The last dream of Akira

Akira Kurosawa's last “Dream”.　黒沢明の最後の「夢」

“

正直、生きてるのは良いもんだよ。とても面白い。
In fact, it's good to be alive. It's exciting.

The village

(This is the text of the english subtitles)

The movie on YouTube: Watermill Village Part 1 Part 2

.

“

A young man (Y) arrives in a village. He meets an old man (O) sitting and repairing a wheel of a water mill...

Y: Good day. Good day!

O: Ah... good day.

Y: What's the name of this village?

O: Doesn't have one. We just call it “The Village”. Some people call it “Watermill Village”.

(Looking at the house...)

Y: Do all the villagers live here?

O: No... they live in other places.

Y: There's no electricity here?

O: Don't need it. People get too used to convenience. They think convenience is better. They throw out what's truly good.

Y: But what about lights?

O: We've got candles and linseed oil.

Y: But night's so dark...

O: Yes. That's what night is supposed to be. Why should night be as bright as day? I wouldn't like nights so bright you couldn't see the stars.

Y: You have paddies... but no tractors to cultivate them ?

O: Don't need them. We've got cows, and horses.

Y: What do you use for fuel?

O: Firewood mostly. We don't feel right, chopping down trees, but enough fall down by themselves. We cut them up and use them as firewood. And if you make charcoal from the wood, just a few trees can give you as much heat as a whole forest. Yes, and cow dung makes good fuel too!

* * * * * * *

O: We try to live the way man used to. That's the natural way of life. People today have forgotten they're really just a part of nature. Yet, they destroy the nature on which our lives depend. They allways think they can make something better.
Especially scientists. They may be smart but most don't understand the heart of nature. They only invent things that in the end make people unhappy. Yet they're so proud of their inventions. What's worse, most people are, too. They view them as if they were miracles. They worship them. They don't know it, but they're losing nature. They don't see that they're going to perish.
The most important things for human beings are clean air and clean water and the trees and grass that produce them. Everything is being dirtied, polluted forever. Dirty air, dirty water dirtying the hearts of men.

* * * * * * *

Y: On my way here, I happened to see some children putting flowers on a stone beside the bridge. Why?

O: Oh, that. My father told me once. Long ago, a sick traveller died by the bridge. The villagers took pity and buried him right there. They placed a large stone on his tomb and put flowers on it. It became a custom to put flowers there. Not only the children. All the villagers put flowers there as they pass, though most don't know why.

(One hears a music in the distance...)

Y: Is there a celebration today?

O: No, a funeral. You find this strange? A nice, happy funeral. It's good to work hard and live long and then be thanked. We have no temple or priest here. So all the villagers carry the dead to the cemetery on the hill. We don't like it when young adults or children die. It's hard to celebrate such a loss. But fortunately the people of this village lead a natural way of life. So they pass on at a ripe old age. The woman we're burying today lived to be ninety-nine. You must excuse me but I'm going to join the procession.
To tell the truth, she was my first love. But broke my heart and left me for another.

* * * * * * *

Y: By the way, how old are you?

O: Me? One hundred plus three. A good age to stop living.
Some say life is hard That's just talk.
In fact, it's good to be alive. It's exciting.

(the old man joins the merry procession...)

Spring

...

not to stop the torrential flow of my life not to attach me to live joyfully to pick what is offered to say goodbye to what is refused to go like a gushing spring

...

Life

I left a tyrannical god for a loving and generous one, then rejected the narrowness and the pride of his human face to embrace the infinite of the universe and to blend in with it; today, I want to exorcize every image and to deal with life.

What do I know about life?

To the devil - that is definitely the word - all the questions: they are only pretexts to temporize indefinitely, to put off living. To ask myself whether I have lived little or badly is not to live. I do not know and do not want to know anything about it. That is: the questions are judgements which lead to other questions and chain me to a merry-go-round which never stops. It is time only to be.

Ahead

“Stand up! Go ahead!”

“

“Stand up! Go ahead!”, this is the Hebrew word ashrei, which evokes the rectitude of the one who walks on a road which goes straight towards IHVH, who walks resolutely on a road without obstacle (Andre Chouraqui).

Stand up and go ahead.

This is not a mere blessing, mere “Beatitudes” for the one who yearns for the sacred breath, but an incentive to stand up and go ahead.

“Stand up! Go ahead!”: if I stumble? I go on!

“

(Matthew 5, 2-12)

Ieshoua`: “Ahead!, the humiliated of the breath!... those who mourn!... the humble ones!... those who hunger and thirst for righteousness!... the matricials!... the pure hearts!... the peacemakers!... those who are persecuted because of righteousness!... when they offend you and persecute you, lie and accuse you of any crime, because of me.

