Big News! One of the people profiled in A Different Kind of Luxury coming to US

BEYOND PLUNDER:  LEAVING BEHIND THE MYTH THAT LEADS US TO WAR AND ECOLOGICAL DISASTER 

An evening with filmmaker, philosopher and writer Masanori Oe

* Berkeley: Saturday Feb 18, 7 PM, Blue Willow Teaspot

1200 Tenth Street, Berkeley, CA 94710 (Near Gilman and San Pablo)

Facebook Event Notice

* Santa Cruz: Sunday Feb 19, Resource Center for Non Violence 
612 OCEAN STREET, Santa Cruz 95060 (between Water and Soquel, across from Hotel Paradox)Facebook Event Notice

In PHILADELPHIA , Saturday February 11, at International House, (You can meet Masanori and Andy Couturier at this event)

In CHICAGO area at Northwestern University (Andy Couturier will NOT be at this event)

Author, organic farmer and philosopher Masanori Oe will be coming to the US on a multi-city tour for the first time in four decades. A once-only opportunity to meet this major Japanese thought leader. 

Oe, profiled in A Different Kind of Luxury (soon to be re-issued as The Abundance of Less), will be showing several short films of 1960s protests, and give us a philosopher's AND activist's view on how to handle these times we are in.  

Woodblock print by Masanori Oe

Intriguingly, Oe believes that it is our collective myths that lead us either into continued ecological catastrophe, or, if we create new myth, into a new era of symbiosis with all of the life world.  In this quest he draws in not only activist politics, but our power to see and understand dreams and organic farming.


Oe will be accompanied by author Andy Couturier, and there will be a lot of time for conversation after the short film screenings. (Please note that there are strong images of Vietnam war era violence in the films).   



Besides being a movie director and an author of ten books, Oe is a sculptor and a woodblock print artist, a translator of books by Hindu and Buddhist sages, Native American and Australian aboriginal spirituality for Japanese audiences, a photographer, an ecological educator, an organic farmer in the tradition of Masanobu Fukuoka (One Straw Revolution), and an antiwar activist. In the early 1970 he helped to found one of the first health-food stores in Japan, and helped to write the first Japanese version of the Whole Earth Catalog and he has organized massive festivals of alternative culture attended by thousands of people.

"A real mind blower" said publisher Peter Goodman about Chapter 11 in A Different Kind of Luxury which profiles Oe.

Still from the film GREAT SOCIETY by Masanori Oe

FROM THE BOOK: Masanori and his partner were asked by the national CBS network to make a film that would be an overview of the entire decade for the annual CBS network convention in New York, with permission to use footage from the CBS archive. He explains that it was made with six different screens going simultaneously in order to show the many-sided nature of the times.

Now we’re into the fast-cut, jump-at-you images, one after the other. The screen splits into six, strobe lights flashing, soldiers marching, JFK shot, Oswald shot, miniskirts, Vietnamese POWs, space walks, napalm-burnt children, fighter jets dropping bombs, the American flag, LBJ driving home a point forcefully at a lectern. Too much is happening at once for the mind to perceive. The soundtrack is riveting and disturbing: heart beats, guitar distortion, gurus chanting, a woman screaming as someone is shot, a koto twanging as a mushroom cloud fills the sky.

Late 60s era of Masanori with his collaborator
Marvin Fishman

The images jumping from race riots to liquid light shows to atomic blasts are all in present tense here, not an artifact, or shorthand for “the sixties” digested by some future generation. The images are contemporary, and are rendered as such by the hallucinatory film grammar, prompting again the dilation of the psyche.

A brand new edition is coming. We need your support.

Great news! A Different Kind of Luxury, out of print for more than a year, has been accepted for publication with North Atlantic Books, in a brand new, fully updated edition.

To do justice to the people and their stories, I believe it is right to speak to each of the people profiled, before I write about them. But I cannot afford this journey without your help. In exchange you can become part of the adventure of my return journey. I will send you stories and photos as travel, letting you experience the reality of their lives today in rural Japan. Scroll down for specific thank you gifts.

TO MAKE A CONTRIBUTION PLEASE CLICK https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=UU6LCETY2MC6L



The new edition will have updates on the lives of the people profiled, especially since the Fukushima disaster, as well as new photos and a substantive afterword by myself about how we in the West can live differently-- more sustainably, and more happily-- by learning from them.

I would also be happy to TAKE a MESSAGE from you to one of the people in the book, expressing how their stories have affected your life.

