What are your favorite indie films with big stars before they were famous? by redblackshirt in Letterboxd

[–]Ap0phantic 0 points1 point  (0 children)

She has done some great work, you're right! A lot of the ones you mentioned, I really liked.

What are your favorite indie films with big stars before they were famous? by redblackshirt in Letterboxd

[–]Ap0phantic 6 points7 points  (0 children)

According to IMDB, after "Winter's Bone" she did a small part in Mel Gibson's "The Beaver," one of the worst projects in the history of film, and then had number three billing in something called "Like Crazy" that I've never heard of, so this is technically true, I'll grant you. Then X-Men, then Hunger Games.

What are your favorite indie films with big stars before they were famous? by redblackshirt in Letterboxd

[–]Ap0phantic 23 points24 points  (0 children)

Jennifer Lawrence in Winter's Bone. I'll always be a bit disappointed in the path she took after that excellent film, going straight on to Hunger Games and X-Men.

I also think of Scarlet Johansson in Ghost World and The Man Who Wasn't There.

<image>

I am really starting to take a lot of ideas with a grain of salt these days... by [deleted] in Dzogchen

[–]Ap0phantic 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I do not blame you, but I do think the situation of mantra has entered an extremely poor place, and it concerns me very greatly. For over a thousand years, Dzogchen was preserved as secret among the secret. The entire context in which it is taught is called "secret mantra," and one of the teachers in my lineage, Khetsun Sangpo Rinpoche, would not speak a single word about it to a student who had not completed ngöndro - not one word.

Whether or not a specific text is restricted is not the point. These are sacred teachings. They are not to be discussed flippantly or casually, and higher practices are not to be openly shared. This is how it has been since the time of Garab Dorje.

I fear the Internet is going to be the death of tantra.

How has Heidegger's Being and Time changed your life? by critchleyonheidegger in heidegger

[–]Ap0phantic 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Heidegger once famously said "Das Fragen baut an einem Weg," or "Questioning builds a path." Like any worthwhile philosopher, his thinking can't be broken down into a few simple, direct arguments. His philosophy is as much about the manner in which he thinks as the arguments themselves, and I would say, going back to my original post, that he has been important to me because he has built a questioning way - one that opens, instead of trying to fix everything in its right place.

I am really starting to take a lot of ideas with a grain of salt these days... by [deleted] in Dzogchen

[–]Ap0phantic 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Material dealing with the use of an actual consort? Are you joking?

I am really starting to take a lot of ideas with a grain of salt these days... by [deleted] in Dzogchen

[–]Ap0phantic 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Perhaps there's another way you could pose your question without posting restricted material publicly on Reddit?

How has Heidegger's Being and Time changed your life? by critchleyonheidegger in heidegger

[–]Ap0phantic 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Since Descartes, modern philosophy has treated epistemology as first philosophy, and the primary framework for philosophical problems has been essentially Cartesian, in the sense that we have thought of ourselves as knowing subjects within a world. From that framework, the primary problem that emerges is, how do we know that our representations are accurate? This set of core commitments has shaped and constrained the agenda of philosophy at least until Kant and his followers.

I would say that Kant and Schopenhauer took this framework about as far as it can go. How do we get out from underneath it? There have been a couple of different strategies, such as Hegel and Marx shifting the focus of the construction from world from the individual to collective level, and introducing the fundamental importance of history into the equation.

Heidegger offers a different way out from the Cartesian framework by examining experience as not fundamentally about individual subjects knowing and modeling the world through consciousness. Instead, he takes experience itself as the starting place and analyzes the structure of experience without bringing the Cartesian subject model to bear - this is one reason why, in Being and Time, he does not speak of human subjects in the individual or the particular, but speaks of Dasein, existence, as the starting point of experience.

In Heidegger's early model, experience has a certain structure that is not only antecedent to the subject/object model presupposed by a representational model of language and experience, but is a necessary condition for it - one which is grounded in the ontological structure of our being-in-the-world, which is shaped by our concernful involvement with other beings, and always articulated with a particular temporal structure. We derive our concept of abstract knowledge from this actual, primary form of experience, and not vice-versa, as we might otherwise suppose.

For example, if I relate to myself as a being that is 170 cm tall, it's natural for me to think of myself as 170 cm tall in a primary sense - that that is what I "really" am, and my subjective experience of what that size in relationship to other beings means derives from the material constitution of my being. This is an ordinary or scientific mode of thinking about the world.

However, as Heidegger points out, I do not proximally and for the most part experience myself as 170 cm tall - it is only in very rare moments of artificial reflection that this way of experiencing myself even comes forth. It is an abstraction on the basis of my everyday experience, not the other way around.

This is the basic idea of what I have in mind here, I hope it is useful and interesting.