I stand up. I go ahead. I am.

Tests

Summary of Matthew 4, 1-11 and Luke 4, 1-13

Ieshoua`, full of the sacred breath, returns from Iarden.

He is led in the breath to the wilderness, forty days tested by the devil. He fasts forty days and forty nights. Afterward, he is hungry.

1 The “tester” approaches him and says:

“

“If you are son of Elohims, tell these stones to become loaves.”

Ieshoua` answers and says:

“

“It is written: ‘man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes out of the mouth of Elohims’.” (Deuteronom 8, 3: “man does not leave on bread alone: the human lives on everything that comes out of the mouth of Adonai.”)

2 Then the devil takes him with himself and leads him to Ierushalaim; he sets him on the ridge of the sanctuary and says to him:

“

“If you are son of Elohims, throw yourself down from here. Yes, it is written: ‘He advises his messengers to keep him.’ And: ‘With their hands, they will lift you, so that your foot does not strike a stone’.” (Psaumes 91, 11-12: “Yes, he orders his messengers to keep you on all your roads. They carry you on both palms, so that your foot does not strike any stone.”)

Ieshoua` answers and says to him:

“

“It is written, on the other hand: ‘Do not test Adonai, your Elohims’.” (Deuteronom 6, 16: “You will not test Adonai, your Elohims.”)

3 The devil takes him again with himself to a very high mountain. He shows him all the kingdoms of the universe and their glory. He says to him:

“

“I will give you any authority on them and their glory. Yes, it has been delivered to me and I give it to whom I want. For you thus, if you bow and prostrate yourself before me, it will be yours, all.”

Ieshoua` answers and says to him:

“

“It is written: ‘Prostrate yourself before Adonai, your Elohims. Serve him, only him!’.” (Deuteronom 6, 13: “Quiver before Adonai, your Elohims, serve him, swear by his name.”)

Having exhausted every test, the devil leaves him and withdraws until fixed time.

And then, messengers approach him; they serve him.

* * * * * * *

Material life is lack and concern: one must feed one's body, ensure one's security, have power over things. Everything must always be done again and again.

Spiritual life is fed generously by itself (“out of the mouth of Elohims”), entered through faith (“Do not test”), maintained by gratitude (“Prostrate yourself... Serve him, only him!”).

The material world may obstruct the flow of spiritual life, but it never stops it. And as soon as the obstacle is removed (“Having exhausted every test”), it starts flowing again (“And then, messengers approach him; they serve him.”)

Faith, “adherence” is a way of being, a way of living in which generosity and gratitude are one, me and life are one: it only concerns children and fools.

“

“Come to me, you all, the tired ones, the overworked ones; I will give you rest.
Take my yoke upon you, learn from me that I am humiliated and small-hearted: you will find comfort for your beings.
Yes, my yoke is useful, my burden is light.”(Matthew 11, 28-30)

I take your yoke, your light burden to get out of my cage and to embrace whole life.

Conscience

or rather conscientiousness.

One considers usually that an answer of the Yi Jing is valid only for the moment when the question is asked. For my part, I consider that it is up to the questioner to fix the range of the answer.

I thus affirm that Yi Jing must be able to answer questions which aim at the totality of the existence; with this intention, I consider that all that refers to the time amounts to expressing the global circumstances of the life of the questioner.

* * * * * * *

One day, I handled the rods of achillea to ask the Yi Jing to suggest me a way to obtain inner peace, quiet mind, and to preserve them.

☳
☶

It answered me with the hexagram 62 “Xiao Guo”, “preponderance of the small”, formed by the trigram ☳, “zhen”, “the arousing, thunder”, surmounting the trigram ☶, “gen”, “keeping still, mountain”.

The general meaning of this hexagram is given by the judgement, which states:

“

PREPONDERANCE OF THE SMALL. Success.
Perseverance furthers.
Small things may be done; great things should not be done.
The flying bird brings the message:
It is not well to strive upward,
It is well to remain below.
Great good fortune.

Here is an extract of the comment Richard Wilhelm wrote about this judgement:

“

Exceptional modesty and conscientiousness are sure to be rewarded with success; however, if a man is not to throw himself away, it is important that they should not become empty form and subservience but be combined always with a correct dignity in personal behavior.
We must understand the demands of the time in order to find the necessary offset for its deficiencies and damages.
In any event we must not count on great success, since the requisite strength is lacking
In this lies the importance of the message that one should not strive after lofty things but hold to lowly things.
The structure of the hexagram gives rise to the idea that this message is brought by a bird.... this gives the image of a soaring bird.
But a bird should not try to surpass itself and fly into the sun; it should descend to the earth, where its nest is.

