Apple (my favorite monkey),muay Thai, muay Boran, T'ai chi chu'an (currently studying Yang 108 long-form movement and saber, both of which are best practiced in winter, around midnight, under a full moon ), Soto Zen, Vajrayana, and Vipassana Buddhism and meditation, pre-European contact Meso-American and Andean Indian cultures (especially the Olmecs and Moche), distant and not so distant places (Cambodia, especially Angkor Wat is an all time favorite, as are the big stone hills of northern Laos, covered in pine and bamboo and shrouded in mist, looking as they do like a Chinese brush painting), Chiang Rai and Mae Salong, Kanchanaburi, many, many books, different cultures, great food shared with good friends, music, and any solitary place with lots of snow, water (preferably the sea), trees, and mountains.
ON MYSPACE, I'd like to meet those who care about others, people who are non-judgemental and who are interested in substantial, lengthy communication, who mean what they say and say what they mean, who are simply who they are and not trying to be something or someone they only imagine themselves to be (as Bruce Lee said, there's a difference between self-actualization and self-image actualization). Those who are kind rather than cool, wise rather than witty, people who like to smile and laugh, people who have friends rather than "bitches" or "thugzz," and anyone who generates affection rather than gives an attitude. People of Grace.
All that's good and none that's bad: very much into Emy Lou Harris's "Wrecking Ball" and Krishna Das at the moment. Beyond that, various international/cultural works and anything with feeling and melody.
(Obscure stuff...) Marborosi, Pathfinder (the original Lapp/Norwegian film, not the recently released, politically correct-meaning B.S.- Hollywood excrement), Why Has Bodhidharma Left for the East, After Life, Dangerous Liasons, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, A Man for All Seasons (with Paul Scofield), Smoke Signals, In the Realm of the Senses, Master and Commander was a good period piece, as was The Duelists, The Return of Martin Guerre, Cold Mountain, The Name of the Rose, The Missing (Cate Blanchet and Tommy Lee Jones),and Ride with the Devil. A&E's version of Ivanhoe with Steven Waddington and Ciaran Hinds, the later of whom was especially impressive. On a more low-brow level, kick-flicks are a not so guilty pleasure. I liked parts of The House of the Flying Daggers and all of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (Zhang Ziyi can kick me in the head anytime). Anything made by Bruce Almighty Lee, Jet Li, Tony Jaa's Ong Bak and Tom Yum Goong, all the great Wuxia films, preferably by Sammo Hung Kam Bo, Yeung Woo Ping, Tsui Hark, as well as the Japanese equivalents, like Zatoichi (with Katsu, not Beat Takeshi, although that one wasn't bad either, even if the Riverdance scene at the end was a little bewildering).
I don't really watch t.v. all that much, but when I do, Deadwood, The American Book of the Dead, a.k.a. Six Feet Under, although it's politically correct leanings are tedious and cloying, the earliar seasons of Northern Exposure, Due South, National Geographic, A&E, History and Discovery Channel.
Anything by Joseph Campbell, Barbara Tuchmann, Geshe Kelsang Gyatso, The Dalai Lama, and D.T. Suzuki, and Jack Kornfield, Mantak Chia, Gabriel Garcia Marquez (Love in the Time of Cholera, The General in His Labrynth, An Evil Hour, but One Hundred Years of Solitude kicked my ass), Kahlil Gibran's Sand and Foam and The Prophet, James Joyce's Ulyssess, although it was largely over my head. Also, Mary Rennault's books on ancient Greece, especially The King Must Die and The Bull from the Sea. Other favorites are Black Elk Speaks, Cormac McCarthy's Border Trilogy, Blood Meridian, and to a lesser extent, Child of God, as well as Annie Proulz's The Shipping News. Sogyal Rinpoche's "The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying." Most recently read and enjoyed very much Bernard Cornwell's "Saxon" series; not really literature, but very enjoyable historical fiction. Became fanatically devoted to Gene Wolfe's two book fantasy epic Wizard Knight, but not as thrilled with Soldier of Sidon. Salutations to and for Yves Meynard for "The Book of Knights."- "You asked to become a knight, not an expert on knighthood. To train you further would make you into a scholar, not a fighting man. What remains for you to learn you must learn by living and doing."
I would think I'm too old for heroes, but I do especially admire and respect the brave and compassionate and those who "joyously participate in the suffering of the world."