The Dharma Force

The Wisdom of Western Movies

This entry is dedicated to iconoclast37 .
Lisa, may the feeble words here dry your eyes!

Have you ever watched western movies and pounded the deeper meanings inside.

I'm not walking about how a six-shooter can shoot out 10 bullets, and keep on firing. Or if you saw a dynamite was threw in your house, and the fuse was still 6 inches long, why do you run out of the house instead of pick up the stick and pull out the fuse.

Well, OK, if I saw a lit dynamite stick, I will run as fast as I can, instead of investigating the length of the fuse. I will give them that one.

I am actually talking about the famous comments in "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly"

"If you want to shoot, shoot! Don't talk!"
Do you guys remember that one?

There is another dialogue in another movie. I can't remember the name of the movie, the names of the characters, but Henry Fonda was in it.

The main character was trying to say a fable,
"A baby bird fell out of the nest, into the snow. It was cold and scared. A cow came by, sniffed at the bird, and dropped a big cow pie on top of it. The bird struggled to the surface, and chirped at the top of its voice. Then a wolf came by, picked it up, dusted off all the stuff.... Then it gulfed down the little bird."

So the guy who dumped a cow pie on you may be trying to help you, while the guy pulled you out of a mess may not be your friend....

Wow! Deep! Interesting! But totally useless to cheer up Lisa!

So, OK, forget about Western movies. That was not helping!

How about a Chinese Fable.
A wise wealthy old desert man had a herd of horses. One day, the only stallion in the herd ran off into the wild. All of the old man's friends came over to offer their condolences to the old man. The old man simply said, "How do you know it is not a good thing?"
A few months had passed, one day, the stallion returned with a big herd of the wild horses. All of a sudden, the man's fortune doubled. His friends came over again to congradulate him. The old man said, "How do you know it is not a bad thing?"
Then one day, his only son tried to tame one of the wild horses. He fell off and broke his leg. He was lame.
The old man's friends returned again to console him, and guess what? The old man said, "How do you know it is not a good thing?"
At that point, all of his friends thought he was senile.
And then a year later, the lord of the land want to go to war with his neighbor, and he demanded all the able-bodied men of his land to join his army.
But since the old man is senile and his son was lame, they escaped the draft, and henced saved themselves from the later massacre at the battle.

The deeper meaning of the story, (besides telling you how to dodge a draft), was that life is circular. What goes around, comes around in a whole new twist. What you thought was a disaster, a tragedy was maybe a blessing in disguise.
Just depending on the way you look at it.