Forging a Buddhist Cinema: Exploring Buddhism in Cinematic
Representations of Tibetan Culture
by
Mona Harnden-Simpson
B.A. (Honours), Film Studies, Carleton University
A thesis submitted to the Faculty of
Graduate Studies and Research in partial fulfillment
of the requirements for the degree of
Master of Arts
In Film Studies
Carleton University
Ottawa, Ontario
August 23, 2011
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Ill
Forging a Buddhist Cinema: Exploring Buddhism in Cinematic
Representations of Tibetan Culture
Abstract
In contrast to the West where the divide between the secular and the
religious is generally perceived as distinct and impermeable, in the Tibetan
Buddhist culture, religion is at the root of all political and social formations.
The current scholarship in world cinema has shown the importance of
situating a particular cinema—whether it is national, transnational or
exilic—within a social, political and cultural context. Yet this scholarship
subsumes religion under the broad umbrella of culture, effectively limiting
what could potentially be a thorough exploration of the representation and
place of religion in films.
This thesis explores the centrality and multidimensional features of
Buddhism by means of a close textual analysis of four films about Tibetan
culture—The Cup (JPhorpa, Khyentse Norbu, India, 1999), Travellers and
Magicians (Khyentse Norbu, Bhutan, 2005) Milarepa: Magician,
Murderer, Saint (Neten Chokling, Bhutan, 2006), and Kundun (Martin
Scorsese, USA, 1997). It argues that a Buddhist ethos forms the core of
these films and informs how the language of cinema is used to convey
Buddhist themes and principles.
IV
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank my thesis supervisor and mentor Zuzana Pick. More than
anyone, she knows my penchant for wordiness (and commas) and would have no
trouble believing my claim that I could have written pages on how much her help and
support have meant to me. For the sake of brevity, I will constrain myself to these few
inadequate words to express my profound gratitude and appreciation for all she has
done.
I would like to thank my husband Bruce for not only attending to the practical
duties and household chores I've been ignoring for the past two years, but for his
faith in me. After 33 years, his acts of love, generosity and kindness may no longer
take me by surprise, but they always have the power to move me. I also extend my
gratitude to my kids, Davah and Karis, who provided love and encouragement as
well as much needed technical support.
A few words of thanks to the faculty of the Film Studies Department—
Aboubakar, Charles, Jose, Marc, Malini and Mitsuyo—for challenging me in ways
that had me equally terrified and thrilled. And finally a thank you to the
administrative and support staff—Barb, Diane, Jack, Laurie and Sue—who always
managed to find time to help me.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction
Representing Tibetan Buddhism Cinematically
Chapter One
Tibet and Buddhism in the Cinema: A Survey of Divergent
Perspectives
Chapter Two
Khyentse Norbu: Film as a Modern Day Thangka
Chapter Three
Milarepa and Kundun: The Magic, Miracles and Mystery of
Tibetan Buddhism
Conclusion
Towards a More Inclusive Methodology
Bibliography
1
INTRODUCTION
Representing Tibetan Buddhism Cinematically
The setting of the Hollywood film Lost Horizon (Frank Capra, USA, 1937) is a
fictionalized Utopian village called Shangri-La in the Buddhist nation of Tibet. However,
the film eschews any mention of Buddhism presenting instead a serene Christian
community whose particular enunciation of Christianity resonates with the Buddhist
ethic of non-violence. The film was made during the inter-war period and ostensibly,
Capra's goal was to offer a pacifistic alternative to the growing warmongering which was
taking center stage in Europe. The film exoticizes Tibet as a place of mystery and
magic—people live for several centuries, there are no diseases, and gangrenous limbs can
miraculously heal without medical intervention. However the film also renders Tibetan
Buddhism in blatantly Christian and colonialist terms. The spiritual leader of the
community is Father Perrault, a 250-year-old Christian brother, who travelled from
Belgium to the Tibetan plateau several centuries before. At one point, he sermonizes, "it
is our hope that the brotherly love of Shangri-La will spread throughout the world. Yes
my son, when the strong have devoured each other, the Christian ethic may at last be
fulfilled and the meek shall inherit the earth." Explicitly and unapologetically taken from
Christ's Sermon on the Mount, the maxim—"the meek shall inherit the earth"—suggests
that he, as the community leader, has "converted" the valley's Tibetan Buddhists to
Christianity.
2
Tibetan Buddhism is rendered invisible in Lost Horizon, establishing Christianity's
pre-eminence in offering a humanitarian prescription for a modern world driven by war
and greed. Moreover, Shangri-La is not even vaguely portrayed as a Tibetan Buddhist
Utopia but an exoticized Christian paradise, suggesting that an untainted, purified brand
of Christianity can thrive anywhere.
Frank Capra may have done a disservice to Buddhism and the Tibetan people by
effacing Buddhism to promulgate a Christian ethos. But in his defence, over the
years many Western interpretations of Buddhism have been shaped by Western
biases. Even now, in this era of post-colonial cultural sensitivity, Western directors
continue inscribing their perspective into the films. A case in point is Seven Years
in Tibet (Jean-Jacques Annaud, USA, 1997). While it seeks to shed light on the
systematic annihilation of Tibetan culture since the Chinese Occupation in 1950, it
still represents Tibetan Buddhism as a humanistic religion, capable of assuaging
the psychological suffering and sense of alienation experienced in the West. In
spite of its positive portrayal, the film fails to provide a nuanced depiction of the
deeply religious culture of Tibetans, and strips Buddhism of its more esoteric and
profound features. Possible reasons for this representation may be the director
Jean-Jacques Annaund's conscious effort to appeal to the sensibilities of Western
audiences, his inability to mitigate his own intractable Western bias, or perhaps a
limited knowledge of Tibetan Buddhism. As a result, Seven Years in Tibet offers a
discernibly secular interpretation of Buddhism and Buddhist culture of Tibet that is
limited in its scope.
3
Lost Horizon and Seven Years in Tibet serve as examples of how biases, no
matter how well-intentioned, determine a film's representation of a foreign culture
and religion. However, it would be inappropriate to view these films as
representative of a general tendency within films about Tibet. The extant corpus of
films reveals a variety of perspectives on Tibet and Tibetans, their devotion to
Buddhism as well as the multifaceted features of Tibetan Buddhism.
