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  • #46
    Trailer

    One more thing, the trailer that some of you saw was created 2 years ago, and was recently taken down because it wasn't very good. As you can imagine, the film has improved much since that time, otherwise it wouldn't have gotten accepted into Toronto Film Festival, which is a top 3 festival in the world.

    Best,
    Alexander

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    • #47
      if its going to be released in theatres everywhere and its out then of course i will see it just because it has to do with martial arts lolo.

      anything that has martial arts in it i usually will see, except kungfu panda lolo
      "did you ask me to consider dick with you??" blooming tianshi lotus

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      • #48
        Actually I have several friends who are very intelligent in their 20's and 30's who really enjoyed Kung Fu Panda, believe it or not!

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        • #49
          lolo its not about age or intelligence to me, its about jack black lolo

          even though tropic thunder or whatever does look funny
          "did you ask me to consider dick with you??" blooming tianshi lotus

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          • #50
            My girlfriend and I loved Kung Fu Panda, and we both thought it was quite the enjoyable movie-going experience.

            I'm really looking forward to seeing your film Alex. Although I'm less and less about styles these days, Shaolin has always held a special place in my heart and I still think about going there one day.
            "For some reason I'm in a good mood today. I haven't left the house yet, though. "

            "fa hui, you make buddhism sexy." -Zachsan

            "Friends don't let friends do Taekwondo." -Nancy Reagan

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            • #51
              I dont know about the place now, but before it was destroyed u could meet some monks here and there.

              And the shifus i had, certainly had some eastern wisdom a westerner could learn from. Cultural difference is always interesting and their understanding of buddhism might be different from ours.

              Maestro when u say most shaolin monks are shitheads might refer to some truth but u r taking a position there. Without desire or aversion or indifference u might have a different reality.

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              • #52
                "Maestro when u say most shaolin monks are shitheads might refer to some truth but u r taking a position there. Without desire or aversion or indifference u might have a different reality."

                the reality is, alot of the monks are shitheads. real recognizes real and besides the point, what i said before is true. many of the monks know what it is they are doing, training for combat is not what wushu is. wushu may improve your balance and agility and speed and whatever but that is not combat training, that is just part of martial art ..u know i could talk but it doesnt matter the monks know in their heart what they are

                if they were what they say they were, plenty of them would be fighting, because they are all greedy as hell and no one likes living in a shithole lolo
                "did you ask me to consider dick with you??" blooming tianshi lotus

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                • #53
                  the most important thing to realize, i think, is that shaolin is not a martial arts school! its a buddhist temple...

                  much of what you may find from warrior monks or shaolin wushu guys in the west may be disheartening. but that does not reflect the temple itself and the current generation of truly devoted buddhist monks there who are carrying on the traditions.

                  i think its completely unfair to judge shaolin by almost anyone in the west, especially without going there and getting to know a few of the identities that live their lives in the temple devoted to buddhist practice- not just to tour the place. its really unfortunate if you can judge before experiencing that true side of shaolin temple. its behind all the politics and commercialization. it is indeed there and will always be.

                  i hope all who are interested will get to see that one day.

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                  • #54
                    Originally posted by arhat View Post
                    there is no way to live a non violent life. your every breath destroys, your every step takes life. even eating plants destroys sentient life and brings harm to others. this can not be escaped but in one way.

                    you need to come to grips with the face of glory. look it up.

                    the only way to live in pure non violence is to feed yourself back to the universe and snuff yourself out.

                    clearly, this ultimate logical conclusion does not express true wisdom and is not a true path. don't kill yourself.
                    it really depends on how you define "violence" or "karma" (and which way is true).

                    the face-of-glory is of hinduism, and what you are saying seems to suggest the hindu understanding of karma wherein all action produces karmic results- positive or negative respectively.

                    this means that walking becomes a "violent" act because it kills, or simply breathing becomes violent. "there is no way to live a nonviolent life". what a helpless way to be! i hope you dont truly believe this.

                    in buddhism, however, karma is intentional action. violence is thus determined by ones intention to harm. if walking and breathing are to be considered violent acts bringing karmic retribution there would be no way to practice the first buddhist precept of "not killing", and there would further be no liberation from samsara.

                    the nonviolence liutangsanzang was talking about was not intentionally killing animals. this would be a noble example of nonviolence as taught by the buddha.

