Category Archives: buddhism

V for Vendetta

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V for Vendetta portrays an aspect of spiritual v for vendetta movie coverdevelopment that is frequently overlooked and rarely embraced.  In many traditions, both Hindu and Buddhist, there are fierce deities that perform the job of removing obstacles.  Two such fierce babes are Kali and Ekajati (Blue Tara).  Some of the many obstacles that these two remove are complacency and deep seated fears and addiction.

If that little bit of wine you take at dinner every once in awhile keeps you comfortable and not growing spiritually, then they can create circumstances that turns that into a devastating addiction.  Or if your great job and comfy home has lulled you into inaction, Kali or Ekajati will be glad to take that job away for you.

In V for Vendetta Natalie Portman, our lead star, has suffered from anxiety most of her life, probably due, in part, to losses she experienced as a child.  Then through torture and trial she overcomes the greatest fear (fear of death) and becomes free.  It might have been thought she did not have what it would take to withstand her circumstances and stay in integrity, but she did.  And through her strength of will she tapped into an even stronger and more eternal sense of self.

It is when we lose attachment to things and then finally ourselves that we achieve true freedom.  As long as we are acting from fear of any sort we are chained.  As my favorite quote of the week says:

…swept along on four fierce river currents, chained up tight in past deeds, hard to undo, stuffed in a steel cage of grasping self, smothered in the pitch-black ignorance.

 Je Tsongkapa (Three Principle Paths)

Natalie’s liberation came because of a choice she made.  Eventually, due to that choice, and the actions that followed she was able to realize a cessation of fear.  This absence of fear (a major mental affliction for many of is) means that she actually realized a greater truth about who she is.

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Seven Pounds

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Seven Pounds movie with Will SmithSeven Pounds is another movie in my top ten list of Buddhist theme movies.  This movie brings to mind the activities of a bodhisattva.  A bodhisattva is defined as someone that has bodhichitta.  And bodhichitta is the wish to become totally enlightened for the benefit of all sentient beings.  One of the activities of a bodhisattva is the perfecting generosity. Generosity is perfected when one gives without self-concern at all.

Although Will Smith is not motivated by bodhichitta, his role in this movie reminds me of the following quote from Master Shantideva’s Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life.

To begin with, Buddha, the Guide, encourages us to practice giving such things as food.

Later, when we become used to this, we can gradually learn to give our own flesh.

This may seem a little startling, but there are many stories of bodhisattva’s being asked to give of themselves and they do so without hesitation.  Indeed, one story of Buddha’s past lives has him coming upon a starving tiger and her cubs.  He sacrificed himself in order to save their lives.  Since the mother was too weak to eat,  he first cut himself and fed her his blood so that she would become stronger. Then he offered her his entire body and his life.  It is said that the cubs reincarnated and became his first disciples after his enlightenment.

In the movie, Will Smith gives up “seven pounds” of body parts in order to save people in need.  It is an interesting movie to stimulate thought regarding the practice of extreme generosity.


Inception

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Inception movie Here is another movie in my series on the top ten Buddhist movies. Inception came out in 2010 and demonstrates nicely the Buddhist concept that the reality we live in is merely a projection of our subconscious.

In the movie, people share dreams together.  One person, the architect, sets up the basic framework of the dream (location and environmental features) while the subject populates the dream with projections (people) that are parts of their subconscious.  Other dreamers can join the subject in the dream as well.  The movie plot focuses on using the dream state to either steal information from the subject (extraction) or to give the subject an idea that they will carry out during their awake time (inception).

My interest is not so much on the plot, which is fascinating in itself, but on how the movie as a whole models the Buddhist concept that the world we find ourselves in is really just a projection of our mind.  A school of Buddhist thought called the Mind Only School (Chittamatra or Yogacara) actually purports that the world we live in is just mind only.  The people in the movie (aside from the shared dreamers) are actually just projections of the dreamer’s subconscious.

My first reaction to the movie took a couple of days to wear off.  When the movie was over, I found myself viewing the world and the people around me with a different lens.  Each person I interacted with I saw as an extension of myself.  I couldn’t shake the sense that they were just an extension of my subconscious and that my world in a dream.

One of the themes of Inception is that the dreamers have to be on the alert about whether they are dreaming or awake. The dream is so real that discernment regarding their sleep state is nearly impossible.  This too is similar to the idea in Buddhism that our awake state is really just a dream state.  It is impossible to tell the two apart and like a dream what makes certain things occur or not is not readily apparent.  Our awake state seems real, when it it truly a deceptive reality.