The cause of suffering is attachment

Last week my cranky old bicycle that I found ages ago that now has a broken saddle, wonky bottom bracket and dodgy gear changer and which I left unlocked outside my house was taken away. I was mildly annoyed at the inconvenience. Yesterday evening I came home to discover the cover of my new motorbike had been moved and my neighbour told me that she had disturbed someone fiddling with it. An hour later the whole cover had been removed. Clearly someone was casing it to see how easy it would be to steal and probably whether it was worth it. The result of that for me was intense anxiety and a strong sense of vulnerability and, today, one more lock on it and I moved it even closer to my front door.

The Buddha once asked a king how he would feel if a member of his family experienced distress or disgrace. The king replied that he would suffer intensely. the Buddha then asked him how he would feel if someone in his kingdom that he did not at all know were to experience distress or disgrace. The king replied that it would have little impact on him. The Buddha said that this shows that the cause of suffering is attachment.

Blade Runner – the Director’s cut

I have just got back from seeing Blade Runner. This ‘director’s cut’ has been around for a while but I have never seen it. Its also the first time I have seen it on a big screen with decent sound (music is by 80s icon Vangelis and at times I imagined it turning into the theme from Chariots of Fire. Luckily it didn’t. Having seen so much of Harrison’s Ford’s laid back acting style in other films I took more notice of beautiful replicant Sean Young. What’s fantastic about cinema is that the screen is so big so that ultra closeups of replicant Rachel undoing her hair, for example, and her highly produced lips are breathtaking and intimate and of course I couldn’t help falling in love with her. It would be impossible not to. She was so beautiful and so vulnerable and this is clearly what Ford’s character, Deckard, is drawn to. Now, there is the debate about whether Ford is actually a replicant himself, a suggestion which I don’t like for some reason as it spoils the intense and central ambiguity about a human falling in love with a non-human, but apparently director Ridley Scott has acknowledged that it is plausible – for a couple of very subtle plot reasons. Check here from 7 years ago or here.