{"id":15534,"date":"2014-12-16T19:50:18","date_gmt":"2014-12-17T00:50:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/?p=15534"},"modified":"2014-12-16T19:51:42","modified_gmt":"2014-12-17T00:51:42","slug":"frozen-as-buddhist-manifesto","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/?p=15534","title":{"rendered":"Frozen<\/i> as Buddhist manifesto"},"content":{"rendered":"

The lyrics to the wildly popular theme song “Let It Go” from the recent Disney film Frozen<\/i> have puzzled many people. What exactly is the song trying to say?<\/p>\n

It occurs to me that one valid way to interpret it is as an avowal of Buddhist tathagatagarbha. Specifically, the song expresses a mindful path to contentment based upon acceptance of what is, rather than on a craving for what is not.<\/p>\n

Excerpting lyrics from the song, we uncover something that sounds very much like a succession of Zen koans:<\/p>\n


\nsnow glows white on the mountain
\na kingdom of isolation
\ndistance
\nmakes everything seem small
\nand the fears that once controlled me
\ncan’t get to me at all
\nno right, no wrong
\nthe past is in the past
\nlet it go, let it go
\ni am one with the wind and sky
\nhere i stand
\nin the light of day
\nlet the storm rage on
\nthe cold never bothered me anyway
\n<\/i><\/center> <\/p>\n

That’s pretty cool. Also the fact that this is the very first Disney song in history with lyrics that include the word “fractal”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The lyrics to the wildly popular theme song “Let It Go” from the recent Disney film Frozen have puzzled many people. What exactly is the song trying to say? It occurs to me that one valid way to interpret it is as an avowal of Buddhist tathagatagarbha. Specifically, the song expresses a mindful path to … Continue reading “Frozen<\/i> as Buddhist manifesto”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15534"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15534"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15534\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15537,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15534\/revisions\/15537"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15534"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15534"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15534"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}