Perfect Days

In gratitude to Wim Wenders

This week I want to tell you about a great new film with a Buddhist theme. It’s called Perfect Days and is by Wim Wenders. I recommend you watch it if you can.

Hirayama is content with his simple life cleaning toilets in Tokyo. Each day he engages in his work with love and care. In fact, he is an epitome of the three ‘D’s’: dignity, discipline and diligence. Outside of his routine he loves music on cassette tapes, books and taking photos of trees. The story is deeply moving and turns into a poetic reflection on the profound acceptance of one’s lot and on finding beauty in the world around us.

The spirit of the movie is Buddhist, quite ‘Zen’ actually: live in the moment, be disciplined, nothing in life is beneath you, little things can make life beautiful. It shows how different things can be when we take responsibility for our situation and don’t get stuck in blame or bitterness; dropping expectations, just getting on with it and finding meaning in whatever presents.

The movie shows how a Buddhist attitude can turn solitude into a viable path in life, bring a sense of dignity to even the humblest job, and help us find happiness in simplicity. In one way we can relate quite readily to the characters and their lives and yet, at the same time, the inner and outer world of Perfect Days feels so far removed from the reality that most of us know.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_Days

Perfect Days by Dominique Side

Dawn is creeping across the sky. A new dawn, I should say; a new day, in fact. A fresh and brand new time that is completely different from yesterday, like morning mushrooms.

No repetition, no habits, and even those things that look like routines are each done with an open mind in the present moment. Every drink of water is new, each turn of the bicycle wheel has never happened before. There is no past or future.

This wondrous world feels as distant to me as Japan. The perfect Buddhist life of mindfulness combined with attention to detail and self-effacement sparkles through every shot and every scene like an immaculate toilet. Yet I know that’s not where I am.

I see something is broken inside as a branch can break off from the tree when it fails to bend in the wind, and falls to the ground disconnected from the root, leaving a space in the sky where there are no leaves for the light to shimmer. Something has broken off and shattered; what, exactly, is difficult to tell but in the life of a branch there is no grounding in reality, no sap in the heart, no joy in the everyday.

My cascading thoughts drown out the birdsong, memories of yesterday go round and round, dragging me away from the delight of today. Heavy mental clouds weigh on my mind so I am mostly looking down like a dog and not up like a bird. When wonder is lost, where does one look to find it again? How does one engage that spiritual alchemy that transmutes dirt in the lavatory into stuff that is pure?

Does cinema have the power to re-connect me and all these people looking up from dark red seats to the true and wondrous root of existence? Or is this movie a jester’s cruel tease pointing to what we are not?

I find no irony here. Amazingly, Wim does connect me with everything.  He guides me to see the world through the lens of an enlightened camera for just long enough that it melts my mental fog and leaves me in a state of peace.