10 Life Lessons from Perfect Days

What we can learn from Hirayama, the toilet-cleaning hero from the new Wim Wenders movie

People kept on recommending the new Wim Wenders movie Perfect Days to me. Even my Zen teacher mentioned it in one of her lectures during my last retreat.

Finally we watched it this weekend, and I have to admit it’s full of truth and wisdom, with a splendid soundtrack as well. This might be Wenders’ late-career masterpiece.

My teacher was right: Perfect Days is a Zen movie. In its essence, it’s a story about a monkish man called Hirayama, who lives in Tokyo and cleans toilets for a living. The film depicts a week in his simple, calm and slow life.

Hirayama is not a classic movie hero, and still there’s a lot to learn from him. The movie left me with a weird feeling that everything you need to know about life is in there.

Here are ten important lessons the film reminded me of.