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                    • #55
                      Tickets Now Available!

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                      • #56
                        Originally posted by LFJ View Post
                        it really depends on how you define "violence" or "karma" (and which way is true).

                        the face-of-glory is of hinduism, and what you are saying seems to suggest the hindu understanding of karma wherein all action produces karmic results- positive or negative respectively.
                        It's not accurate to label something "Hinduism" or "Buddhism," which is archetypal thematically, and mentioned in Buddhism anyway. You see it is not about hinduism at all, the face of glory is only on it's surface a story about Shiva. Buddhism is not exactly bashful in importing themes anyway. I'm not talking about karma at all, which is completely irrelevant. When a lion chokes out a gazelle's life, one does not need to frame out the violence of the act according to various interpretations of karma. Pick up an ant with a tweezer and whether my intent is to put it under a magnifying glass, dip it in chocolate, or set it back free the ant still struggles for it's life.


                        this means that walking becomes a "violent" act because it kills, or simply breathing becomes violent. "there is no way to live a nonviolent life". what a helpless way to be! i hope you dont truly believe this.
                        I find this statement kind of ironic, coming from someone who studies Buddhism, which has as a core maxim, All Life is Suffering. Anyway I would say I recognize it as opposed to 'believe' it, because by using the word believe it makes it sound like it might not be true and is a matter of faith rather than empirical observation. It's far from a helpless way to live life, it's just a more accurate understanding of how the universe works. Life sustains life. ALL life requires life to sustain itself, all life, it destroys to renew. Even plants require death. This is an immutable law, else you and I would dine on rocks to break our fasts.

                        in buddhism, however, karma is intentional action. violence is thus determined by ones intention to harm. if walking and breathing are to be considered violent acts bringing karmic retribution there would be no way to practice the first buddhist precept of "not killing", and there would further be no liberation from samsara.
                        you can say in Buddhism, in Jainism, in Christianity....I'm not talking about local flavors tweaking immutables to make them more palatable to bodies of believers. But now you are getting it, except there is liberation still, but not according to a sleight of hand conceptual interpretation which is localized to your own personal perception, and there is no need to paint this universal truth from the perspective of karma.

                        But rest easy, LFJ, I'm just a mouth breathing minion of a bribing henan wushu coach, lmao, far be it from me to have a thought about Buddhism!!
                        "Arhat, I am your father..."
                        -the Dark Lord Cod

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                        • #57
                          Originally posted by arhat View Post
                          But rest easy, LFJ, I'm just a mouth breathing minion of a bribing henan wushu coach, lmao, far be it from me to have a thought about Buddhism!!
                          Sounds about right to me. lol... Rich I thought you were never gonna post here again?
                          The essential point in science it not a complicated mathematical formalism or a ritualized experimentation. Rather the heart of science is a kind of shrewd honesty the springs from really wanting to know what the hell is going on!

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                          • #58
                            arhat,

                            i understand, in this general definition of violence, saying it is impossible to live a non-violent life, is recognizing that in order to live, death must be a factor. to live is to kill (albeit unintentional).

                            but i fail to see how such a realization means one should not be concerned with issues of animal cruelty and vegetarianism, like liutangsanzang, and attempt to live in the most peaceful and beneficial way possible.

                            how do you understand the teaching of non-violence in buddhism; for example, the first precept? as i see it, even though there is that "violent" aspect to life in which beings must die in order for others to survive, even in unintentional killing, basic rights to life should be respected in all beings. and so, where we are able, all attempts should be made to lessen the suffering of beings- which includes not paying for them to be killed for our benefit, or attachment to taste.