Humility is said without servility, it consists in dealing, while keeping a worthy attitude, with things of small importance, smale scale, small greatness, i.e modest.

How does this “judgement” answer my question?
It suggests that I cannot obtain inner peace by taking height, distance compared with the contingencies of the present.
I should not avoid immediate, concrete, small, modest realities, and fly away towards higher thoughts or aspirations, but face them.
In a face-to-face discussion without condescension, without presumption, but with a respectful attention, with delicate, subtle and light conscientiousness, as when I am walking in a garden.

Thus that I abandon the idea of doing great things and having great aspirations, and that I remain on earth, or come back to live on it, with sensitivity and lightness.

Inner peace is the friend of small things and simplicity.

Nymphs

Nymphs, women, I like to contemplate the radiance of your nudity, as fresh as birth, so modest, so shameless!

Welcome my kisses and my caresses, by turns soft and careful, by turns passionate and tender, according to the impulses of our cheerful passions.

Whom you invite in your residence, in the depths of water, disappears forever, says one... Why would he return from there?

Nymphs and Satyr
William Bouguereau
(1873)

Nymph with morning glory flowers
Jules-Joseph Lefèbvre
(?)

Hylas and the Nymphs
John William Waterhouse
(1896)

(Click on the images to enlarge them.)

* * * * * * *

Thanks to Wikipedia for the Nymphs.

Charm

The Queen of the Witches said to the novice:

“

“You should know it! Hear, little dope, that you should not use, to bewitch a man, complicated charms before you have exhausted all the natural charms your Master provided you when you were born. You must, to bewitch him, dance a furious dance for him.

“For a start, out of his sight, you can undress entirely, scent yourself discreetly and put on a short dress, black or dark, no longer than well above your knees, with fine straps, which lets guess your beauty under subdued lighting and is liberally low-cut. You can also, if you wish, decorate your hair and your ears. But do not wear any collar, bracelet, rings, girdles, shoes or other accessory.

“Then join him in the soberly enlightened room where he is awaiting you and say to him: ‘Look at me, I dance for you!’. Start dancing at once, raise high your arms, high your legs, take lascivious poses, utter little cries, let frenzy overcome you and, at the height of your dance, throw your dress at him. When finally you stop, naked, breathless, exhausted, you will see the bewitched man, with his eyes bulging, prostrate himself before you.

“Then you will be in command and he will do all that you want. But do not scorn him, because if he has attracted you, the reason is that without you knowing it, he broke a spell which was hanging over you.

“To prevent him from escaping, ask him to give you all his clothes and hide them. Make up a name to call him, or just tell him simply: ‘You, do this to me, You, do that to me...’ Take a name with which he will name you: ‘Madam, Miss, Mistress, or Voluptua, etc...’

“From now on, each time he is alone with you and you want to bewitch him, you will have only to look him in the eyes and tell him firmly: ‘Be bewitched!’, and you will get him at once in your power. To break the spell, first give him his clothes back and, when he has got dressed, make him lie down and sleep, then tell him: ‘Charm, leave him!’ He will awake and apologize for having fallen asleep.”

With these words, the Queen of the Witches disappeared at once, and her laughter faded little by little in the depths of the night.

Welcome

“

“Let the little children come to me. Do not hinder them: yes, it is for their kind, the kingdom of Elohims.
Amen, I say to you: who does not welcome the kingdom of Elohims like a little child does not enter it.
He takes them in his arms...” (Mark 10, 14-16)

You say to me: “Adhering to me is welcoming me, it is up to you to open your door to me, because the door which prevents you from coming to me is also the door which allows you to come to me.”
If I open my door to you, I open your residence.
What separates us is nothing but my door, and its handle is on my side.
My door is my free choice. You say to me: “Live without me, or live with me. If you want to live with me, simply open your door to me. I welcome you at your door, welcome me”.

You say to me: “You, the little child you are, come to me!”

You say to me: “Me, the little child I am, welcome me!”

Deep in my ear are streaming laughters of children.

“

“I judge you according to your mouth...” (Parabola of the talents or the mines, Luke 19, 22)

“Do not judge, in order not to be judged. Yes, with the judgement you judge you will be judged; with the measure you measure it will be measured for you.” (Matthew 7, 1-2)

Echo says to me: “I am who you say I am” and reflection in the mirror: “I look at you with your eyes.”