• If you can donate $97, you'll receive all my photos and new writing delivered to your email inbox while I'm traveling in Japan. Also I will send a beautiful full-color, large-format (11 x 14) printed photo to your home address that is suitable for framing. You can donate easily with this link:
https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=BAPN9QAEKCH9J

• If you can donate $197, I will send you the email updates, two printed large format color photos (11x 14) plus I will send you the full set of the 22 Original Japan Times Articles that were the basis of the book (many of these people were not featured in the book, but all of them amazing) printed in large format and sent to your home. These articles have been unavailable for fifteen years. Donation Link:
https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=B8BD32A42NAAY




• If you can donate $497 or above, I'll send you all of the above—the printed photos, the articles, the updates plus a special gift – either a Japanese antique or a piece of original artwork or pottery hand selected by myself for you. Also I will thank you personally by name in the acknowledgments page of the new edition. In addition, I will send you a personally autographed copy of the new book when it comes out next year, dedicated to you or whomever you choose.Donation Link:
https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=VCSAWXAYYR3WY

• If you are able to fund the entire journey (apx. $3500) besides my eternal gratitude and all of the above, I will send you two personally hand-selected pieces of Gufudo & Atsuko Watanabe's exquisite pottery. (Chapters 3 and 8) These are truly one-of-a-kind pieces, and will no longer be available in the future. (Gufudo has passed away.) I will also offer to come to your town or city and give a reading at your home either for you and your close ones personally, or at the bookstore of your choice.

I have been given a hard deadline of November 1 for the delivery of the fully updated and revised manuscript, so I have to make my plans quickly. I'll have to buy my air tickets soon for a journey in late September.

If you are able to donate, to let me know as soon as possible, and kindly make your donation by or before September 15.

I hope you'll seriously consider supporting this heartfelt project, as I simply will not be able to do this without community support.

We're hosting a virtual event on facebook.  Please visit it, make comments, and invite your friends.  https://www.facebook.com/events/119495475169470/?active_tab=posts

Fondly yours,
Andy Couturier

Climate change and A Different Kind of Luxury

Keep Wanting More

Think about it: 7 billion plus people on the planet.  Each with a yearning to fulfill basic needs: food, shelter, heat, clean water.  And then we have the indisputable fact that human beings keep wanting more. Every honest person sees this tendency in their own heart.  I just heard about a man who was building a 100 million dollar house because he hates Larry Ellison, a fellow software billionaire, and so he wants to build a bigger house than him.

Train our minds

It's easy to dismiss the rich as clearly insane in such examples.  But the question remains, how do we each, individually train our minds and adjust our behavior so that we can be satisfied, even deeply satisfied, with less?  Not a little bit less, because, you know, 7 billion people.  A lot less.

No more elephants? 

That's what the people in this book can teach us, if we take the time to listen, listen deeply to their words. And perhaps the beauty of their lives can provide the much needed, incentive to actually make the changes we must if we have any chance of not loosing all the elephants, or living in a war-torn world.  That's very very serious.  So we really need to change.  And lots of us, and soon.

Now, sitting with me, Akira Ito lets out just a little bit of his disappointment. “For the sake of money, and for the sake of ‘economic activity,’ people try to change things, products, works of art—everything—as quickly as possible. To win at competition, everyone tries to do this.  

"Even though it is the nature of the universe to change, the ‘change’ originated by human activity is too violent. Floods of cars and airplanes, the acceleration of transportation, mass movement of merchandise, the forced cultivation of vegetables in all seasons, excessive lighting and air conditioning, and limitless information: the change is much too intense. The human body and spirit cannot withstand this kind of acceleration. This is what I hate the most. 

“For the sake of this changing, the world is being ruined. And it is based in greed. I don’t want to get involved in it. It’s better to be poor.” 

Now when he says "It's better to be poor," what he means is just living a very very simple life.  Not traveling very much.  Using motors less.  Finding fulfillment inside.  The training of the spirit.

Simply using less

Is that the answer to catastrophic climate change?  If everyone did that, starting with you and with me, we could allow the people of Bangladesh to get what they need, their own "enough" and still keep a beautiful planet.  We need international agreements, scientific help, more efficient ways to provide for people, but the hardest part is simply using less.

Last weekend, I took up Ito's suggestion, to learn Chinese style brush painting.  Beside the price of the pen, it cost me nothing. And it was deeply satisfying.  No carbon footprint.

Beautiful Images from A Different Kind of Luxury

I have always loved the beauty of these people's lives. 

This is often reflected in the external beauty of their artwork

or the places they live. But it all derives, I think

from the cultivation of self and the values they embrace.

Which you can get by reading their words.