Notwithstanding, the documentaries and feature films can be unified by a single
point of comparison: Tibetan Buddhism. This function can be explained in part by
its enormous effect on quotidian Tibetan life, and its importance in the areas of
education, health, politics, organized dissent, and culture.
This recognition of Buddhism as the most unifying facet of Tibetan society
informs the subject matter and objectives of this thesis: to provide an overview and
explore how Buddhism connects the disparate body of documentaries and feature
films about Tibet mostly produced in the 1990s and 2000s. The survey is aimed at
contextualizing the films I have chosen for an in-depth study: The Cup or Phorpa
in Tibetan (Khyentse Norbu, India, 1999), Travellers and Magicians (Khyentse
Norbu, Bhutan, 2005) Milarepa: Magician, Murderer, Saint (Neten Chokling,
India, 2006), and Kundun (Martin Scorsese, USA, 1997). The close textual
analysis reveals that the directors use cinematic devices—parallel editing, sound
bridges, visual motifs, shot composition—to allude to Buddhist concepts and also
convey a Tibetan Buddhist worldview that fuses material and nonmaterial realms.
The first of these three films are by Tibetan Buddhist filmmakers who are also
Tibetan Buddhist lamas, or rinpoches (precious ones), born in exile in Bhutan.
4
Norbu and Chokling have devoted their lives to teaching their followers the
meditative, devotional and philosophical aspects of Tibetan Buddhism. Under his
religious title of Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse Rinpoche, Khyentse Norbu has
established Buddhist centres all over the world. They view filmmaking as an
extension of this didactic and spiritual undertaking, and have been explicit about
what they hope to achieve. In an interview Chokling remarked: "If this film
[Milarepa] inspires just a single person to become more compassionate, tolerant
and patient towards others, I will be more than happy. From a Buddhist point of
view, this is the most precious gift that we can offer to the world."1 Norbu and
Chokling have clearly embraced cinema both for its artistic and proselytizing
potential, adapting the aesthetic and dramatic protocols of film to disseminate the
fundamental tenets of Buddhism to the world at large.
Conversely, Martin Scorsese repeatedly stated that he wanted to avoid overt
didacticism or proselytizing in Kundun in order to focus on the universal and
emotional aspects of the film's story about the Fourteenth Dalai Lama. Regardless
of his aims, the textual analysis of this film reveals a distinctly Buddhist approach
in its allusion to an arcane traditional practice of Tibetan Buddhism called the
Kalachakra Tantra. Kundun may lack the nuanced cultural and religious
perspectives only a Tibetan filmmaker can provide; nevertheless the film reflects a
distinctly Buddhist outlook in spite of its director's Catholic upbringing.
"Interview with the Director" Milarepa, the Movie, http://www.milarepamovie.com (accessed
July 5, 2010).
5
It is my position that all films about Tibet address Buddhism, even superficially
at times as elucidated in the survey, because it is deeply embedded in Tibetan
culture, and viewed as one of the most salient aspects of Tibetan identity. Even the
country's political system, formerly a theocracy, was a blend of the secular and the
religious, requiring the Dalai Lama to simultaneously perform dual roles as Tibet's
spiritual and temporal leader. Despite the Dalai Lama's resignation as temporal
leader in March 2011 and exiled Tibetans' vote for a new prime minister, he will
likely remain a spokesperson of Tibet's government-in-exile due to his high
international profile. Therefore, Tibet will continue to be strongly identified in the
West as a Buddhist nation and an exemplar of a national Buddhist ethos.
Tibet's unique Buddhist identity is becoming increasingly nuanced in the West
as a growing number of Westerners have become familiar with Tibet's culture and
political situation through their engagement with Tibetan Buddhism. After a
number of exiled monastic Tibetan Buddhists established Buddhist centres
throughout the West and started acquiring students, many Westerners like myself
became aware of Tibetan culture once they started studying under a lama. Even as
Tibetan Buddhism was becoming an international phenomenon, it was still able to
retain its uniquely Tibetan character, due in large measure, to the commitment of
the majority of lamas to maintain traditional religious practices. In spite of
Westerners' growing awareness of Tibetan Buddhism, many remain unacquainted
with its provenance and elementary principles. To ensure that non-Buddhists are
not at a disadvantage engaging with this thesis, a short exegesis of Tibetan
Buddhism is in order.
6
The Fundamentals of Tibetan Buddhism
Tibetan Buddhists maintain that the transmission of the Dharma (the Buddha's
teachings and spiritual realizations) has remained unbroken and essentially
unchanged—passed on from master to disciple—since the Buddha's life 2,500 years
ago. Originally named Siddhartha, the Buddha was a prince in Northern India who
left his wife and son when he was twenty-nine years old to pursue a spiritual life and
find an end to suffering. Choosing to follow the aesthetic tradition of complete selfdenial, he was slowly dying of starvation when he realized that spiritual liberation
would not be achieved until he also nourished his body. Soon after consuming a bowl
of rice and milk, he continued to meditate under a tree and found the path to liberation
or nirvana. Living to a healthy old age, he travelled all over northern India, teaching
his message of spiritual liberation, the Dharma. His first teaching, the Four Noble
Truths form the essential tenets of Buddhism: all life is suffering; the origin of
suffering is desire and clinging to notions of a permanent "soul" or "self; suffering
can be eradicated; following the Noble Eightfold Path can bring the end to suffering.
The Eightfold Path is a sort of spiritual manual that addresses three aspects of
religious practice: it prohibits moral transgressions (stealing, lying, killing); cultivates
wisdom (spiritual insight into the true nature of phenomena); and establishes
meditation as a means of sustaining mental discipline and achieving enlightenment.
