Seriously Comical

I found a beautiful conversation about heaven & hell in Paulo Coelho’s Warrior of the Lights. Please read!

Heaven and hell

A violent samurai who was known for picking fights for no reason at all arrived at the door of a Zen monastery and asked to speak to the master.

Without a moment’s hesitation, Ryokan came out to meet him.

“They say that intelligence is more powerful than strength,” said the samurai. “I wonder if you could explain to me the meaning of heaven and hell.”

Riokan remained silent.

“You see?” roared the samurai. “I could explain that very easily: to show what hell is, all I need to do is beat someone up. To show what heaven is, just let a person go free after menacing him a lot.”

“I don’t argue with stupid people like you,” said the Zen master.

This made the samurai’s blood boil. His mind was filled with hatred.

“Now, that is hell,” said Ryokan, smiling. “Letting yourself be angered by silly things.”

The monk’s courage disconcerted the warrior, and he relaxed.

“And that is heaven,” added Ryokan, inviting him in. “Not reacting to silly provocations.”

Yesterday is a history, tomorrow is a mistery. And today is a gift. That’s why it’s called ‘present’

-Oogway, the Kungfu Panda-

Love this movie! I watched this twice. I also found  several morals of the story in this movie:

1. Believe in yourself (There’s no secret recipe and nothing is written on the Dragon Scroll)

2. Trust the other people (How Master  Shifu learned to trust the Panda)

3. Don’t worry too much about future, let go the past, and do something now (the Oogway quote above)

Check out these Youtube beautiful creation!

Whatever You Think, Think The Opposite (Paul Arden) really works here.

And for the second video, it’s all about maximizing our brain and body’s potential.

One day one of my friend asked me, “If you’re stuck in elevator, which would you prefer: Stuck there with one comic in your bag or stuck there with three novels without pictures?”. “One comic book, I guess.”, I answered. “Why?”. I replied, “Well, I don’t know actually why I’d choose a comic book, but one thing I know for sure is I love the way a series of pictures tell me a story than the way words telling me a story.” Then my friend just raised one of his eyebrows and walk away.

Actually, the story above was not an interesting story to tell, but I just want to tell that in my opinion pictures let you ‘create’ the story itself. And, never bored me. Here I give examples of pictures that tell you more from my favourite comic writer, Derek Kirk Kim.

Couples of years ago people worry to leave their house because they worried about some important calls, but today that problem seems never happened. Today some of my friends want to have a long vacation, but they don’t want to leave their bedroom for a long time. I thought that was stupid until I found this.

I put a lot of interest on cartoonist, whether it’s Manga, DC/Marvel, or comic strips. Here I show you drawings from one of my favorite cartoonists, Jen Wang: The Dance of the Flight Attendance.

She made the safety explanation as if it was merely a dance and the stewardess doing it just because it’s a ritual dance before the flight.

And she ended this short comic by elegantly showing this ‘dance’ is universally understandable.