Modern images for Buddhism

The image of Hope Harlingen throwing up, squirting poop out her butt, and then getting together with a guy with the sluices open like that, of course all while on drugs, using drugs, and then getting involved with a man also in the stall in a gross bathroom. She describes it in the 2014 movie Inherent Vice, it's gestured at in the book. Really imagine the dirty stall, the poop and vomit being ignored. 

It reminds me of Parasite (2019) when the girl is high up on the toilet, while shit water squirts out because of the flooding in her neighborhood, enjoying a cigarette. 

That reminds me of a Zen Flesh, Zen Bones image. A man is chased by an elephant and falls off a cliff, but catches a vine. Stomping elephants above him, tigers down below, a mouse gnawing on the vine, and he jostles a beehive, and the bees are stinging him, but a little drop of honey falls into his mouth. 

From the Lotus Sutra, the house is on fire, and the children are playing. It's hard to get them to leave the house. So the king suggests there are even better toys outside. The children eventually come outside and the toys aren't what they thought they would be but they are somehow good enough. 

The path is difficult, you don't just have to pretend you believe in something, like in Christianity, to be saved. Pure Land Buddhism tries this angle, the hope that if you really want to be born into a pure land you can be reborn there, and then you can go for enlightenment in that pureland where the circumstances are better. Nice literature, but I wouldn't put any eggs in that basket. Metaphorically speaking, I'm vegan, so no real eggs. Go watch a vegan documentary on how animals are treated. There's some torture.