Given that the Buddha was a human being who gained insight into the cause of
suffering and established techniques to eliminate it, Buddhism has tended to focus on
the Dharma—his teachings—instead of the Buddha as a historical figure. Thus, we
find a number of fundamental Buddhist concepts underpinning the films we will be
7
examining. For instance, the Buddhist understanding of the illusory nature of
perception is central in Khyentse Norbu's Travellers and Magicians. Believing his
hallucinations are real, the film's protagonist exemplifies the Buddhist position that
strong emotions and cravings obstruct our minds to such a degree that what we think
are ordinary perceptions are actually illusions or delusory thoughts. The film also
touches upon the idea of suffering as part of a perpetual cycle called samsara, (birth,
death, and rebirth) which ceases only upon the cessation of desire. The Cup is
informed by the Buddhist notion that all phenomena of the material world—
experiences, thoughts, emotions—are impermanent and affected by change, and that
cultivating awareness of the mind, through meditation and ritual, will eliminate the
pain and anxiety caused by impermanence. Milarepa touches upon the cosmic law of
karma, which states that even the smallest action will have a positive, neutral or
negative result. We see that Milarepa is terrified of the negative karma he has
generated after killing dozens of people and realizes that he cannot escape the
consequences of his actions. The opening half hour of Kundun often references the
Buddhist belief of reincarnation in its depiction of the selection process for the Dalai
Lama's successor.
The abovementioned tenets form much of the core of Buddhist thought; however,
there are so many different schools of Buddhism, each with its own emphasis and
approach, that it is difficult defining it in a few words. The problem stems from the
fact that as Buddhism spread north to Tibet, China, Mongolia, Korea and Japan, and
south to Thailand, Cambodia, Burma and Viet Nam, it was altered by each new
culture, according to the needs of new adherents. Buddhism was gradually
8
transformed into a diverse religious practice, and can be broken down into two main
branches: Theravada (The School of the Elders) and Mahayana (The Great Vehicle).
The split occurred early, about a hundred years after the Buddha's death, erupting
over the Theravadins' position that only monks could find liberation through
individual effort and skill. A number of monks championing the Mahayanist view
proposed that all beings could achieve enlightenment with the help of bodhisattvas,
individuals who vowed to return in each successive life and help all sentient beings
attain enlightenment. As the Mahayana tradition developed, it taught that there are an
infinite number of buddhas which can manifest themselves, in infinite ways, in the
celestial and material realms. Mahayana Buddhism became a more transcendent and
mystical tradition of Buddhism and Tibetan Buddhism was in turn shaped by its more
esoteric elements.
Tibetan Buddhism developed into a subset of Mahayana Buddhism, differing
considerably from other Mahayana traditions—like Japan's Zen Buddhism—by
becoming far more shamanic. To explain, and occasionally defend, the esoteric and
magical elements of their practise, Tibetan Buddhists often refer to the three phases of
the Buddha's teaching, called the "three turnings of the wheel of Dharma". In the first
"turning", the Buddha taught the Four Noble Truths; in the second "turning", he
focused on the inherent emptiness of phenomena; and in the third "turning", he taught
that the nature of mind is clear light and provided yoga practises for an accelerated
realization of the essential nature of mind. Known by countless names such as the
Vajrayana Vehicle or Secret Mantra Vehicle, the third "turning" developed into
Tibetan Buddhism when it was exported to the Himalayas. This is the only region
9
where it flourished and endured, largely due to the efforts of the Buddhist master
Padmasambhava. He is credited with establishing this unique variety of Buddhism—
sometimes called Vajrayana or Tantric Buddhism—during his visit around the eighth
century.
Epitomizing Tantric Buddhism's mystical energies, Padmasambhava is said to
have used magic to "tame" the indigenous deities of Tibet's shamanic Bon religion
and extract oaths that they would remain the guardians of Buddhism. Still living
today as a fully enlightened buddha "in the palace of Lotus Life on the glorious
Copper-Coloured Mountain on the subcontinent of Chamara",2 he eluded death by
flying on the rays of the sun. He is not the only buddha to manifest himself among the
people of Tibet and exert a lasting influence on the nation's history. The most notable
is Chenrezi, the Bodhisattva of Compassion, who simultaneously manifests himself in
the reincarnations of the Dalai Lama and the Karmapa, the head of the Kagyu sect of
Tibetan Buddhism. Renowned Buddhist scholar and former monk, Robert Thurman,
points out that Tibetans are the only Buddhists who believe they are surrounded by
living buddhas manifesting as human beings. Given that buddhas perpetually
reincarnate and affect events in the material world, interpretations of Tibetan history
simultaneously incorporate the mundane and the transcendent. Thurman asserts:
The rich tapestry of the activities of these enlightened beings constitutes the
Tibetan sense of history itself. Tibetans live in a multidimensional universe,
they are quite aware that a single event appears quite differently to different
beings. Thus in history they posit an "ordinary perception" [...] and an
2
3
Reginald Ray, Indestructible Truth: The Living Spirituality of Tibetan Buddhism (Boston and London:
Shambhala, 2000), 23.
Robert Thurman, Essential Tibetan Buddhism (Edison, New Jersey: Castle Books, 1995), 1.
10
"extraordinary perception" [...]; or sometimes "outer", "inner," and "secret"
levels of history.
Thurman gives the example of Siddhartha, the historical Buddha, to illustrate the
blending of the ordinary and extraordinary levels of history. On the ordinary level,
Siddhartha attained enlightenment 2,500 years ago, only after much effort. On the
extraordinary level, however, he had attained enlightenment eons earlier and chose
to "incarnate as Siddhartha and manifest the deeds of a Buddha-life in order to
educate and liberate the beings of this world."5 This fusion of the ordinary and
extraordinary, which is so essential to our examination of the films Milarepa and
Kundun, creates a unique Tibetan perspective that arguably does not exist
anywhere else in the Buddhist world.
It is crucial to note that Tibetan Buddhism is remarkably diverse, reflecting the
diversity of Tibetans themselves. Reginald Ray, a professor of Buddhist Studies,
posits that the physical barriers of Tibet's geography forced inhabitants to live as
nomads on grasslands, farmers in isolated hamlets or artisans in small villages,
with each community developing its own dialect, folk traditions, and social and
political configurations. The four schools or sects of Tibetan Buddhism—Geluk,
Sakya, Nyingma, Kagyii—were also concentrated in particular regions of the
country, each cultivating its own approach towards the Buddha's teachings.6 A
certain amount of centralization did occur in the more populous and wealthy
Central Tibet, with its largest town Lhasa, becoming the centre of politics and the
4
5
6
Ibid., 6.