                            realizing the fact that life is "violent" shouldnt make us throw our hands up and say; "try as i might, i'm still killing." for me, i realize this fact, but i also realize the buddha taught a non-violent (to a certain extent) lifestyle, meaning not intentionally causing harm or death- directly nor indirectly.

                            so, my question is; "come to grips with the face-of-death to what end?" i will still practice the path of non-violence, as taught by the buddha, as i am able according to my current understanding- which includes vegetarianism, because, as the bodhisattva realizes, we are one with all beings. their suffering is our suffering. true compassion is a natural function of this wisdom, and for that reason, the follower on the bodhisattva path takes the precept to abstain from eating meat.

                            it is my chosen path at present. although i understand the violent nature of life, i try to uproot intentional violence.

                            whenever you refer to the face-of-death, it seems to be in response to the stance of a vegetarian's message of non-violence. but what about to a vegetarian who understands the violent nature of life, as well as the non-violent lifestyle taught by the buddha?

                            is it really such an irreconcilable paradox? from the standpoint of karma, i think not. i dont think the buddha taught such a concept of violence as in the face-of-death, because it doesnt appear to lead to liberation. whereas karma is a central concept.

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                            • #59
                              just realized i called the face-of-glory the "face-of-death" all in that post. lol, sick...

                              Comment


                              • #60
                                I'm not hitting this out of the park just yet.

                                LFJ- consider this- to live is to kill. Ok, we agree. Further, you, myself, Lituishzhang or whatever the hell his name is, we all choose to live. Therefore if to live is to kill, then we all kill intentionally. We can't weasel out of it. Maybe weasel is a harsh sounding word but I can't think of a better one yet.

                                Don't mistake me- I'm all for non violence, putting a stop to animal cruelty like vivisection etc. and I've never said we shouldn't be concerned about how we go about living and that we shouldn't try and bring as much peace as we can to this needlessly violent world- what I'm suggesting is that you take the whole ball of wax and not just slice away some pieces to make yourself feel comfortable into some false sense of propriety while turning a blind eye to the reality...and I feel like a lot of vegetarians who come to this practice from a misplaced sense of morality do exactly that. While they point the finger at a person who eats a cow, they sit at table to dine on vegetables whose reaping required the slaughter of thousands of other animals. Who are they really, to put more worth to a cow than a rabbit. Who are they to drink Soy milk from a perspective of non violence, when the harvesting of soy beans causes death to entire populations of bugs and animals.

                                Like I said, I don't really eat all that much meat, and when I do I try to make sure the animal did not suffer the abuse of the standard agri-business model. When I do eat I am thankful for the sacrifice of whatever lives are involved in my sustenance, and that is why I try and lead as much as I can by example and help people as much as I can- to pay back. Once a ch'an master said something interesting about saying "Amitabha" before and after a gong fu form....in that we consecrate the form and recognize the death it causes and respect the sacrifice made so we can practice and hope to achieve our original mind.

                                So I am not saying throw up your hands and take yourself out, I'm just saying recognize the reality.

                                Lately I've taken to growing a lot of my own food. Sadly I lost all my melons and cucumbers. i didn't know they were susceptible to a fungal attack which comes from soil that had tomatoes grown in it. I would have lost my strawberries to raccoons but I threw rocks at them to chase them off and put out an alternate food source. Turns out racoons like to eat cat food. More death, more life. So you see, I had to resort to violence to protect the strawberries. I could have let them have them all, of course, and since I have the luxury of purchasing strawberries from the store, maybe that would have been the buddhist way. Maybe it would have been more Buddhist to kill the raccoons, saving them the suffering of starvation when their population, free of natural predators, exceeds my ability to grow crops which they can steal. Eventually the strawberries in my garden would all be gone and the raccoons would be after something else. Somewhere, something, would suffer for that decision as well.

