Saturday of inner peace.

"Snuggying is when you are lying down 100% close to someone with long hair and you open your eyes." That is Jonah's definition of snuggles or snuggies. I didn't here this because Noah woke up at 6:00am and we had breakfast and then we went biking. We had fun until while playing soccer at the field I kicked a ball into Noah's goal. He got angry at me beyond reason and it took forever to get back to playing. My strategy was that I wouldn't play with someone who was acting like that. We could play however he wanted, with whatever rules in his favor. We could just pass. We could just have one goal, I could let him win, but if he was going to flip out I wouldn't play with him.

We returned home to have a Kung Fu class which was pretty good, then we went to a birthday party where they wore themselves out. We picked up Pizza and other junk food, which I stuffed myself with while watching Kung Fu Panda. Now I am watching Kung Fu Panda 2 at Noah's request.

Every time I watch these movies (I didn't like the first one when I first saw it) I see something new. In fact I think the filmakers, as hard as they worked on it, and as much research as they did, may have created something much better than they even necessarily understand. What I mean is, by copying the cinematography of countless Kung Fu movies which focused mainly on action instead of plot but nonetheless had deep moments in them, they created a really deep allegory. By taking all the great stories and a symbolism and putting it into one movie that entertained and made sense, the created something worthy of scripture. Something better than the things it was based on, because past legends and movies had flaws. Plot flaws, sections that were boring, but they had that idea, which the KF panda movies absorbed.

For instance,
What I saw in Tai Lung this time was a force within yourself instead of an actual person. I suppose the same could be said of Po. But I only realized this when Master Sifu is waiting for Tai Lung. He closes his eyes while it is storming outside and then when he opens his eyes and Tai Lung is there when he opens his eyes. Now this could be that Tai Lung ran up the whole mountain in the blink of an eye and chose to stand there still as Master Shifu opened his eyes. Or, maybe it is that Tai Lung just represents the dark side, anger, all those bad things in Master Shifu's Past. In other words, Tai Lung is almost not real. Master Shifu summoned him. Which was true. He couldn't have escaped if Shifu didn't send the goose to Chau Gam prison. In fact, although Master Shifu doesn't understand the dragon scroll, in a way he does. After he looks at the scroll which is "empty" but shows his reflection, he gains understanding not by looking at the scroll, but looking at his reflection in the reflection pool after saying, "Master OO gwei was wiser than us all."
In other words, he sees this issue as him. Tai Lung (big Dragon) is was the dragon warrior, Shifu's Dragon warrior, who Shifu created because he was prideful. Tai Lung represents a dark side of Master Shifu as much as he represents a person on his own.

I guess I think about these things because Noah keeps asking me questions about the movie even when we aren't watching it, which is why we chose to put it on today.

We don;t have a family altar. When I was little I saw Faht Siu, the fat laughing Buddha, and Huan Yin in the house all the time. Instead Noah just saw a book holder of two fat buddhas and asked me what it was. As I write this I kind of feel like that might have been a mistake, because now Noah doesn't really know about these things. But anyway he asked me what they were and why they were fat and I tried to explained how the fatness probably represented wealth or a form of happiness to people who were starving.

But I realized, and said out loud that Po is actually a better symbol. Because a "fat Panda" really is the perfect Dragon Warrior. After all a fat Buddha is much more powerful than a dragon, much more powerful than the Monkey King and the monkey kind just went and took the pillar form the Dragon King's palace right?

But Po is basically a Buddha with his joyous attitude and outlook on life and the way he deals with suffering. He is still working toward enlightenment or the ultimate Kung Fu. He isn't completely there yet. But he has the Buddha nature inside which is tied to our real life experience (eating, making noodles, being working class and in the service industry) rather than ideas of grandeur and Dragon Warriorship. In fact it is the noodle making that unlocks his ability to understand the Dragon scroll.

A Panda may look cute and have Buddha nature in that it is vegetarian, eating only bamboo. But ultimately, a Panda, is a bear with carnivourous teeth and bone structure. Bears are symbols of power as much as Dragons are. After all the Bear is to Russia as the Dragon is to China. And Souuthern China is really about TIgers as a symbol of power. Cranes, represent internal power and immortality. In other words, a bear makes perfect sense as a dragon warrior. Nothing weird or funny about that at all. I'm not saying there is anything Russian in KF Panda. I'm just saying bears are symbols of power,

In other words, these stories are really great. Greater and more deep than some of the stories they are based on, even though they are comedic in nature.