Ibid., 7.
Reginald Ray, Indestructible Truth: The Living Spirituality of Tibetan Buddhism (Boston and London:
Shambhala, 2000), 9-13.
11
residence of the Dalai Lama. Despite the high level of isolation and diversity, Ray
asserts that: "Certain patterns bound Tibetan civilization together more or less as a
unified whole.[...] Second only to language, Tibetan culture was unified and
defined by Tibetan Buddhism itself, providing a history, a worldview, and a
manner of living more or less characterizing all Tibetans." In short, Tibetan
Buddhism defines and unifies the Tibetan people far more than it divides them.
The Scholarship on Religion and Cinema:
We certainly cannot say that a unifying set of principles and perspectives binds
film studies scholars and the methodologies they use to account for the diversity of
films and cinematic practices. Yet, film scholars on the whole are reluctant to
consider religion and exploring works that manifestly express religious themes.
Even in the field of world cinema scholars have been reluctant to delve into films
of non-secular cultures. Although their work has shown the importance of
situating a particular cinema—whether it is national, transnational or exilic—
within its social, political and cultural contexts to explain the factors that shaped
the films' production and reception, the general tendency is to subsume religion
under the broad umbrella of culture. In the following review of some of the
approaches to world cinema, including the small body of work on religion in Asian
cinemas, I address the limitations and unsuitability of the existing scholarship for
this thesis.
7
Ibid., 12.
12
World cinema scholars have forged various approaches: exploring national
cinemas; tracking the cultural/economic exchanges and partnerships of various nation
states and peoples; looking at films of a particular diasporic community; or examining
the oeuvres of exiled auteurist filmmakers. However, the criteria of these approaches
are limited and the methodologies are not appropriate to the study of Tibetan cinema.
Even the most inclusive category, national cinema, cannot accommodate all the
disparate elements related to Tibet and the Tibetan diaspora for a number of reasons.
Firstly, since China's invasion, Tibet is not an independent nation or a fully
autonomous region. Tibetans are a minority whether they live in Chinese occupied
Tibet—now outnumbered by Chinese settlers—or in India, Europe or North America.
Secondly, Tibet does not have a national film industry. In Chinese occupied Tibet,
Tibetan filmmakers work under the auspices of the Chinese film industry. The
Tibetan government-in-exile in Dharamsala, India, has instituted a "national film
policy" of sorts by providing funds to establish film archives and document Tibetan
religion and culture on film and video. But can 100,000 exiled Tibetans reflect a truly
national perspective when they represent only a small fraction of the six million still
living under Chinese rule? Thirdly, Tibetans are only responsible for a number of the
films about Tibet. Since Chinese and Western filmmakers also actively produce films
about Tibet, can we say a Tibetan language film set in Tibet is "Tibetan" if the
writers, producers and directors are not Tibetan?
At first glance, a transnational approach focusing on mobility, plurality,
permeable borders and exchanges appears to be more inclusive and productive.
This approach provides us with a critical framework to examine cinemas that fall
between the cracks of the global and the national—those hard to classify practices
emerging from cultural and political specific contexts. It also allows us to explore
collaborations between Westerners and exiled Tibetan filmmakers, giving Tibetans
access to Western technical expertise, financing and distribution networks.
However, transnationalism is inadequate for the study of practices within countries
with oppressive regimes like China. How can we discuss mobility, permeability
and cultural exchange when it is illegal for Tibetans to cross the Himalayas to
Nepal, Bhutan or India, and the government places restrictions on collaborations
with foreigners?
Given that it is problematic to classify Tibetan cinema as national or even
transnational cinema, Hamid Naficy's category of "accented cinema" appears at
first glance as a viable alternative. By focusing on prevailing cinematic modes
among exilic and diasporic filmmakers, his approach provides a framework to
discuss filmmakers who are so "deterritorialized", liminal or marginalized within
their host countries that their films do not—or cannot—exemplify a mainstream or
national perspective. However, this approach fails on two fronts. The first is due
to Naficy's insistence on creating a genre of "accented cinema" which connects a
disparate international group of filmmakers—Abid Med Hondo, Ang Lee, Atom
Egoyan, to name a few— by a recognizable "group style". Since not all diasporic
films conform to Naficy's criteria, including those made by Norbu and Chokling, it
is unclear whether these films can be classified as "accented" films. This apparent
8
Hamid Naficy, An Accented Cinema: Exile and Diaspora Filmmaking (New Jersey: Princeton
University Press, 2001), 21.
14
willingness to ignore any anomalies severely undermines Naficy's approach, at
least for the purposes of this thesis. The second and main drawback is its secular
criteria. Although Naficy acknowledges the importance of examining other
determinants such as ethnicity, language, gender and social formations, he
practically ignores religion. This elision cannot be regarded as an inconsequential
oversight since religion is a dynamic and important marker of identity in many
exilic or diasporic communities. Hence, this methodology is counterproductive for
a thesis examining the multidimensional role of Buddhism in cinematic depictions
of Tibetan culture.
An extensive search of numerous databases yields little in the way of film
studies scholarship of non-theistic religions in cinema despite the fact that it is an
area of study worthy of our attention. Extant scholarship on Central and East
Asian film tends to be written by religious scholars, such as Winfried Corduan's
examination of East Asian religions in Hong Kong martial arts films and Francisca
Cho's articles on Buddhism in Asian films. Worthy of note is her recent essay
exploring the parallels of cinematic illusion and Buddhism's "life-as-dream adage",
thus rendering film "a natural medium" for imparting Buddhist lessons.10 Only a
handful of film scholars have broken with the convention of overlooking the
Buddhist themes, attitudes and aesthetic sensibilities that permeate Asian cinemas.
Kathe Geist has attempted to situate Yasujiro Ozu's film Tokyo Story (Japan, 1953)
9
10
Winfried Corduan, "Bottled Water from the Fragrant Harbour," Faith Film and Philosophy^ Eds.