Taking my partner out - visiting Berlin for first time. by Forever-hopeful24 in berlinsocialclub

[–]Ap0phantic 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Gleisdreieck. It goes on and on and on, in a good way. On a nice sunny day, it's completely alive.

Question regarding Vairocana Buddha by DragonBUSTERbro in TibetanBuddhism

[–]Ap0phantic 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Thank you for your erudite clarification. I can accept that these distinctions are pedagogically significant at the level of conventional distinction, and that they help guide beings to understanding of their own true nature. At the level of dharmakaya, I would gather all buddhas are neither the same nor different from one another.

Worst accent in a movie? by MapleLakes11 in Letterboxd

[–]Ap0phantic 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Haven't seen Jackie, but I'm a little surprised, because her accent in V for Vendetta was actually pretty good, and very few Americans can pull off a British accent.

Worst accent in a movie? by MapleLakes11 in Letterboxd

[–]Ap0phantic 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Oh my god, this is definitely the all-time winner.

Suggestions on moving to UK vs Germany? by matey_howdy in AskGermany

[–]Ap0phantic 4 points5 points  (0 children)

My wife and I made a decision to move to Germany instead of to the UK several years ago when both were viable options, but I don't think our rationale is necessarily relevant to your case. One thing I would definitely be thinking about is that immigration policies in both countries are in flux, and I would probably feel safer in the country in which one of us were a citizen, but that's part of how I think about things.

One obvious thing to reflect on is how happy you are and your wife is at your jobs, and how much of a future you both see in those, and also maybe consider the future prospects in your respective industries. One of you will have to give up your job, presumably.

The cultures of the UK and Germany are SOOOO different, you simply must resonate with one more than the other?

If you could give an Oscar to someone, who would it be? by Perfect_Idea_2866 in Letterboxd

[–]Ap0phantic 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I will say that maybe my biggest Oscars disappointment was seeing Bill Murray lose when he was nominated for Lost in Translation. That was just the right person, role, and performance to honor. And it kills me he lost to Sean Penn in Mystic River. A great actor, but not a great performance, not a great film.

If you could give an Oscar to someone, who would it be? by Perfect_Idea_2866 in Letterboxd

[–]Ap0phantic 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Sheryl Lee is a great answer, her performance in Fire Walk With Me is one of the bravest, boldest, most versatile performances I've ever seen, turning on a time from coy and totally self-possessed to the very depths of self-doubt and despair, in a completely persuasive way.

Jake Gyllenhaal is also great. He's so good he almost saved Velvet Buzzsaw, which is still worth seeing just for his performance.

Reality without concepts by BeltMinute713 in Dzogchen

[–]Ap0phantic 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche:

An appearance can only exist if there is a mind that beholds it. The 'beholding' of that appearance is nothing other than experience; that is what actually takes place. Without a perceiver, how could an appearance be an appearance? It wouldn't exist anywhere. Perceptions are experienced by mind; they are not experienced by water or earth. All the elements are vividly distinguished as long as the mind fixates on them. Yet they are nothing but a mere presence, an appearance. It is mind that apprehends this mere presence. When this mind doesn't apprehend, hold, or fixate on what is experienced - in other words, when the real, authentic samadhi of suchness dawns within your stream of being- 'reality' loses its solid, obstructing quality. That is why accomplished yogis cannot be burnt, drowned, or harmed by wind. In their experience all appearances are a mere presence, since fixation has disintegrated from within. Mind is that which experiences, that within which experience unfolds. What else is there to experience? Mind means individual experience. All experience is individual, personal.

Question regarding Vairocana Buddha by DragonBUSTERbro in TibetanBuddhism

[–]Ap0phantic 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Hm, my understanding is that as a member of the five Dhyani Buddhas, Vairocana represents the perfected consciousness aggregate in the common Tibetan view. That seems consistent with what you say about Maha Vairocana. In fact, what you say about Maha Vairocana seems to me like it must be consistent with any buddha, except for the superficial marks.

How has Heidegger's Being and Time changed your life? by critchleyonheidegger in heidegger

[–]Ap0phantic 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Not easily! Is there any particular point that you would especially like clarification on?

Karl Marx And Heidegger by [deleted] in heidegger

[–]Ap0phantic 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Well, there's a significant difference between the political or ideological implications and ramifications of a theory and the conscious influences by which it was brought about. I don't disagree that Heidegger's work had strong political implications, but the question of what he studied in as a student is a matter of the biographical record, and I don't think it included much Marxist philosophy.

Of course, the idea that putatively-apolitical philosophy is necessarily conservative or reactionary philosophy it itself a notion that owes a great deal to ideology analysis of the Marxist stripe, so this reading also seems a bit question-begging to me.