What's it Like to be in Tao

Livestream via Zoom

and

At the Institute

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 2024

2 -5PM/PT

PRESENTED BY: JOHN BEEBE, MD

FRIENDS MEMBERS: FREE

GENERAL ADMISSION: $30

LIVESTREAM: $25

CANDIDATES/STUDENTS/INTERNS: $15

The film Perfect Days (2023) by director Wim Wenders was nominated in 2024 for the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film. Watching it, we experience the living pattern of a man whose work is to clean public toilets in contemporary Tokyo. Far from being oppressed by his work, the man, Hirayama, seems to find enjoyment in all the different parts of his days. In this seminar, Dr. John Beebe will draw upon Perfect Days, which participants are encouraged to see in advance, and his understanding of the Taoist/Confucian classic, I Ching, to explore with the group the relationship between Tao, self, and ego.

How can we learn, both at work and in leisure, to know when to “let things happen” and when to assert our will? What might the introverted hero of this film teach us about the balance between speech and silence, enjoyment of the visual and verbal music of the world, and the role of solitary reflection in that enjoyment?.

JOHN BEEBE, MD, a member and past president of the C.G. Jung Institute of San Francisco, has spearheaded a Jungian typological approach to the analysis of film and has often used type and archetype to explore developments in the cultural unconscious. He is co-author, with Virginia Apperson, of The Presence of the Feminine in Film.

Image: Still from Perfect Days (2023). Dir. Wim Wenders.

Host or Publisher The C.G. Jung Institute of San Francisco