R. Douglas Geivett and James S. Spiegel (Downer's Grove Illinois: IVP Academic, 2007), 225-240.
Francisca Cho, "Buddhism", The Routledge Companion to Religion and Film, ed. John Lyden (London
and New York: Routledge Taylor and Francis Group, 2009), 162-177.
15
within Zen Buddhist aesthetics. She posits that Buddhism has been absorbed by
Japanese culture—thought, behaviour and institutions—to such an extent that a
Zen Buddhist aesthetic also informs Ozu's films, despite his disavowal that his
films were Zen-like.11 Also noteworthy is the work of Rachel Dwyer on the
centrality of Hinduism in Hindi films, and the illuminating analysis of religion in
South Asian cinema by cultural studies scholar Patrick Colm Hogan.
While Dwyer concentrates on the religious genres of Hindi film, Hogan examines
cross-cultural patterns or prototypes to facilitate an understanding of religious aspects
of Indian cinema, employing cognitive theory to universalize those that, at first view,
appear to be culturally specific. In spite of being the result of substantial research,
these approaches are not entirely appropriate for my goal of understanding how
Buddhism informs films about Tibet. There is not a substantial body of feature films
dealing with Tibet to conduct an extensive overview as Dwyer and Hogan have done,
or to explore the emergence and development of religious film genres as Dwyer has
done. Hogan's approach is perhaps more fitting for a small corpus of films, but his
assertion that there are essentially three universal meta-narratives is problematic for
two reasons. On the one hand, the Tibetan world view and culture are shaped by
Vajrayana Buddhism, a forbidding geography and centuries of relative isolation, and
often defies universal and absolute definitions. On the other hand, Tibetan music,
visual-and performing arts have largely been devotional; their aesthetics, themes,
11
Kathe Geist, "Buddhism in Tokyo Story," Ozu 's Tokyo Story, ed. David Desser (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1997), 102.
16
iconography and subjects are designed to facilitate a specific religious experience and,
in all likelihood, are not universal.
In light of the paucity of suitable film studies methodologies, I opted for following
the framework outlined by theologian John Lyden. Not quite a methodology, this
approach can be described as a set of guidelines requiring scholars to identify their
personal and cultural biases in order to avoid the pitfalls of relativism and moral
judgements. Calling for an unbiased and inclusive alternative to the theological and
ideological approaches of religion and films studies scholars that tend towards pre-set
readings of religious films, Lyden proposes that we "find the religious voice of the
film itself before critiquing it.
Lyden posits that we should equate film to religion,
understanding it on its own terms by looking at "how it develops its own distinctive
forms of myths, morals, and rituals" and objectively understand how it "functions
for people as a worldview, a system of values".14 We do not have to agree with Lyden
that film is like religion as long as we recognize that we have to critically engage with
the films and seek to understand each one's unique message. By following Lyden's
suggestion and focusing on the films themselves and their religious messages, we can
analyse themes, symbolism and aesthetics relatively unencumbered by personal
agendas and biases.
Taking another cue from Lyden and identifying my own personal bias, I must
admit being drawn to these four films—The Cup, Travellers and Magicians, Milarepa
12
13
14
John C. Lyden, Film as Religion, Myths Morals and Rituals (New York and London: New York
University Press, 2003), 34.
Ibid., 34.
Ibid., 134.
17
and Kundun—because of their profound spirituality. From the outset, this project
sought to discover whether these films express a distinctly Buddhist ethos or how they
fit within Buddhist culture. To achieve my objective, I surveyed the diverse body of
films dealing with Tibet in order to provide a context for the work of Norbu, Chokling
and Scorsese. After having ascertained the unsuitability of most film studies
scholarship for this thesis, I used the four films and selected works on Buddhism as
primary sources to conduct an in-depth study of these feature films. This approach
enabled me to explore how elements of Buddhism are expressed through cinematic
language, themes and narrative structure. I primarily focused on how the films refer
simultaneously to material and non-material realms, and how they evoke traditional
arts forms—thangkas (wall hangings) and storytelling—used by Tibetans to express
their devotion and connect with the Buddha's teachings. Moreover, I explored how
Norbu and Chokling, who as Tibetan exiles and lamas, are well versed in the precepts
and traditions of Buddhism, use cinema to promulgate a Buddhist message to scores
of people who have never been exposed to the Dharma. Similarly, I examined how
Martin Scorsese uses cinematic language and Tibetan Buddhist rituals and prophesies
to give his film Kundun a powerful spiritual complexity that few foreign films on
Tibet have matched.
A Brief Outline of the Chapters
Chapter One provides a cursory survey of films about Tibet and is organized into
three arbitrary categories: documentaries by Western filmmakers; documentaries made
by Tibetans; and finally, short films and feature length films by Tibetans and non-
18
Tibetans. It is designed with two objectives in mind: to argue that Tibetan Buddhism is
the main point of intersection for all the divergent perspectives that make up the corpus
of films pertaining to Tibet; and to contextualize the films I examine in this thesis.
Chapter Two deals with two feature films by Khyentse Norbu: The Cup and
Travellers and Magicians. Its aim is to illustrate how Buddhism provides a solid
spiritual foundation that enables the characters to navigate modernity and change.
Consideration is also given to how Buddhism informs the aesthetic of the film, and
how cinematic devices—visual motifs, sound bridges, camera focus—sustain the
film's Buddhist themes and message.
Chapter Three explores how Milarepa and Kundun allude to a uniquely Tibetan
multidimensional concept of reality and esoteric elements of Buddhism. Drawing on
a rich visual and literary tradition to retell Milarepa's story cinematically, Chokling
uses a formalist aesthetic style to visually represent Milarepa's state of mind—his
perception and experience of an unseen, but very real, dimension that Tibetans
believe is only accessible through the mind. In Kundun, Scorsese intercuts the Dalai
Lama's escape from Tibet with rituals of a Tibetan Buddhist practice called the
Kalachakra initiation. The inserted segments allude to a Tibetan prophesy,
illustrating how Tibetans imbricate the ordinary and extraordinary, the present and
the past, and are used to explain how Scorsese uses cinematic language to depict a
Tibetan Buddhist worldview that is complex, captivating and magical.
