Teaser Trailer for Osamu Tezuka's Buddha

Warner Brothers released a teaser trailer for Osamu Tezuka's Buddha today. The trailer is in Japanese and although while short (it is only a teaser after all) it is pretty understandable. Buddha is based off of the 8 volume manga series written by Osamu Tezuka. I'm VERY excited for this one. The graphic novels, while fictionalized to some degree for entertainment, is a very fun read and the animated feature looks like it is getting good treatment and high production values.

Watch the trailer here.

(Click the big Japanese button in the middle of the screen to watch.)

Japanese Temple Bells

Each week BBC features a half-hour audio program entitled “Heart and Soul”that explores spirituality in different parts of the world. This week’s installment is Japan’s Buddhist temple bells.

Inception - Planting an Idea

Director Christopher Nolan (Memento, The Dark Knight) is back with his new movie Inception (starring Leonardo DiCaprio), which opens today. I went and saw the midnight showing last night and thought I would take a few minutes here to share my experience of it.

Inception is a movie about ideas and the mind and particularly about extraction and inception. The idea of being able to steal ideas or plant new ideas in people's subconscious minds through shared dreaming.

Leonardo DiCaprio plays Dom Cobb, a professional extractor who specializes in subconscious security and stealing ideas. Cobb is hired by Saito (Ken Watanabe) a business man who wants Cobb to plant an idea in a business rival's mind. The story follows Cobb as he assembles his team to perform the job and as they travel through their target's mind via shared dreaming.

Inception poses some good questions throughout as the Cobb struggles with recurring memories and questioning what is actually real as the line between dream and reality start to blur.

Inception is a good paced action/thriller that will actually prompt you to think, a difficult tasks for many summer movies. Some viewers may be reminded of The Matrix and other movies that also deal with conscious and subconscious perceptions of reality and dreams but I felt Inception was fresh and smart and enjoyable the whole way through.

A lot of Buddhist philosophy and studies address the nature of dreams, memory and perception and many of those concepts are a key component to Inception.

After watching Inception I was reminded of a Chinese philosopher I read back in my undergrad studies by the name of Chuang-Tzu. Chuang-Tzu meditated on his dreams and wrote about them in great detail; especially famous is his Butterfly Dream, where he could no longer differentiate whether he was a human dreaming he was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming he was a human. DiCaprio gets so far into his dreams, even dreams within dreams that soon everything has to be questioned as to whether or not it's real and if he can ever wake up.

Below are a few links to various film reviews, trailers and other articles you mind find interesting.

Overall, I would recommend seeing Inception. I know I'll be seeing it at least once more while it's still in theaters.

The Influences of Inception Rotten Tomatoes - Inception Reviews

A Buddhist Approach to Dreams Inception Movie Trailers

Dreams and Their Significance - Buddhanet Inception Review - Twitch Films

Reality in Buddhism Inception @ IMDB

Teavana!

Not necessarily a particularly Buddhist posting but definitely appropriate since many of us love tea. I was in Somerset Mall today getting my iPhone fixed at the Apple Store and as I was leaving I spotted in my peripheral vision what appeared to be several tea pot sets in a store window. I took a double-take and went back to explore what was in fact a speciality tea store called Teavana (Heaven of Tea™) They had tons of fresh imported and rare loose leaf teas, most of which were available to sample and a very knowledgeable sales staff. I ended up spending over $50 on tea and also purchased a new tea pot. They seem to have a strong Asian/Buddhist vibe going on in the store and also sell tons of awesome Buddhist statues and some interesting books. I know there is a Kuan Yin/Heart Sutra statue I am interested in myself. A very awesome tea store I was quite excited to discover today. Some of you may already know of this store but those of you that don't will want to check it out. I know I'm going to be a regular customer now.

Check out their website here.

http://www.teavana.com/

Happy 75th Birthday to H.H. Dalai Lama!

Tomorrow (July 6) is the Dalai Lama's 75th birthday. There will be a live webcast of the celebrations from his website which you can watch here. The webcast will start at 9:00 AM Indian Standard Time (GMT +5:30)

MWZ extends our well wishes to the Dalai Lama and hopes for many more years of teachings and inspiring compassion all around the world.

Digital Dharma

Many people who are interested in Buddhism are interested in finding out what they should read or what should be on their book list to get them started on the path. While there are several dozens if not hundreds of different authors and commentaries on Buddhist teachings, perhaps the best place to start is to go directly back to the source material and interpret it for yourself.

The Buddha's teachings are collected in the Nikayas and also the Dhammapada. There are several different translations and editions widely available at most local bookstores or online.

There are also a few helpful websites that have digitized portions of the above collections:

Access To Insight has a massive free digital library of over 1,000 sutras searchable by subject.

ATI also has a free offline iPhone/iPad/iPod version for those of you that would like to take parts of the Pali Canon with you on the go.

Buddhanet.net is also a great online resource with enough content to easily fill hundreds of hours worth of reading.

Happy Interdependence Day!

As we celebrate the 4th of July weekend, let us not forgot our interdependent nature. Here is a link to the Declaration of Interdependence from 2004 that was presented to both Republican and Democratic delegates at their respective conventions that year.

A Declaration of Interdependence

MWZ hopes everyone has a safe and enjoyable holiday weekend!

Dharma Dots

Browsing through some Buddhist blogs today I ran across a site called Dharma Dots. Dharma Dots is a daily Dharma aggregator and Buddhist News Feed Hub linking to several great Buddhist blogs from around the internet. A must have bookmark for anyone wanting to get their Dharma fix online!