A fun movie for some great actors to have another fling at making us laugh. Like the Full Monty that we just watched on our Friday night movie, this movie also fits the formula of a Catch 22 (or double-bing) where our characters are caught in a lose/lose situation and in order to be free make the Mad Leap. Like Jake Sully in Avatar, our three musketeers leap on the Last Shadow, the most insane idea they could imagine, Rob a Bank.

As with all single ideas that transcend but includes the polarity of the Catch 22, the Idea generates tremendous energy to carry it out, and because the Idea creates a whole new world, that world is not conflicted by unconscious elements, so the plans does not go astray from self defeating actions. In the Single Idea, the Brave New World, there is no shadow to trip you up. The world works with you, not against you, as it does when caught in the Catch 22.

The movie is a metaphor for the powerful truth of Liberation through madness. By doing what is totally unexpected, even by yourself not to mention family and the world, you creates a world that is not conflicted by the old forces that created the lose/lose situation. This formula is Buddhism, I have come to discover.

The Catch 22 is the Zen Koan. “If you say this is a stick, you are wrong. If you say this is not a stick, you are wrong. Not which is it. Choose or I will hit you with it, ” says the Zen master. The choices cancel each other out, yet neither can be eliminated because they are mutually dependent upon each other like the yin/yang. Yet…there must be ONE.

The transcendent or Zen way to discover the ONE is through the mad leap, the spontaneous leap into a new world or Idea that both transcends the polarity yet (and this is important) includes the polarity. This is also the formula for relationship in general. The relationship is transcendent of the polarity it contains.

In this way movies as extended metaphor are great spiritual teachings no less great than the teaching. you find in the Bible. Here is the Catch 22 of Christianity. Love your God with all your heart…..okay…try to do that. You can’t try to love. Oh, well you can but then you are a hypocrite. You lose! If you don’t try, you lose! This is a lose/lose Zen Koan or Catch 22.

What can you do. Go out in style! Make the mad leap. Jump on the Last Shadow, on death itself, on emptiness itself…and transcend the commandments  by stopping the struggle to be good, to be religious and to obey the commandment. But this doesn’t mean becoming an atheist or nihilist. No…you stay still. You hold the contraction. You reset in choices awareness, knowing you can’t choose, but, you see, turning away is also a choice, so you can’t so that. This is the Dark Night of the Soul, or the Eclipse of the mind.

And out of this existential Catch 22 is Christ is born, you are resurrected as a whole mind that is no longer caught on the horns of your own dilemma. You go out in style.