The conclusion addresses the audience reception of Milarepa and Kundun to
determine whether their projection of a multifaceted Tibetan Buddhist worldview
renders them difficult for Western viewers. It also touches upon the popularity of
19
religious films with movie goers in general, to begin to understand how religious
films are received. Religious films speak to a spiritual need felt by many, as film
scholars, it behoves us to understand how this is accomplished.
20
CHAPTER ONE
Tibet and Buddhism in the Cinema: A Survey of Divergent Perspectives
Looking at the body of films regarding Tibet, it quickly becomes apparent that its
most salient feature is diversity. One is struck by the disparity of the filmmakers and the
conditions of film production. There are the exiled Tibetan filmmakers, often procuring
financing, distribution, and film crews from international sources and screening their
films at international film festivals. There are a handful of indigenous Tibetans residing
in Chinese occupied Tibet, articulating the Tibetan experience of living under Chinese
rule. And finally, there are the Chinese and Western filmmakers making films about
Tibet for domestic and international audiences. The types of films are no less diverse.
There are documentaries and feature films that focus on Tibetans in Tibet, Tibetans
living in exile, the Dalai Lama, the political situation, or aspects of Tibetan Buddhism.
This diversity poses a challenge to any attempt to formulate a single approach to examine
this body of work in its entirety. Restricted by the comparatively narrow scope of this
thesis, I have only been able to conduct a limited survey, drawing from an extensive list
of films about Tibet posted on the internet by history professor Tom Grunfeld. In this
chapter, I contextualize this relatively contemporary corpus of films, most produced in
the 1990s and 2000s, by providing information about the films themselves, and the
conditions of production, circulation and exhibition. It is the ultimate aim of this chapter
to demonstrate that Buddhism is the main point of intersection for all of the divergent
perspectives on Tibet found in this corpus of films.
21
Buddhism was so thoroughly embedded in Tibetan culture before the Chinese
invasion—affecting social hierarchies, the arts, education, medicine, even the political
system—to the point where it is virtually impossible for any film about Tibet or the
Tibetan diaspora not to refer to Buddhism. Even a documentary focusing on political
dissent in Tibet would have to touch upon some aspect of Buddhism, because dissent
inside Tibet is mostly organized and carried out by nuns and monks who are guided by
the Buddhist principles of non-violence. Furthermore, Chinese officials have used
cinema and television to attack Buddhism and the Dalai Lama as part of a large scale
effort to promote a secular communist agenda. Despite Tibetan resistance, Chinese
efforts have partially succeeded since Buddhism's influence is gradually being
diminished, thus spurring Tibetan filmmaker Pema Tseden to subtly expose China's
destructive cultural policies in Tibet, by making Buddhism a gauge in his films—a way
to measure Tibetan's declining religious devotion and their disappearing culture. Even
though Buddhism is addressed in multiple ways, reflecting diverse perspectives, the
following survey demonstrates that examining the role of Buddhism is the only
comprehensive and inclusive approach to this diverse body of work.
A Short Survey of Films about Tibet
Films that focus on Tibet and/or the Tibetan diaspora can be divided into three
somewhat arbitrary categories: documentaries by Western filmmakers; documentaries
made by Tibetans, most living in exile; and short films and feature length films by
Tibetans and non-Tibetans. According the extensive list of over 800 titles of films,
videos and TV programs compiled and posted on the internet by history professor,
22
Tom Grunfeld, documentaries make up the majority of films and videos that focus on
Tibet. However, there is a dearth of documentaries originating from China—less than
twenty titles on Grunfeld's list. Primarily screened on Tibetan television to celebrate the
"liberation" of the Tibetan Autonomous Region by Chinese forces, an extensive search
on the internet reveals that most of the titles are unavailable internationally. There is one
notable exception: Tibet Diary (Duffy Wang, USA, 2004), a documentary for PBS
featuring two Americans, Katy and Moge, who embark on a 10-day visit to Tibet. After
enumerating the benefits of the Chinese occupation several days into their stay, Moge,
concludes the documentary by saying: "I'm not at all sure that Tibet needs to be an
independent state, and I'm not the least bit convinced that most Tibetans even want
that." As the pair ruminates about the lives of Tibetans, their comments often reiterate
the Chinese government's official rhetoric—that Tibet has profited by China's
modernizing and progressive presence—and perhaps it is for this reason that a free and
complete version of the documentary is available on multiple Chinese news/information
websites.
Tibet Diary is an anomaly in portraying its subjects' willingness to even consider the
legitimacy of the Chinese government's colonialist position. The survey I conducted
suggests that the majority of documentaries produced by Tibetans and Westerners are
critical of the Chinese occupation. Indeed, an in-depth exploration of all the
documentaries available internationally, including foreign language films not on
1
2
Tom Grunfeld, "Films and Video on Tibet". Last updated November 1, 2010.
http://www7.esc.edu/tgrunfeld/tgrunfeld.tibetfilms.html (accessed December 2010).
The film is available on YouTube to view in segments. An uninterrupted version is available at
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=278503142787331149#.
23
Grunfeld's list, is necessary to determine whether a unified, pro-Tibetan, proindependence, anti-Chinese bias is a dominant position. Moreover, the fact that the vast
majority of the documentaries on Grunfeld's list are either in English or have English
subtitles suggests they are chiefly marketed to Western audiences for the purpose of
generating awareness about Tibetan culture and religion and soliciting international
support for Tibetan autonomy or independence.
Another interesting dimension of the documentaries and their reception in the West is
that a large number of them are Western productions. The 300 documentaries, videos and
TV programs (including interviews on news programs) on Grunfeld's list suggest that
Tibet has become an abiding interest for many Westerners. We must, therefore, take into
consideration that Tibetan culture, religion and politics are being mediated by countless
Western-made documentaries, and as such could be reinforcing cultural stereotypes or
other commonly held assumptions. Without a comprehensive and ongoing study, we
have no way of determining the impact of cultural differences, shifts in cultural
perspectives and assumptions informing the multifaceted documentaries by ethnic
Tibetans and Westerners. In addition, such a study would need to take into account all
the disparate players—the Chinese government, the colonized Tibetan population, the
exiled population in India, the diaspora living elsewhere, foreign converts to Tibetan
Buddhism, and finally, a curious international community—because their idiosyncratic
perspectives inform, at least in part, the documentaries about Tibet.
