East-West Madness

Happy Halloween, or Day of the Dead!

Finished watching Zorba the Greek, to trace the quote from the title of Jon Kabat-Zinn's book Full Catastrophe Living. The line comes early on in the movie when the Englishman played by Alan Bates asks Zorba if he ever married, and Zorba says is he not a man? Is he not stupid? He had a wife, kids... the full catastrophe. Kabat-Zinn's book is about using Eastern meditation practices to help American chronic pain patients. On a smaller scale, perhaps, this is played out in the movie - at the end Zorba tells the Englishman that all he needs to enjoy life is a little madness. I was just reading in a history of Modern Yoga how one of the Hindu leaders, maybe Vivekenanda, said exactly the same thing about the West. Funny that in both cases the madness is claimed by an Eastern source, and yet Greece was the cradle of Western civilization. At the same time, in Kazantzakis' original novel, instead of an Englishman the 'boss' character is a Greek intellectual writing a book about Buddha. It's as though the roles are set out, but they're playing musical chairs.

The message of the movie is strangely clear. You try to put stuff up, it crashes down, and then you dance on the sand. You need to learn that lesson, my friend. But I'm not sure if I want to be there to teach you. I feel like I'm chomping at the bit. Why the hell are we so needy? I need a break. This is too hard.

At least it's still raining. That makes it easier to rest my knee.