Buddhist Assignment

This video is a commercial that came out a few years ago for Mountain Dew. It begins with a guy who was traveling and sees a Buddhist Temple up in the mountains. He walks up the trail and encounters several Shaolin Buddhists training their ‘hand-slapping techniques’.  He then joins them to improve his skills. After months/maybe years of enduring tiresome and painful training, he reaches a point where is given the ‘ok/nod’ from the sensei. He then opens a can of Mountain Dew to reward himself after all his hard work until his instructor comes into the scene. The ‘American’ places the open mountain dew in on top of palm and faces his sensei. The sensei goes to grab it but is hand slapped before he can touch the can. The American believing that he ‘out slapped’ his sensei soon notices that his instructor drank the mountain dew so fast that he realized at first.    

The first stereotype I noticed was that every one of the Buddhists were ‘training’ to hand slap all night and day as if it was their only priority to reach enlighment. Another thing I noticed about this video was the fact that there was a teacher/sensei teaching everyone to practice their hand slapping abilities. When I going over what Warner said in his book Zen wrapped in Karma Dipped in Chocolate, he mentioned that ‘sensei’ doesn’t necessarily mean teacher or master and can be said to anyone who is respected or well known. He says we ( Westerners) have, “this idea seemed to suggest that the teacher was supposed to be an example of a Christ like spiritual creature…spiritual superman”.  I was unaware of this before it really made me realize how ignorant I was about the meaning of the word itself. Plus he also says that “…Zen practice and philosophy provide the only truly rational and realistic way to live a balanced and happy life”. Which reminds me about a point I made before, I don’t think any kind of Buddhist would ‘train’ (physical martial arts) hoping they will reach enlighment through such acts.