Question: If farmed animals are not bred in farms and wild animals are not caged in zoos, will they be roaming about on Earth? If farmed animals are bred with much humanity, say almost equivalent to rearing pets, will it be deemed fit to eat them eventually? Answer: The truth is that wild animals have been [...]

Warning: This is a proper vampire movie, where vampires adhere to the classic rules. E.g. they do not glitter with fairy dust in the sun without bursting into flames during non-twilight hours! (To avoid confusion in monster lore, Twilight’s ‘vampires’ shouldn’t be called so in the first place!) What if the situation is in reverse? [...]

DHARMA@CINEMA: School Days with a Pig (Strictly by registration only) A movie screening and sharing by Shen Shi’an Based on a controversial true story that swept across Japan, a rookie primary school teacher suggests his students to raise a pig before eating him, so as to learn ‘the real connection between life and food.’ The [...]

< Movie poster for Singapore The award-winning movie ‘School Days with a Pig’ tells of a teacher’s special project for his class of grade 6 students to learn more deeply about the connection between life and food – by raising a piglet together, before eventually eating it. This premise is actually rather disturbing (though there [...]

Retelling of a Tibetan folk story: Brother One has 99 horses. Brother Two has 1 horse. None feel they have enough. Brother Two thinks: If only my brother would give me 1 horse, my horse would have company! Brother One thinks: If only my brother would give me 1 horse, my horses would number 100! [...]

Understanding ‘Underworld’ Underdogs http://buddhistchannel.tv/index.php?id=12,7765,0,0,1,0 ‘Underworld: Rise of the Lycans’ is the instalment of the trilogy that explains how the lycans (werewolves) were enslaved by the vampires in the first place, and how the the first came to rebel against the latter, thereafter becoming enemies. Psyche-wise, the vampires resemble asuras who are power-hungry while the lycans [...]

The Ponyo Paradox of Change & Acceptance (Review of ‘Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea’) http://buddhistchannel.tv/index.php?id=12,7664,0,0,1,0 The Japanese animation feature ‘Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea’ is a creative ‘retelling’ of ‘The Little Mermaid’ minus the tragedy of loss. It is largely an uplifting story on the universal themes of love, sacrifice, acceptance [...]

The below email dialogue with a fellow reader is about the ethics of neutering cats to prevent the multiplication of strays, which might lead to their culling by animal control authorities. She is for the neutering of cats, but was posed some tricky questions by other Buddhists. (She keeps two vegan cats, one a stray [...]