The task of detecting cultural biases within the 20 or so feature films is much less
daunting because of their comparatively small number. While each film has a slightly
different focus, Tibetan Buddhism is presented as an indispensable religious tradition
24
imbued with valuable and timeless insights that can benefit the modern world. With the
exceptions of Milarepa (Neten Chokling, India, 2006) and Himalaya (Eric Valli,
France/Nepal, 1999), the feature films tend to show Tibetan culture, and by extension
Tibetan Buddhism, as being assailed by foreign cultures, modernity and exile. Acutely
aware of the difficulties implicit in the task at hand, I will seek to provide in the
following pages a brief, provisional yet hopefully useful overview of the films that focus
on Tibet or the Tibetan culture.
Documentaries
The documentaries that appear on Grunfeld's list can be loosely grouped into a
number of categories: public talks or teachings delivered by the Dalai Lama; biographies
of the Dalai Lama; the teachings or biographies of other prominent Buddhist masters;
Tibetans in exile; and Tibetans under occupation.
Grunfeld has catalogued approximately 100 documentaries which either focus on the
Dalai Lama's life or his teachings, many of which are available on DVD and sold
through distribution companies or independent retailers such as Snow Lion
Publications. Of these 100 titles, half are film, video or digital records of events, often
in the tradition of the Lumiere brothers' "actualities". They are minimally edited
recordings of the Dalai Lama offering public talks, rudimentary or advanced instruction
for specific Buddhist practices, or performing Buddhist rituals like the Kalachakra
3
Snow Lion, situated in Ithaca, New York, is one of the largest independent book publishers specializing
in Tibetan Buddhist topics, including core Buddhist texts. It is also a major retailer of DVDS on Tibet
and Tibetan Buddhism, listing over 100 titles, which can be purchased via the internet through its
website www.snowlionpub.com.
25
initiation. The remaining are biographies of the Dalai Lama that conform to more
standard documentary practices by incorporating voice-over narration, interviews and
complex styles of editing.
The third category, teachings or biographies of prominent Tibetan masters, can also be
divided into two separate subgroups: instructional or biographical documentaries. One
popular English speaking Tibetan Lama, Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche, specializes in
instructional documentaries and offers about 20 DVDs on Snow Lion's website,
including one called Atisha's Lamp for the Path to Enlightenment. Snow Lion's write-up
describing the DVD as: "Almost like attending a retreat, this 4-camera, live-mix DVD
provides 21 hours of great teaching", illustrates the didactic role of these documentaries
in offering Westerners an opportunity to receive Buddhist teachings from highly
respected Buddhist masters. In contrast, the director of Milarepa, Neten Chokling's
second film, a documentary entitled Brilliant Moon: Glimpses ofDilgo Khyentse
Rinpoche (India/USA, 2010), incorporates biographical material with interviews to
develop a portrait of a one of Tibet's most illustrious Buddhist teachers Dilgo Khyentse
Rinpoche. Chokling's 56-minute film about his former teacher is jointly narrated by
Richard Gere and Lou Reed and features interviews with the Dalai Lama and illustrious
Buddhist masters like Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche. Unlike the instructional
documentaries which are rarely screened publically, Brilliant Moon was screened at
4
http://www.snowlionpub.com/search.php7cat_icH147
26
several public events and film festivals over the summer of 2010 before it was released
as a DVD.5
The fourth category pertains to documentaries about Tibetans living in exile, mostly in
Dharamsala in Northern India, the site of the Tibetan government-in-exile. One example
is Tashi Wangchuk and Tsultrim Dorjee's Miss Tibet in Exile (India, 2008). Made by
their production company Tibet Motion Pictures and Arts,6 the film follows the creation
of the Miss Tibet beauty pageant in Dharamsala. Another is Following Kunsel (India,
2006), written by Jamyang Dorjee and directed by Thupten Chakrishar, which follows an
eleven-year-old Indian-born Tibetan singer, Tenzin Kunsel, as she performs
internationally.7 There is also the 34-minute documentary called Shining Spirit: The
Musical of Journey ofJamyang Yeshi (Karen Mc Diarmid, Canada, 2009), produced by a
Canadian organization called the Tara Cafe Project which supports Tibetan musicians
living in Tibet and in exile. It documents a Canadian named Mark Unrau recording
music performed by a Tibetan family still living in Tibet and the subsequent efforts of
two of their exiled family members, Jamyang Yeshi and his brother Tsundue, using the
tapes to make a music CD called Shining Spirit in a Canadian studio. The film has been
screened at the Kathmandu International Mountain Film Festival and the Telluride
6
7
Brilliant Moon: A Glimpse ofDilgo Khyentse was picked up by Kino Lorber, an independent film
distributor, in August 2010 and is distributed and marketed as a DVD through their Alive Mind
Collection. The film is also available through Snow Lion Publishers.
Tibet Motion Pictures and Arts was also responsible for two digital feature length comedies, Phun Anu
Thanu (Two Exile Brothers, India, 2006) and Richard Gere is My Hero (India, 2007). One can still
visit the production company's website www.tibetanfilm.com even though it hasn't produced any titles
in the last three or four years.
Tenzin Kunsel's official website is http://kunsel.youngtibet.com/bio/html.