Adherence

Bar-Timai (Mark 10, 51-52)

“

Ieshoua` answers and says to him: “What do you want me to do for you?”
The blind man says to him: “Rabbouni! let me be able to see!”
Ieshoua` says to him: “Go! Your adherence has saved you!”

Little children (Mark 10, 15)

“

“Amen, I say to you: who does not welcome the kingdom of Elohims like a little child does not enter it.”

Adherence

“

“If you had adherence as a mustard seed, you would say to this sycamore: ‘uproot yourself and plant yourself in the sea!’; and it would obey you.”(Luke 17, 6)

“Amen, yes, I say to you, if you had adherence as a mustard seed, you would say to this mountain: ‘Move from here to there’, and it would move. Nothing would be impossible to you.” (Matthew 17, 20)

“Adhere to Elohims.
Amen, I say to you, who says to this mountain: ‘Raise and cast into the sea', without having any doubt in his heart, but adhering, if he believes that what he says will come to pass, it will be so for him.
Thus I say to you: to all that you will ask while you are praying, adhere to it. Believing that you will receive, it will be so for you.” (Mark 11, 22-24)

Religion

The human being I am has a double, ambivalent look at religion.
Shall I be grateful to it for having opened my mind to the spiritual dimension of human life?
Or shall I reproach it for having dispossessed me of a dimension which belongs to me solely and to have turned it against me?
Whichever of the instituted spiritualities I consider, I see only threatening power, overt or hypocritical, and exaltation of submission, which comes to the same thing.
I hardly see difference between religion and politics, but the same forgery “for my own good” of threats of misfortune to blackmail me: submit yourself to me, otherwise I will send my acolytes and your brothers against you, submit yourself to me, otherwise the gods will punish you or you will come into the world again to live a life of suffering.
Rather than argue on endlessly weighing up the pros and the cons, it lucidly appears to me that I have to take away from religion the monopoly of the spirituality, which does not belong to it, and to create on my own the relation I wish to maintain with the universe.
Thus I challenge all the powers, i.e. all the political and religious gangs and other public evils, and I leave them to their noisy vanity.

Far from the exhausting logorrhea of certain texts known as wise or sacred, I want to furnish my residence with silence and simplicity. Because I am intimately - “viscerally” - convinced that silence and simplicity are my essential foods.

Universe, which I cannot look at without my drawing a picture of you, it is to our generosity that I entrust myself.

Genesis

I owe my religion to the circumstances of my birth: the only reason, the true one, for which I have been brought up as a Christian, is that I was born in a Christian family. To allege a reason different from that one is only ideology, i.e. means of coercion. “The circumstances of my birth”, this reason also applies to my nationality, the color of my skin, my gender and, why not, for the mankind, even the animal kingdom to which I belong.

Here is also the only reason for which I do not “defend” Christianity “against” Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Taoism, etc, or French against Foreigners, White against Blacks or Yellows, etc, men against women, human against other animal species, and animals against plants and minerals.

I was invited from childhood to read the Bible. This vast pillar of justice instilled the poison of fear into me, the fear of the guilty whose unwillingness destines to be punished after his death.

It is because I wanted to exorcize this fear which haunted me that I returned like a prodigal son to the temple and there, one fine day, as some of us had been gathering to study Genesis, first book of the Bible, a “miracle” occurred.

This miracle is an almost innocent verse of the Genesis, the 15. of the 2. chapter, of which all the versions I could find in bookshops come down to the one of King James (Authorized King James Version, Oxford world's classics):

“

And the Lord God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden, to plough (or cultivate) it and to keep it.

All these translations say the same thing: God put Adam in the Eden to employ him there as a gardener and as a guard. I.e. God created the man to make of him his servant, his employee.

But in this day of grace, I have been acquainted with the (french) translation André Chouraqui (Desclée de Brouwer) had made of that verse, and without which it would have continued, while remaining unperceived, to achieve its guilty work in my subconscious. Here is the translation (of the translation) by André Chouraqui:

“

IHVH-Adonai Elohims takes the man of glebe and puts him into the garden of Eden, to serve him and to keep him.

And so is the creation put back in the right order: God created the man, not to make his slave of him, bus as a being responsible for his creation (even if the creature has required of him to be created), he puts himself at his service and assures him of his protection.

No more Mr Bogeyman who watches for the least mistake to clamp down on me. Nothing but love, nothing but generosity. And I experienced, maybe for the first time, an immense feeling of joy and gratitude.

