Film link: The Voyage of Bashô (2018)
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Film link: The Voyage of Bashô (2018)
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One of the Substack pages among my recommendations is “Silentium” (you can locate it here). Just posted there is this superb meditative film, The Voyage of Bashô, made in 2018. As described here, this 99-minute feature is: “A fictionalized documentary about the great Japanese poet Bashô (1644-1694), the spiritual father of Haiku poetry. A monk plays the role of Bashô and walks through the Japanese countryside, following the tracks of the poet’s travel diaries. On the way, he writes many of his famous haiku poems. A film about poetry, meditation, Zen Buddhism, and a view of untouched, virgin nature, seen and [understood] as a lost paradise.”
It is a beautiful work, conducive to contemplation. And if you don’t have Bashô’s The Narrow Road to the Deep North and Other Travel Sketches (here) or a collection of his haikus (consider this one), I urge you to get them.
Here, then, is the link to The Voyage of Bashô.
Film link: The Voyage of Bashô (2018)
I love Basho dearly. One of my most treasure books at university was that very same Penguin Narrow Road to the Deep North that you link to; with its evocative narrative, lovely poetry and charming illustrations, it was often a refuge from the freneticism and (let's face it) shallowness of my student life. I have it still.
Whilst I happily belong to the Theravadin school of Buddhism, I have to admit to finding much of Zen very attractive. Southern School Buddhist exchanges can all too often devolve into a pedantic blizzard of text-slinging, with sutta quote after sutta quote used to bolster one's argument or dash the other fellow's (a little like some Protestants or Thomists hurl their various passages), and so there is something deeply refreshing about the simplicity and directness, the emphasis on "seeing for oneself" that is so important a part of the Zen tradition. This is not to say that much of this isn't in our tradition as well. Several great teachers (Ajahn Chah and Ajahn Martin come to mind) have frequently said that sometimes one needs to take the suttas, put them in a closet and toss away the key, to better focus on one's own practice, to not be attached to texts, which in the end after all are only rafts and not the destination itself.
I really look forward to watching this film. I'm not sure I'll be able to sell my wife and daughters on it - Guardians of the Galaxy would be a considerably safer choice - but I'll try. Thank you as always for the recommendation.
With metta,
Dary l