
of all sizes are nailed, each placard having the name of a donor, the size of 
the placard being proportional to the size of the donation. That practice, 
I'm told, is quite old in Japan, certainly dating to a time before Japan was 
spoiled by contact with the money-grubbing materialism of the West. And it is 
ubiquitous.

We might then move to a shot of Bikram Chaudhary's lawyers preparing their 
strategy for a lawsuit against privately owned yoga studios in which teachers 
use some or part of the sequence of yoga poses that Bikram has patented. I 
jest not. He has also patented doing yoga in a room in which the temperature 
is kept at 104F (40C). Approach that temperature in your yoga room and you 
get sued. 

And while on the topic of yoga, we might discuss the marketing of Ashtanga 
Yoga (name copyrighted), so called because it has dropped seven of the eight 
limbs of Patanjali's classical Indian eight-limbed (ashtanga) yoga and 
focused everything on bodily postures, most of which were completely unknown 
to Patanjali.

We might then have a few scenes of people paying Japanese Buddhist priests 
somewhere between $200 and $500 for taking refuge and getting a new Buddhist 
name. (At the risk of insulting the viewer's intelligence, it could be 
pointed out that the Buddha never charge a single rupee for giving people 
refuge, nor did he give anyone a new Buddhist name.) 

We could show a Buddhist priest thumbing through a catalog for a new set of 
robes, wishing he could afford the $20,000 gold-embroidered robes but having 
to settle for the $5,000 robes because his niggardly parishioners give such 
puny dana. Then a closeup shot of his wife suggesting that he could raise the 
money for the gold-embroidered robes if he charged $600 instead of $300 to 
give someone a new Buddhist name.

We could then show Buddhist monks in Thailand laying a gilt trip on lay 
disciples, encouraging them to put their savings into buying gold leaf to put 
onto a Buddha statue already so covered with gold that people gazing upon it 
without sunglasses routinely go blind.

At some point we could have a sequence of shots of websites advertising the 
price of attending meditation retreats for a week. It might be pointed out 
that a week of meditation these days costs about as much as a week in a Swiss 
spa, but the price is well worth it, because everyone knows it's impossible 
to meditate at home or under a tree. (Hey, how about offering patrons the 
option of paying an extra $100 a day to have a penniless peasant girl, 
certified untouchable, bring them a bowl of rice milk?)

I think it would make a great movie, and I think Michael Moore is just the 
fellow to make it. After all, he looks a bit like those statues of Maitreya 
whose tummies Chinese merchants rub for good financial luck. But please don't 
forward this message to Michael. I'm going to copyright it and try to sell it 
to him. Or maybe sue him for stealing my ideas. That's the American way, eh?

-- 
Richard Hayes
Department of Philosophy
University of New Mexico