A Year Since the Death of Gufu Watanabe

This has been hard to write, so I am finally able to tell you all that Gufu is gone.  He was a fine human being and he deeply affected my life.  I will post some memories over the next few months.  My partner Cynthia Kingsbury just offered this one to me as we looked at photos sent to us from Japan of his "o-wakere-kai" : a gathering of people to (honor) the separation.  "Farewell gathering might be a less literal translation.

Cynthia said, "I remember sitting upstairs with him and his sculpture of Jonah and the Whale.  He was explaining it to us."  Andy: "Do you remember what he said?" Cynthia: "Not exactly, but it was weird."   We both laughed.  Gufu's love for the odd was tremendous.

Black clay sculpture of Jonah and the whale.  

Both the top and the little statuette of Jonah are removable.

Gufu passed away last year around April 15 of lymphatic cancer.  I had known of it for several years before he passed, and was able to visit him in October of 2013.  He was still gardening, and I brought home some seeds.  This spring I am launching a large garden, and in it I will plant some odd, strange and peculiar plants, in memory of Gufu.  

Cynthia also said, "I loved being in the room with you Andy when you were interviewing him.  You brought out so much of what he thought."

Atsuko, his wife, said to me after he died, "You were a rikaishi for him." I asked her what that meant.  She said, "You were one of the few people who really understood him."  

If you would like, please read the chapter about him, Chapter 8, in the next few weeks.  Even better if you want to read parts aloud to a friend.  

Those of you who got to meet him, please send me any memories, and I will put them on this blog.  If you did not meet him, but were moved by anything in the chapter, feel free to email me with those at andy@theopening.org.

And then, be sure to live your own "different kind of luxury" and pass it along to the next generation.  

More soon.  

Andy

"It's all Buddha" Zen Abbot Takaoka on Death

A short talk with Abbot Shucho Takaoka on his work during funerals.  I had just seen the movie Departures, which I recommend very strongly, and it deals with this topic.  I asked him about it.  

(Takaoka was mentioned in many chapter of A Different Kind of Luxury.  He inspired many of the people in the book. Please read about him in the book to find out more.) 

Shucho Takaoka, Abbot of Tokurinji Zen Temple

"Everyone thinks of the dead body as dirty, a disgusting thing.  They don’t want to touch it.  But in the case of a loved one, the dead body is also the body of the person they were very close to.  So that creates a psychological distance or imbalance.  And people have the need to “circulate” those feelings.  In Japan, we have a word, hotoke for the people who have died, and it means that they have become a Buddha.

As Buddhist priests conducting a funeral, it’s our job to bring the people from one place to another.  There’s a business of decorating the body, making it pretty, and that may be part of the same impulse, to bridge the distance, and to help people move from the feeling of “dirty” to “clean”.

But we know that every single person dies—there is no one who doesn't die. You will absolutely and without fail die.   But usually it’s not from fully alive to utterly dead in an instant though.  Things in the body break down bit by bit, in small steps.

From my point of view,  I want to show people that it is all hotoke.  Living, dying, and dead.  It’s all Buddha. 

This drawing is by Hideo Ito of Akira Ito,
who passed away some years ago.

 

Film screening of Masanori Oe's movies in Santa Cruz, Sat Mar 8, 7PM

I will be offering a free film screening of a few short experimental movies made in 1967 and 1968 by Masanori Oe, who I profiled in Chapter 11 of  A Different Kind of Luxury.  The screening will be at 7 PM at my writing studio in Santa Cruz CA, at 147 SOUTH River Street, above Mobo Sushi, by the Trader Joe's parking lot.  It's upstairs in room 203, and the entry code to the outside door is 0497* (that's STAR at the end), you may have to try it twice. 

The studio is relatively small so most people may have to sit on the floor, although we do have some chairs. PLEASE RSVP so I know you are coming. andy@theopening.org  Please bring your own popcorn or snacks if you want them, or just come as you are. 

Screen Shot from The Great Society

Screen Shot from Head Games

I describe these films in the book but have never shown them in public before.  You can read a description of the movies below, but they are intense, beautiful, powerful and in the original sense of the term "psyche-delic", "to open the soul".  This is a rare opportunity, and I'm not sure if I will do it more than once.  

The films are "Head Games" about the Great Be In in Central Park in the spring of 1967, "No Game" about the protest at the Pentagon in 1968, and "Great Society" a true masterpiece looking back at the entire sixties, DURING the sixties--no after filter-- projected on six simultaneous screens, with a wrenching musical score.  These are intense movies of intense times.  After the movies, we can talk, and if time permits, I will show some slides about Mr. Oe's life today in the mountains of Japan. 

