tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7958681.post-1099015314703396812004-10-28T19:01:00.000-07:002004-10-28T19:01:00.000-07:00been thinking about the whole Fight Club, Last Samurai and violence and yoga thing since you left. today at the end of my yoga class i had a thought that maybe it's not so much "violence as yoga" as it is "yoga <br />in the violence". It's difficult for me to articulate it, but while maybe it's nothing more than semantics, it is something that could explain the samurai and bhuto. meditation, yoga and related disciplines <br />train both mind and body and increases not only control over the body and mental concentration, it allows a person to tolerate (with patience) the suffering and pain that occur in life - and the samurai's way allows them to move through the pain and suffering that comes with that life that they were born into (samurai generally did not "choose" to be samurai. they were born to it, and so must learn to accept it). <br /><br />so yoga is a tool to move through the violence (in a way - as i said, it's very difficult for me to articulate). a way of mastering the destruction inherent in violence and not being destroyed yourself. <br />(sounds a bit theatrical, but it's the best i can do).<br /><br />so in Last Samurai - Cruise's character is learning this way dealing with the violence of the life of a soldier. but in Fight Club, I would say what's happening to Norton's character is more that he is letting go. it's often the first step towards gaining discipline. we place so much stigma on certain things, importance on others, that our view starts to become twisted by those pressures. you have to let go of the <br />guilty and judgmental feelings, towards yourself and others, and sometimes the first thing that happens is that things that have been suppressed because they are "bad" come rushing out. Fight Club would be <br />an extreme example of it. Also there is the aspect of voluntarily "destroying" his repugnant life. Creative destruction. Norton does eventually moves to a space where he no longer feels the need for that violence and becomes able to shed the Tyler Durden persona.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com