Occasionally, Gudetama will use very Buddhist themes (in posted Cartoons on Youtube), and it’s always humorous, if you can appreciate the Japanese sense of humour…
Does this remind you of any religion you know?
Well, good friends are an important external condition. Perhaps now she can leave Vegas and go to a monastery!
NOTE FROM THE CARTOONIST:
Throughout my improbably-long career, I’ve enjoyed doing cartoons that take more than a glance to understand. We’ve discussed the brain’s “default mode network” (DMN) here on this blog before but as a quick refresher, it’s the part of your brain that glances at things and tells you what they are so you don’t have to identify every object, sound, or sensation every second of your waking life. But sometimes—much more often than we realize—it gets it wrong and convinces you of things that aren’t true. For example, you may wander through your living room on your way to the kitchen and see your spouse sitting in front of the TV out of the corner of your eye. Once in the kitchen, you look out the window and see your spouse in the yard. You return to the living room and find that it was a pile of clothes to be donated to the Salvation Army that you mistook for your spouse. (Yes, the pile of clothes you no longer have use for may be an apt metaphor for your spouse, but that’s not your DMN’s fault.)
In the dog cartoon above, many people’s DMN will tell them the sign says “Beware of Dog,” because that’s what it is used to seeing in this context. But in this case, it is not saying that, and that’s the joke. In that sense, this cartoon is about being fully aware, not just our usual partial awareness where we’re actually assuming most of what we perceive.
This reminds me of the ‘disappointment license’ I received from Ajahn Brahm at one of his New Year parties.
Sorry Bhante @sujato, only jokes. But after reading A Swift Pair of Messengers I couldn’t help but put you in a meme
(Also, this is in no way whatsoever a claim to any sort of attainment!)
Hehe. Welcome to the Forum @wodrow.