Here are some quotes from the book, the first by Marvin Fishman, who was Masanori's filmmaking partner.

EXCERPT FROM A DIFFERENT KIND OF LUXURY
(Do you have a copy of the book yet?  Please buy it so that it remains in print)

“We filmed the Great Be In in Central Park in the spring of that 1967. We titled the film Head Games to indicate that even though the event had the idea of protest of the Vietnam war to it, this kind of thing, a Be In, was not the answer to the war. Everyone was in costume.

"By the time we went on to film the protest at the Pentagon in October of 1968, things had changed a lot. You could see how much the focus changed in the difference between the films. We called that No Game, to say that this was not a game anymore: this was violent. It went on to became a major film. The demonstration was a mind-shattering experience for all of us.

“The film shows how a nonviolent demonstration became violent. The question was how do you take care of each other, and how do you film violence and not get hurt.

There had been a change in the mood of the country. I don’t know what we expected, but the police became less tolerant; there was a lot of talk of ‘lawlessness’ and here we were invading the Pentagon, the center of U.S. military might. They brought in a lot of U.S. Marshals: you’ve seen those images—redneck thugs with pot bellies, crew cuts, and truncheons.

“That movie we made was a real shocker. We were trying to make a statement that this government was becoming repressive of free speech, and we were trying to make it in as stark and shocking a manner as possible. The black and white gave us a grainy look, and then we made it more high contrast. We wanted to say, “Here is your government.”

Marvin Fishman and Masanori Oe filmakers in the 1960s

[LATER IN THE CHAPTER, MY VOICE]

Masanori now sets up the screen and projector, turns down the lights, and then all of a sudden I’m plunged back into another world. Even though I’m in this mud-walled house in the mountains of Japan, I am able to witness the immediate and vibrant, chaotic ’60s counterculture world in full blossom, “as is.”

People parade with signs and painted faces, dispersed on the streets of a late-winter New York, some perhaps high, or angry, or just playing guitar on the grass. It’s a slow-motion movement of carnivalesque faces with soap bubbles floating in the air in the war-torn fever dream of the Us-versus-Them, red-scare, Gulf-of-Tonkin, daily-body-count sixties. These are more than documentaries, though. They are art. It’s a controlled kind of wild: the hand-held camera shots at cockamamie angles and the syntax of rebellion inherent in the cuts between police batons and street protest, the voices shouting each other down. Yet neither are they gratuitously shocking, or easy, or pat.

The camera movements don’t startle, but neither do they settle. What’s next? What’s next? Who knows? Flashing lights, throbbing and dreamlike, and absolutely unresolved, like dreams are.  

The lights come up just slightly as Masanori prepares another film, this one entitled “Great Society.” He says that his studio was asked by the national CBS people to 

do a major project, an overview of the entire decade, for the annual CBS network convention in New York, with permission to use footage from the CBS archive. He explains that it was made with six different screens going simultaneously in order to show the many-sided nature of the times.

Now we’re into the fast-cut, jump-at-you images, one after the other. The screen splits into six, strobe lights flashing, soldiers marching, JFK shot, Oswald shot, miniskirts, Vietnamese POWs, space walks, napalm-burnt children, fighter jets dropping bombs, the American flag, LBJ driving home a point forcefully at a lectern. Too much is happening at once for the mind to perceive. The soundtrack is riveting and disturbing: heart beats, guitar distortion, gurus chanting, a woman screaming as someone is shot, a koto twanging as a mushroom cloud fills the sky.

The images jumping from race riots to liquid light shows to atomic blasts are all in present tense here, not an artifact, or shorthand for “the sixties” digested by some future generation. The images are contemporary, and are rendered as such by the hallucinatory film grammar, prompting again the dilation of the psyche.

When the lights come back on, I am transformed. Only sixteen minutes. The film is a masterpiece, and everyone in the room knows it. None of us can speak. He’s captured the overlapping movements: a new spiritual consciousness not separate from the very political, antiwar immediacy of the moment.

Masanori says that CBS refused to show it again, and there were threats from affiliates to drop out of the network if this was the kind of thing that CBS wanted to spend their money on. He explains the idea of having six different screens was to show how everything was happening all at the same time. “The overwhelm and disorientation break down barriers and open people to the possibility of a change, a change in consciousness.”

Talking afterwards together, drinking tea, Masanori says, “Today people think the word ‘psychedelic’ means just taking drugs, but the main meaning is from the Latin roots of the words, psyche-delos ‘to open the soul.’ So if the method for doing this was drugs, that was OK, but it also included yoga, meditation, and the exploration of thought itself.”