My computer was just downloading it at home while I listened to Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche recommending it on the ngondro teachings he was giving at Khadro Ling.

This is a particularly brilliant Kurosawa, which is to say a lot. Rinpoche called our attention for the "genuine heart of sadness" (Vidhyadhara Trungpa's coined term), as the main point of the contemplation on the four thoughts (precious human birth, impermanence, karma and the ocean of suffering—the external preliminaries). The japanese are maybe the main culture to manifest the dignity of mono no aware, lacrimae rerum¹, as an aesthetic principle, that is, sadness connected with basic dignity.

In the movie a bureaucrat discovers he wasted 30 years of his life when he finds out he has stomach cancer. He then tries learning to live in the few months he has left. As with many japanese masterpieces, the depression one could get from watching such a story is surprisingly replaced with "genuine heart of sadness" and even moments of laughter.

The funeral at the end—a masterpiece of unabashed melodrama—would make Darth Vader himself come to tears. So beautiful, so true; how blessed to watch it under the auspices of Rinpoche. He said, quoting Jigmed Lingpa (that is, himself), "remembering death is the wealth of the sublime beings", even to wish to always remember death is like desiring a different kind of wealth, sublime wealth.