A suspended review

Recommended by an athesist friend, it is interesting to find out the film is themed by the gist of Zen.

Religion believes are very often expressed by significance of animals, same to this film. The appearences of fish, frog, snake, cat and turtle are symbolic. In the Sutra, there are several reference to snake. The Taiwanese writer/scholar Li Ao used to quote the assimilation between snake and women written in the Sutra

佛经里对女人殊无好评。《毗奈那杂事》说女人有五种过失（瞋、恨、作恶、无恩、刻毒），像大黑蛇一样

He said that rarely you could find praise for women in the Sutra.. According to毗奈那杂事 ( can’t figure out its original title), women have five sins: anger, hatred, wrong, ungratefulness, acrimony, same to the big black snakes.

But in the same article, Li Ao later put forward that the Sutra has put much praise on sex. It symbolized female sexual organ as the lotus and the ‘Buddha's warrior attendant's throne for the male’s. Both are holy articles in Buddhism. Such assimilation seems to pull down the previous assimilation, by praising the organ of women.

For the case of snake, actually the boa or very big snake is often thought the antetype of the fictional Dragon. In China, snake is still nicked as ‘small dragon’ sometimes. And in another story adapted from Sutra, snake, together with the turtle and fox, is among the grateful animals. It saved its benefactor from prison. I think such reading of snake is quite different from the Bible.

to be continued…(hopefully/ plan to talk about the sin of love and marriage)

: 03 Jan 2005 07:17 |  Tags: Zp Iv Review |  Comments (0) |  Report a problem