MAYA




"I think the entire world we live in is fabricated," Pan's Labyrinth director Guillermo del Toro told Terry Gross on Fresh Air today.

The director of the best film I've seen in ages was referring to borders, political parties and religions. He sounded like he was referring to the Hindu concept of Maya, or fear-driven illusion or false belief.*

"These imagined conceits can create such horrors," he said, in an accent that recalled Cheech Martin.

When asked about the darkness of the movie, which takes place just after the Spanish Civil War, he said, "You need horror for beauty and poetry to exist."

Funny, I've been reading something similar in Autobiography of a Yogi:

"Creation is light and shadow both, else no picture is possible. The good and evil of maya must ever alternate in supremacy. If joy were ceaseless here in this world, would man ever seek another? Without suffering he scarcely cares to recall that he has forsaken his eternal home."

I wonder if del Toro meditates.**

I know he's a Catholic.

He told Terry that he and Alfred Hitchcock have a lot in common.

"We're both fat, Catholic and repressed."

Go see the movie.


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*I've never understood why people name their children Maya.

**Some of my favorite famous folks do some form of meditation:
Howard Stern (Trancendental Meditation for decades), David Lynch (TM for 35 years), R. Crumb (sits for 45 miutes each morning) and Leonard Cohen (who lived in a Buddhist monastery for a year). George Harrison and Alice Coltrane were also pretty Hindu-y.