At our Zendo, Sunday evening movies were once a quiet tradition.
After the reopening, that rhythm slipped away, as if waiting for the right conditions to return. When the new kitchen and dining hall were built, the old dining space by the Zendo hall transformed into a reading room and library—a place of books, silence, and study. We named it as Yamada Koun Library, after Fr. AMA ‘s Zen Master.
It was only last year, when Dr. Meath Conlan, a Sangha member, visited and wished to share his film on the Benedictine monk and guru Bede Griffiths, it got reignited. Btw we can’t move on without mentioning about Dr. Meath Conlan. He is one of the persons enriched my life on the way of spiritual seeking immensely. By any yardstick, Meath is an extra ordinary person and lead so far, an extraordinary life. His great grandfather T Conlan was once a VC of University of Allahabad. Once means a long time back. 1894-98 … And Meath as a spiritual seeker would have read about various traditions and travelled around the world in general and India in particular than most of the people whom I have met. He is a retired diocesan priest who once was the Vatican’s representative in China. He is a polymath, knowledgeable in so many areas, a writer and teacher himself. His elegant film “The Human touch” on Bede Griffith was broadcast on ABC. And another connection I have with Meath, in addition to being fellow disciples of Fr. AMA and Bodhi sangha members are he knew Tony De Mello in person. And I was / still am a big fan of Tony De Mello’s writing.
Then Sr. Chitra offered a gift to Yamada Koun Library —a large Panasonic screen—and suddenly the Zendo had a new way of gathering. Zen Master Olaf Muyoju suggested Perfect Days for the following Sunday. And so, the tradition was reborn. To ensure that we don’t regress, Wolf a Sangha member from America, gave me a hard disk with some 200 of the best movies from his collection.
May be the move Prefect days was a perfect restart. Perfect Days is a more of a film of shadows and silences.
Hirayama, its hero, if the current and lofty success standards of our “clean and mean” society permits us to call a toilet cleaner/janitor as a hero, speaks very little. Indeed, so very little that one can count the number of his dialogues. But Hirayama’s life unfolds not in dialogues, but in the stillness of his daily rituals: folding his bed sheet, watering plants, cleaning toilets, listening to cassette tapes, a lonely lunch under the same tree in the same park day after day, photographing the play of light through trees. At first, I thought whether I could sit through this. But then what seemed monotonous and boring instead came out as so lively and luminous. Each act is performed with care, with presence. The film does not hurry, does not hurry at all and does not bother to explain. It simply shows us that even in the smallest gestures, there is a wholeness, a completeness.
In a way this is the rhythm of Fr. AMA and Zendo life too. Early morning Zazen, breakfast, Samu, Sweeping the floor, bowing, walking the Dog. Each act, when done with attention, becomes sacred. And for some mysterious reason this life doesn’t feel boring at all. It feels peaceful. Sacred even. Like there’s something holy in how he takes care of the smallest things.
There’s no big drama in Hirayama’s life. No loud pain. No chase for wealth or attention. But you can feel it. The loneliness he doesn’t complain about. The joy he doesn’t announce. The kindness he gives without asking anything in return. A recurring motif in the film is the canopy of trees. Hirayama photographs them daily, capturing the subtle shifts of light filtering through the leaves. In Japanese, there is a word for this: komorebi—the quality of sunlight as it passes through foliage. Komorebi is never pure brightness. It is light and shadow together, inseparable. Hirayama’s life is like this. (to an extent my life too!) He carries his past, his pain, like the rings of a tree—silent cassette tapes of storms and seasons. Yet he continues to move quietly, toward the light. When he finds a struggling seedling, he gently scoops it into a folded paper pouch, carries it home, and nurtures it among his saplings. The trees are his companions, his mirrors. They remind us that life is both rooted and reaching, both scarred and vital.
Yet the Director of the movie does not give us an oversentimental portrait. Beneath Hirayama’s serenity, shadows flicker. A niece tells him a disturbing story about a boy who stabs his parents after they cook and eat his pet turtle. His estranged sister appears, brusquely reminding him of their father. In these brief encounters, we glimpse a past marked by rupture, perhaps even trauma. And these scenes come and go in a flash. I missed it the first time. And the second time, I had to rewind and watch again. The director of the movie does not care to explain. Neither does the hero, Hirayama. He simply nods, accepts, and returns to his life. His quiet routines are not naïve simplicity—they seem to be deliberate practice of turning toward presence, a way of living with shadows without being consumed by them. His “perfect days” are not perfect because they are free of suffering, but because they hold both shadow and light—komorebi itself.
