I like this trailer a lot. May be I will watch it sometime this summer. Kung fu cult says, everything is Kung fu, just like the Yoga cult.

The documentary eventually makes it to India and shows how the forests are being sold for next to nothing to be constructed as malls. The government even destroyed a lot of the small business owners to construct huge malls. It explores malls in North America, Europe and Asia.

It also talks about malls that have ceased to exist. I did not quite understand the explanation, in fact there was no explanation why a mall goes from a thriving place to a dead place. It interviews a couple of guys who track the malls that are dead.

Recently I heard about this film and I watched the trailer. Looks interesting. It sounds like this film is following Sita Sings the Blues model. Pay what you can. For more information on the film, check out Shyama on MovieSet.

It is a cooking class with Zen priest and chef. This is a film about Zen chef Edward Espe Brown who has penned many Tassajara cookbooks. It is quite a fun film that talks about food as a way of life. There is a bit of zen advice too. He talks about how long it took him to finally understand the Buddhist ritual of offering food to Buddha, when you know for sure it is not going to be consumed. You make your effort and then you offer it. You say this is my offering and then you leave.

According to Ed Espe Brown, if you cook and make an effort at it, a lot of problems can be sorted out. For when you cook, you are not just working on the food, you are working on yourself and the people who eat it. When the cook is joyful, everyone is relaxed. When the cook is anxious, it gets passed around. When you work on food, you are using a lot of acupressure points. You feel connected to the source when you cook. When you don’t cook, you have just lost that important connection. For food and nourishment should not come from a box.

One of the chapters talks about anger- western culture likes to control things, when the object does not do what you want it to do, you just whip it to submission. If the object/people/countries don’t respond, you destroy them. He explains how this is not a sustainable solution from the point of view of Zen.

Another chapter deals with affluence. There is so much food everywhere. Food is not precious, it is just commodity, a thing that gives you energy to move. It has become too much effort to cook. Encountering a potato makes people nervous. I could totally relate to the affluence and waste.  It is too much effort to cut down waste. Even after dozen years of living in the west, it does not cease to shock me every single time I see so much food being offered at restaurants. Except at fancier places where the meal costs half my paycheck. Then I come out being really hungry. That was the main course? I thought it was the appetizer.

I also got to know there are people who use the food that the supermarkets have left out as they are past “Use by” date. This does not mean the food is bad, but the super markets cannot sell them. To stop going it to waste, there are people who use them.

This is what Ed B says about cooking (and maybe living in general).

Make sincere effort, this means the blemishes show. Make your best effort, it is not perfect. It’s not like there are no mistakes or faults, it is not like you are working on a masterpiece. You don’t have to produce a masterpiece. Just take care of something. Make a sincere, honest effort, you will have something to eat.

In short, if you cook and understand the food, you can understand way more of  life. It definitely gave me a lot to chew on.