Then, as if they had awaited this moment only to leap to the light and to confirm me in my discovery, higgledy-piggledy reappeared fragments of the Gospels (from now on all the extracts are translated from the version of André Chouraqui):

“

Stare at the birds of the sky: they do not sow, do not reap, do not garner into barns. But your Father of the skys feeds them.(Matthew 6, 26)
Notice the amaryllis of the fields, how they grow without toiling nor spinning. Yet I tell you: even Shelomo in all his glory was not dressed like one of them.(Matthew 6, 28-29)

“

And I tell you: Ask, it will be given to you. Seek, you will find. Knock, it will be open to you. Yes, anyone who asks receives; anyone who seeks finds; to anyone who knocks it is open.
What father among you whom his son asks for a fish gives him, instead of a fish, a snake? Or, when he asks him for an egg, gives him a scorpion?
If you thus, who are bad, know how to give nice gifts to your children, how much more the Father of the skys gives the sacred breath to those who ask him. (Luke 11, 9-13)

Nevertheless I must say that I was the only one who got enthusiastic that day and that my partners quite simply evaded, even scorned the question (and the one who raised it). So that I did not trust them anymore and, consequently, had to invent my way all alone.

All alone? No, since I had from now on as a friend a benevolent “god”. A god? No, not this face too restrictive, too exclusive, too pleasing to human pride. No, not a god, but the whole universe for partner, and for eternity.

Bubbles

The mayfly (or ephemera) (tanka)

i am the mayfly
i appear, i disappear
my tracks are perfume
my wings blend with light breezes
the universe is my yard

.

Naked

jogging in the woods and meadows

running until gasping for breath

singing songs at the top of voice

witnessing birds' awakening

in the mirror of a river
playing with the drops of water

climbing to the top of the trees
letting me sway from branch to branch

keeping attentive to beings
with kindness and benevolence

giving life to all my daydreams

dying in a forgotten place

gliding like a bird, so lightly,

living on air and fresh water
and on fruits picked from the bush

talking with animals, grasses,
flowers and trees, rocks, brooks and hills

seeing the sun rising from sea,
then blinking its very last flame

just sleeping out in the open

awakening happy to live

on summer nights, sprawled in the grass,
mating with the stars in the sky

welcoming all the wild wild girls
who plunge their eyes into my soul
and laugh and jump and wind round me

and getting lighter and lighter!

.

Venus

The Birth of Venus
William Bouguereau
(1879)

The Birth of Venus
Sandro Botticelli
(1485)

as soon as I begin to write
i'm getting frozen, infected
by seriousness, lethal poison.

why does this corset oppress me
does it protect me from madness
or else from dissolution?

i have not forgotten, Venus
voluptuous and passionate
that you've brought me into the world.

devote my body to pleasure
my soul will follow it, for sure
indecently, shamelessly.

(Click on the images to enlarge them.)

Abandon

Henri Pourrat: The stupid beggar (The Treasury of the Tales. "Fairies")

“

Once upon a time there was a traveller passing through the mountain. As he wanted to take a shortcut, he left a footpath to take another one and so on. Finally, he did not really know which path to take.

He was walking on the pasture, in the middle of a heathland, when he saw an old man, a beggar, who was sitting on a stone and eating a piece of bread.

“- Tell me, my good man, if I'm still going by there, will I arrive at Le Monastier?
- Don't know, sir.
- Is that a path I see over there, towards these three trees?
- Don't know, sir.
- That seems well to be one. Then, where does it lead to?
- Don't know, sir.
- Don't know, don't know... But, well, you must know where you are, here? Yes, tell me, where are we?
- Don't know, sir.
- Well, my poor fellow, I believe one thing: that you are nothing but an animal, a stupid animal.
- That may be so, sir, but so stupid an animal I may be, I come from where it happened to be, I go where the wind leads me, and my way, I still haven't lost it.”

A traveller is running from a place to another one, following tracks. He knows where he comes from, where he goes, where he is, until the moment when, perhaps in a hurry, he takes a shortcut, gets lost in a labyrinth of paths without exit, and ends up wandering, at the mercy of his anxious look.

A beggar is eating and resting, quietly. His way is a point of space and time which does not leave any trace: here and now. Without other place than himself, without other time than the very moment, he never gets lost.

Lost in the interval of a starting place and a place of arrival, a past and a future, mislaid out of the “beaten tracks”, the traveller touches another world, another time but, too busy running after a knowledge which has escaped him, he sees there nothing but a dead end and makes there only one short stopover.

The one who knows follows tracks; if he deviates from his way, his knowledge, he falls into ignorance and fright; then his search starts.

The one who does not know roams; without anything to seek, without asking, without feeling the least tension which would order a search, driven by a desire without object, not even a desire to be, he walks on like an adventurer without adventures, abandoned to here and now.