RE: Moving between absolute thrills and deadly boredom - sounds familiar? Then you might need a little exercise in finding middle ground - a nice resolution for 2018.
The Buddhist "middle path" is actually just a letting go of dichotomies or duality. It's not a mix but a path that slice through the heads and tails of the coin from the 3rd dimension. It's not a grey but moving into Blue&Orange from Black&White.
You see, you hear, you feel, you perceive and you stop there. Without pre-set labels or actions can live in freedom.
Cleverness does not always lead to gain nor stupidity to poverty.
---- Vidura (The Book of the Effort)-Mahabharata
Courage isn't just a second order concept but also something that isn't even necessary. One who 'forgets cowardice and daring nature will achieve what Courage is supposed to achieve without being courageous. What is required is the wisdom and insight to understand actions and consequences and the right action will naturally arise.
A balance IMO is merely a poor imitation of this.
PS: You may also find this conversation interesting. It does require little bit if pre-existing knowledge. You could use it as a bunch of new year anime recommendations.
What you suggest is from my point of view and the world I live in very difficult to achieve. Though I find it highly useful as an ideal resp. a must count into consideration.
I perceive my environment as highly matter oriented. We became builders & architects first in the material world and now extend that also into the computer matrix with which we want to be connected. If we were without pre-labeling we probably wouldn't have developed language. Language is for me one of the factors which pushes us humans in the direction of matter. We identify with language and because words became manifestations and appear as if they are true, I see no way out of labeling and naming "actions and things" other than to drop spoken language and find another form of communication.
The steps to gain wisdom are different from person to person. You may have made already the steps somewhere in your life, others need rational methods first to understand causes and conditions and consequences.
Of course you are right: When a situation happens in which one shows courage it is not necessarily a well thought out action but arising naturally from previously gained wisdom.
Do you have an example on that?
edit: the conversation you pointed to I tried to understand but I am having not the slightest clue what you guys are talking about. It is as if you are highly specialized mechanics talking about a very unique mechanism which was only built two times ever and with certain parts ... I am not at all in the whole anime business and therefore it also could be another language - it becomes blurry while reading. Sorry, but I guess I won't catch up on that.
It's said humans evolved out of apes and there really aren't many genetic differences between us and a tribe living in the middle of Amazon. Going that extra mile is the source of greatness. If somethings is hard, that's more reason to engage in it. All the mundane features of our modern lives were deemed impossible some time ago. Online communities was a contemptible pipe dream in the mid 90s.
I suggest you take a look at the anime mentioned in that conversation. I don't know how much time you have for those things.Fate/stay night is a little boring but it's considered the best place to start the franchise (Think Star Wars ep IV)
You could also watch Aldnoah.Zero but the most relevant to the discussion would be Psycho-Pass and Monster. Puella Magi Madoka Magica would be excellent place to start as it is the writer's best work and it's just 3 movies.
As for examples on spontanious actions:
http://www.cracked.com/article_17019_5-real-life-soldiers-who-make-rambo-look-like-pussy.html
http://www.cracked.com/article_19585_6-real-acts-self-defense-too-awesome-action-movie.html
http://www.cracked.com/article_20252_6-insane-true-stories-more-badass-than-any-action-movie.html?wa_user1=4&wa_user2=Weird+World&wa_user3=article&wa_user4=companion
Hopefully you'd find the links helpful :-)
Help! :-)))
man, you give me a lot homework here. I just saw IP man yesterday. It was the one with the old guy arriving in Honkong who fought for the little ones - it was the most quiet version as my man said. There are four more IP mans. I found it really sad to watch. But funny the scene in the end where "Bruce Lee" entered the movie and they showed that Mr. Ipman was filmed by his son - which was an authentic film.
It was impressive how the two masters from different martial arts were "discussing" disagreements and how polite everyone was. That was indeed artful. That impressed me the most on this character: that he was humane in the way that he felt grief for the loss of his wife, cared for Mrs. "North" and all others, got some things wrong and still could be seen as a master.
I do not promise though to watch all your recommendations;-)
I watched the Donnie Yen trilogy and another one called The Grandmaster. IP Man needs a good martial artist to bring the character to the screen. Only the Donnie Yen movies impressed me. They are going to film the 4th one this year.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ip_Man_(film_series)
If you want more good martial art movies like that try SPL: Sha Po Lang and he sequels. The 3rd act of the 2nd movie was some of the best tension and storytelling I've seen in my entire life. Third movie called Paradox is still not out on Netflix but I'm sure it'll be just as good.
But for the best of action cinema you need to see this:
I watched the videos in your above comment.
Causing a lot of emotions, in particular the first two ones. The suicide experiment made me cry.
For the 10 soldiers and their kills: hm. I would not celebrate that. Every kill left relatives like brothers, parents, wives, children. I know this relates to the ones, who were named "evil" and to prevent even more killings from their sides. But I cannot see anything good in praising killings in any way. Well, that is a topic very difficult to talk about. It shouldn't. One can only live the way it seems to be right, once confronted with war and danger of this kind.
Let's face it: the "evil" is always in challenge with the "good" and as far as I am concerned this will continue as long as "man" walks the earth.
P.S. I assume that you would have liked to transport the message behind it: like the bravery it took to act in the described way. As I am not able to look into the intentions of the killings, I cannot judge.
Any aggression is wrong and impure. Some are just less wrong than others. If Operation Valkyrie had succeed, it would have saved millions of lives even though the operation itself involved murder.
I have heard a story by a Buddhist monk, that in history of Buddhism there was one guy who actually is heard of having killed an emperor. The emperor was about to kill all the religious people in his kingdom and did on a great scale. The one guy was struggling deeply with himself in order to decide of making an end to the killings and therefore being reborn as something less or to stay passive. He decided for action and killed the emperor with an arrow shot from a mountain. The legend says that in this particular case the killer was reborn into a higher being because if he would have not sacrificed himself in doing evil millions would have died. So I know what you are meaning.
I just think that nowadays killings are difficult to be compared to this one and rarely stories are told where people came to an agreement without any killing whatsoever.
I am just kind of allergic to the heroic stories because we have so many of them. Do you get my point?
Is there ANY women/men talked about giving birth or taking care of a dying in the same heroic way?
This was the second movie type of you recommended to me.
Here is a short list of recommendations.
Flowers of War
Admiral:Roaring currents
Astro Boy
Heroic Age
Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress
Imitation Game
47 Ronnin
Watchmen
Manchurian Candidate
13 Assassins
Rurouni Kenshin trilogy
Oblivion
300
https://steemit.com/blog/@vimukthi/stalingrad-2013-a-purely-unbiased-movie-about-the-greatest-battle-of-wwii-from-the-biggest-victims-of-the-battle
AND the sequence that define Spider-Man for me.