Class in Review: 10.24.11 & 10.26.11

Kung Fu Panda is hands down one of my all time favorite movies, and I was surprised to know that there was a belief in the underlying message. I didn’t even know that in some of our movies there’s a christian undertone to it, maybe it’s because I’m just caught up in the movie itself. Daoism is a tricky concept to follow, but I think there are some religions that have similar concepts on different aspects of it. For example in Christianity there’s the idea that everything happens for a reason, we just don’t know what the exact reason is. In Daoism there’s the idea that there are no accidents. Then fate comes in; was Po destined to be the Dragon Warrior or was did he become the Dragon Warrior because Oogway said he was? Were there certain people that were destined to be great or were they great because they were told they could be great? That is the question I left class with.

I’m a bowler and when I first started, like most people I wasn’t great, but I started to get comfortable on the lane. I stopped getting frustrated at every little thing that went wrong and I just let it go and I made the game simple while a lot of people turn it into a complicated game by thinking about so many variables and what not. After a lot of practice I was able to drastically improve my average, and one of my coaches told me, “You can become a great bowler.” When I moved up here one of the coaches in my league said, “Never give up, you’re too talented to do that. You can be a great bowler.” From there, I thought about professional athletes, and of course there are stand out athletes like Michael Jordan and for me, Troy Polamalu, Hines Ward, James Harrison, Ben Rothlisberger, etc (can you tell who my favorite team is?) were they destined to achieve great feats? I think some of them were destined to become great, Troy Polamalu is one of the best safeties in the NFL because he sees certain plays and watches the other teams in ways that a lot of other safeties can’t. There was a week last season where Troy had to sit out and we lost, so I told my dad that Troy should have an apprentice to take his place if he were to ever have to sit out again, but my dad said, “It would be impossible for anyone to train another safety to play the way Troy plays because Troy just sees things other players don’t and that’s what makes him so vital to the team.” The more I’ve watched them play I understand what my dad says and I think that’s why so many people like Troy, he’s the big game changer. He watches the other team and analyzes them, he tries to figure out who’ll get the ball and where. His athleticism also benefits him because he’s able to quickly go where he’s needed.

Was Troy always destined to be this great? I could ask all these “What if” questions, but a Daoist would say, “There are no such things as accidents. We do not have control of the things that happen and bring us to the point where we stand now. If we want to change than we must change the present in order to affect what will occur in the future.” Or something like that. So maybe the whole destiny thing occurs as we learn about ourselves. I mean what if Po wasn’t so passionate about kung fu? Then he wouldn’t have gone through all the trouble to see the Furious 5, and the Dragon Warrior wouldn’t have been discovered. I wouldn’t religiously follow Daoism because there’s a lot of room for error, and yet those errors can be explained using some aspects of Daoism. I feel like I’m going in circles because when I think about it like that, there are some religions that allow something similar.

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