Little Bird by Dickson Schneider

This is a video that my art professor in college made years before I took any of his classes and I stumbled upon it one day and I really liked it. About a year after I saw this video, I told my professor Dickson that I was in love with this video of his. I remember him saying that he was angry at something or was having a conversation with someone over dinner and they ended up talking about this subject of life and he felt like he needed to record bits of it.

So here it is, the little bird complaining to a cat.





I think I really liked this video when I first saw it because of the seriousness of the content that was being talked about placed in this very comical setting, a bird complaining to a cat. I think life can be full of meaning and at the same time like the little bird says, "it's meaningless".

Back in August when I went on a Buddhist retreat in Vancouver I learned that yes, life is full of suffering, suffering is everywhere and in everyone. But at the same time, you can't have suffering without joy because theres always another side to something. This idea that we must get rid of suffering completely, which is something I think everyone would want but it's as I learned you can't have one without the other. One analogy that I really liked from one of the talks was, if you cut a rope to try to get rid of the left, the left is still there, you cut it again, and it's a new left, no matter how much you try to get rid of the left it will still be there. There is no right without a left just like there is no son without a father, there is no rain without the cloud.

So it isn't necessarily an idea of how to get rid of suffering, but how to recognize it and embrace it so we can let joy in. I love this video and I loved that retreat because it gave me a chance to learn more about this complicated life and it gave me better tools to lessen this suffering and lessen the suffering of others around me.