I caught a movie on cable the other night called Kiss The Sky, which was very Buddhist. Anyone seen it? Basically about two guys going through mid-life crisis - searching for something - who head for a tropical paradise in the Philippines and get involved in a love-triangle with a free-spirited Aussie girl. They try to build a paradise there but a tropical storm washes it all away. Impermanence! At this point, old Terence Stamp enters as the Zen Buddhist monk (he also has a history with the girl) to dispense Buddhist wisdom to everyone. I winced a bit when he bought Johnny Walker for his Japanese Zen Master at the airport Duty Free shop but the scriptwriter certainly knew his Dhamma. It's an actor's movie and features some excellent acting from William Petersen (Grissom in CSI). The female star was in Twin Peaks.

The enduring feeling at the end of the movie is that free-spirited women ruin guys' lives.

or weak willed men make poor decisions...

In the movie they don't really come across as weak-willed. They just feel there is more to life than they already have, but they don't quite know what it is. There's a similar theme in Travellers & Magicians, in that the main character thinks going to America will bring him happiness and he doesn't see that happiness is right in front of him in his home town.

In the movie they don't really come across as weak-willed. They just feel there is more to life than they already have, but they don't quite know what it is. There's a similar theme in Travellers & Magicians, in that the main character thinks going to America will bring him happiness and he doesn't see that happiness is right in front of him in his home town.

I get your point... and we all learn at different rates though I am continually frustrated by men (in these examples) who as you mention, fail to take heed of their immediate circumstance. This is attributed, in my view, to a lack of honesty with regard to confronting themselves... their ideas, their thoughts, motivations, deeds, actions... they remain painfully immature. Painful to watch and quite obviously painful for their hearts. Sometimes they just need a swift kick... otherwise tragedy and disappointment become savage teachers.

Just watched Elegy with Kingsley... same kind of riff... they guy won't get in front of himself and virtually everything he 'believed' in his youth with regard to personal behavior and social relationships tumbled down on him. Again, we learn at different rates but the 'wasted' or misused time works aggressively against us until we decide to (willfully) mature.

Peace.

I get your point... and we all learn at different rates though I am continually frustrated by men (in these examples) who as you mention, fail to take heed of their immediate circumstance. This is attributed, in my view, to a lack of honesty with regard to confronting themselves... their ideas, their thoughts, motivations, deeds, actions... they remain painfully immature.

Yes, in this case it's incredibly immature to think that three-way sex (the girl loves one guy and the other guy loves her, but she has sex with both) in a remote place in the Third World is going to solve any existential problems for them.

My favourite quote from the movie was the monk saying, "God isn't out there playing hide and seek."

Everyone matures at a different rate. Sometimes what we take for 'will' is merely ego.

At any rate, these are fictional characters, whose immature search creates the core entertainment for us. No one would want to watch a film about two mature guys who do everything right