One of the most striking aspects of the film is Hirayama’s devotion to cleaning toilets. His young assistant mocks him: “Why spend so much time and energy? They’ll just get dirty again.” But Hirayama’s effort is not about permanence. It is about presence. Each act of scrubbing, polishing, and restoring is a gesture of respect and compassion—for the space, for the people who will use it, for life itself. In Zen, this is Samu: work as practice, labour as meditation. The point is not to achieve a final state of cleanliness, but to embody care in each moment. After seeing the movie, one of the things I did was to create a few posters on the art of dishwashing. I took a lot from an article of Thay. ( I will share those )
It has been a recent practice in LinkedIn to list down the cultural practices of Japanese. Most of them repeat the most famous ones. Like kaizen or kintsugi etc. It was quite fascinating for me to learn about komorebi which is the central metaphor of the movie. Life is not about achieving pure, unadulterated light (joy, peace, bliss or perfection). It is about learning to appreciate, even cherish, the dappled and understated pattern where light and shadow are inseparable. Hirayama’s past, his loneliness, his trauma—these are the shadows that give depth and contrast to the simple joys of his music, his plants, and his work. His “perfect days” are perfect because they hold the whole of it, without denial or despair.
By the way this spirit is not confined to cinema. A recent news report from Tokyo said, Koichi Matsubara, a 56‑year‑old man, earns over 30 million yen (nearly ₹2 crore) annually from rental properties and investments. Financially, he has no need to work. Yet he chooses to spend his days as a janitor, cleaning common areas and doing basic maintenance in a residential building.
He works only part‑time, earning a modest 100,000 yen a month—far below Tokyo’s average salary. Why? Because, like Hirayama, he finds meaning in simplicity. The work keeps him active, grounded, and healthy. It gives rhythm to his days. It is not about money, but about living fully in the ordinary.
Matsubara’s story, like Hirayama’s, is a reminder that dignity is not measured by status or wealth, but by the spirit we bring to our actions.
When Wolf, another ultimate polymath and spiritual seeker, I have seen in my life, handed over his collection of movies , I was thinking the way the Zendo movie tradition slipped away and was reborn is a good lesson. Things in life and practice fall away, and we don’t force them. We wait for the “right conditions,” for the gift of a film, a screen, and a suggestion from a teacher to allow it to return, renewed. This is not regression, but a natural cycle.
In a way that movie taught that one could live a quiet life and still have a beautiful one.
That’s what I felt while watching Perfect Days. This movie made me realize something. That maybe we’ve been running too fast. Wanting too much. Comparing too often. Reflecting too much on the past.. “It could have been” stuff. But life doesn’t always have to be loud to be meaningful. Sometimes, it can be found in small routines and stillness. Decibel levels, the number of likes one gather, the model of the iPhone, the place we went for the last vacation, or the fancy food in that Michelin star restaurant in our Instagram post, or even that AI written intellectual sounding article…. We hardly realise all these chips away parts of our soul one chip at a time.
Some might say Hirayama’s life is simple. But to my uninitiated eyes it looks wholesome. This is the great secret that so many miss in their frantic search for more. A life can be quiet, simple, and utterly, profoundly beautiful. It is a life where every action, no matter how small, is performed with care and presence. It is a life where we can live with the shadows and traumas of our past without being overwhelmed and consumed by them. As the saying goes every saint has a past and every sinner a future. A sinner gets is present moment and future when one accepts one’s past.
And most importantly we don’t need to be seen by the world to feel alive, and that a folded bed sheet, a clean toilet, or the light through the trees can be more than enough. It can be everything.
And it recalled a question from long ago, from Prof. Indrani Bhattacharjee’s Epistemology class in Azim Premji University on Dharmakīrti: If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, did it happen? I think I understand it now. Though, she may not upgrade my low grades in that Epistemology course. And that answer is not found in a textbook, but in a life like Hirayama’s. The reality of the fallen tree—like the reality of our own pain, our joy, our past—does not depend on an external audience. It becomes fully, wholly real when we ourselves can turn towards it with unwavering attention and acceptance. Hirayama’s practice is to be the ultimate witness to his own life. He hears every falling tree in his soul, the shadows and the light, and in doing so, he makes his days perfect.
The final lesson is that “perfection” is not a flawless state or ever bliss, but as the courageous, equanimous and attentive embrace and acceptance of the whole of one’s experience. It brings to mind why I named my own book Fallen Flower, Fragrant Grass—that even a flower which has fallen unseen upon the grass, far from the costly vase of an ikebana arrangement, can still offer its fragrance to the world. Its beauty and purpose are not diminished because they go un-witnessed by the crowd.