                                The logical flaw which I am trying to establish here for you to see, is that you are still trying to make a distinction between how the killing is done, and where and to whom, assign a value to the death, and this is the mistake. When our fields are reaped, animals die, by the thousands. Even if you are vegetarian, you are still participating in a system that takes animals lives. A cow's life is equal to a vole's life- a cow feeds more than a vole. In some cases. So what I am saying is, when people come and start to preach about non-violence to animals and present vegetarianism as the solution, it's actually not the solution at all, they're not really getting it. They are just killing differently. At the same time I say this I would love nothing more than to see something like McDonalds or Subway go out of business, and a company like P&G cease all Draze testing- if they still do it. Have you seen Fast Food Nation. It's unreal. Sickening to see the kill floor, I don't know how they got that footage.

                                But if my family were starving I would kill a cow to feed them, since they can't eat grass.

                                So yeah, let's discuss ways and let's all advocate less harm to other creatures, but it has to be practical and to understand the arguments you need to know the subject matter backwards and forwards, and I think we need to recognize it is a luxury to even have this discussion. Starving is rather violent, where is the fuss and furor over how we are standing by in our wealth and allowing so many people in the world to suffer horrible deaths. How many rapes in the Sudan or Darfur would be avoided if the people just had food to eat. So it's easy for me now, to bang away on my keyboard about what people eat from a position of relative comfort, this cocoon our society puts us in. But many times I don't have any such luxury to actually choose what to eat...I eat what the people I am with prepare for me and for themselves according to their means. If there are no crops, they kill a chicken and make some rice. And since I am unwilling to take the path of non-violence to it's logical conclusion of taking myself out and feeding myself to others, I eat the chicken.

                                A lot of times Buddha taught impossibles. This is one of them. Nobody can really come out and say for sure what he actually said or did, there are certainly enough divergent teachings in the texts to take a stand in either direction which is why we have Buddhists who eat meat and those who do not- and so we can't pretend Buddhism presents a unified front on this subject matter either. What does non violence mean? It means just that. Try not to do harm. But we are so far out of balance, how people eat is not the best way to practice this teaching. This is the year 2008, we know all about the different flavors of Buddhism, the Dalai Lama to Thich Nhat Han. One eats meat, one does not. Both follow Buddha's teachings. Although I've noted on several occasions his monks and disciples still wear Nikes.

                                Originally posted by LFJ View Post
                                arhat,

                                i understand, in this general definition of violence, saying it is impossible to live a non-violent life, is recognizing that in order to live, death must be a factor. to live is to kill (albeit unintentional).

                                but i fail to see how such a realization means one should not be concerned with issues of animal cruelty and vegetarianism, like liutangsanzang, and attempt to live in the most peaceful and beneficial way possible.

                                how do you understand the teaching of non-violence in buddhism; for example, the first precept? as i see it, even though there is that "violent" aspect to life in which beings must die in order for others to survive, even in unintentional killing, basic rights to life should be respected in all beings. and so, where we are able, all attempts should be made to lessen the suffering of beings- which includes not paying for them to be killed for our benefit, or attachment to taste.

                                realizing the fact that life is "violent" shouldnt make us throw our hands up and say; "try as i might, i'm still killing." for me, i realize this fact, but i also realize the buddha taught a non-violent (to a certain extent) lifestyle, meaning not intentionally causing harm or death- directly nor indirectly.

                                so, my question is; "come to grips with the face-of-death to what end?" i will still practice the path of non-violence, as taught by the buddha, as i am able according to my current understanding- which includes vegetarianism, because, as the bodhisattva realizes, we are one with all beings. their suffering is our suffering. true compassion is a natural function of this wisdom, and for that reason, the follower on the bodhisattva path takes the precept to abstain from eating meat.

                                it is my chosen path at present. although i understand the violent nature of life, i try to uproot intentional violence.

                                whenever you refer to the face-of-death, it seems to be in response to the stance of a vegetarian's message of non-violence. but what about to a vegetarian who understands the violent nature of life, as well as the non-violent lifestyle taught by the buddha?

                                is it really such an irreconcilable paradox? from the standpoint of karma, i think not. i dont think the buddha taught such a concept of violence as in the face-of-death, because it doesnt appear to lead to liberation. whereas karma is a central concept.
                                "Arhat, I am your father..."
                                -the Dark Lord Cod

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