27
Mountain Film Festival which also featured a live musical performance by Jamyang
Yeshi.8
Remarkably, there are more films about Tibetans living in Tibet than about the
Tibetan diaspora despite the Chinese authorities' prohibitions against Tibetan and
Western filmmakers. Filmmakers also face the challenge of protecting Tibetans living
under Chinese rule from any repercussions resulting from their participation in films
critical of the Chinese regime. For the documentary Leaving Fear Behind (Tibet, 2008,)
amateur filmmakers, Dhondup Wangchen and Golog Jigme (also known as Jigme
Gyatso) gave their Tibetans subjects the option of covering their faces or being out of
focus when they spoke frankly about potentially seditious topics such as the Dalai Lama,
Chinese oppression, or the looming 2008 Beijing Olympics. Yet only a small portion of
the Tibetans interviewed for the 25-minute documentary chose anonymity. Although the
Western press has not reported whether any of the film's subjects suffered negative
consequences for their participation, it is known that Chinese authorities arrested the
filmmakers shortly after they successfully smuggled the interviews out of Tibet.
A number of documentaries track the journey of exiled Tibetans returning to Tibet to
assess the changes to their homeland, such as Journey Inside Tibet (Tom Vendetti, USA,
1998), which traces the trip of Lama Tenzin accompanied by Canadian flutist Paul
Horn.9 A Stranger in my Native Land (India, 1998), by the married filmmaking team of
Ritu Sarin and Tenzing Sonam, is another example. Sarin shot the footage as she and
8
9
Shining Spirit is available to purchase on DVD with an accompanying CD on The Tara Cafe Project's
website at http://www.taracafeproject.ca.
The film was originally televised on the American public network PBS, but has since been repackaged
and is now included with the film's sequel entitled Mount Kailash: Return to Tibet. It is available for
purchase on Amazon's website.
28
Sonam, an Indian-born Tibetan, travelled across Tibet to visit his extended family and
the city of Lhasa, the former seat of the Dalia Lama's government. The film is largely a
personal account that chronicles the radical changes implemented by the Chinese to
either assimilate or marginalize the Tibetan population.
The systematic marginalization of Tibetans has undoubtedly galvanized many in the
international community to support Tibetan efforts to maintain their culture, religion and
language. Notably, there is a contingent of Western musicians and Hollywood actors
who have supported various projects advocating democratic rights and cultural freedom
for Tibetans. In 1998, the non-profit organization, International Campaign for Tibet
which tracks and publicizes China's human rights violations in Tibet, produced a oneminute public service announcement called Why are We Silent? (Robin Garthwait, USA)
Commemorating the 50th Anniversary of the U.S. Declaration of Human Rights, it
features, among others, Harrison Ford, Richard Gere, Goldie Hawn, Alanis Morissette,
Julia Roberts and Sting reading from the declaration. With the exception of Julia
Roberts, these luminaries have altruistically worked on a number of projects to publicize
Tibetan causes. Goldie Hawn, along with actor and political activist Peter Coyote,
narrated a 30- minute documentary, Missing in Tibet (Robin Garthwait and Dan Griffin,
USA, 1996). Screened internationally at film festivals and aired in the United States on
PBS television stations, it traces the events that led to the arrest of Tibetan musicologist
Ngawang Choepel. Harrison Ford has narrated several documentaries one of which was
a Mustang: the Hidden Kingdom (Tony Millar, USA, 1994) that aired on the Discovery
Channel and explored the state of Tibetan Buddhism in the Himalayan region. Ford's
more recent contribution was the narration for the feature length Dalai Lama
29
Renaissance (Khashyar Darvich, USA, 2007) documenting a weeklong conference of
Western intellectuals under the auspices of the Dalai Lama. Martin Sheen, Susan
Sarandon, Tim Robbins and Ed Harris lent their voices to the documentary Tibet: Cry of
the Snow Lion (Tom Peosay, aka Tom Piozet, USA, 2004). Kris Kristofferson narrated
the aforementioned Journey Inside Tibet and John Cleese narrated the short documentary
47 Years in Tibet (Camilo Gallardo, UK). Arguably, Hollywood stars have been
responsible for generating a sub-category of celebrity narrated documentaries pertaining
to Tibet.
However, no Hollywood star has been more closely associated with Tibetan causes
than Richard Gere. In 1993, in front of an international audience of millions, Gere risked
hurting his career by straying from his script at the 65th Academy Awards and
extemporaneously urging the Chinese leader at the time, Deng Xiaoping, to relinquish
China's control over Tibet. As a long-standing convert to Tibetan Buddhism, Gere has
worked tirelessly to heighten international awareness about the plight of Tibetans,
establishing the Gere Foundation10 which, among other things, awards small grants to
organizations and groups committed to preserving Tibetan culture. His efforts extend to
assisting filmmakers, often providing the narration for documentaries. He has been
involved in no less than eight documentaries, some of which have been televised on PBS
such as Destroyer of Illusion (Richard Kohn, USA, 1986) and Mustang: Journey of
Transformation (Will Parrinello, USA, 2009). Not all of his projects are for general
viewership, such as the instructional 2-DVD set of fundamental Buddhist practices,
10
11
The foundation website is: http://gerefoundation.org/.
Destroyer of Illusion was re-released as a DVD in 2006 by Festival Media and is now available for
purchase on their website http://wwwbuddhistfilmfoundation.org/festival-media/destroyer-of-illusion.
30
entitled Discovering Buddhism (Christina Lundberg, USA, 2004) which he narrates with
Keanu Reeves.
He was also executive producer for the fiction feature film Dreaming
Lhasa (Sarin and Sonam, India, 2004).
Gere also sits on the advisory council of the Buddhist Film Foundation (BFF), an
organization based in Los Angeles which is "committed to presenting, archiving and
preserving Buddhist-themed or Buddhist inspired cinema of all kinds from all over the
world."13 The BFF also sponsors the International Buddhist Film Festival held in various
cities to provide venues for filmmakers dealing with Buddhist subjects or themes to
screen their works internationally. Film funding is another activity of the BFF: it accepts
proposals from filmmakers, solicits outside funding by offering tax-deductions to donors
and supplies limited funds to translate, subtitle and/or master films in the final stages of
production.
In addition to BFF, the Kham Film Project has a mandate to assist fledgling
filmmakers. Working with a small group of partners like the film division of Columbia
University School of the Arts, this organization supports the efforts of students and
monks from four separate communities in eastern Tibet to produce short films.14
Similarly The Meridian Trust,15 a London based archive of video, film, and digitalized
Discovering Buddhism is available to purchase on Snow Lion's website at www.snowlionpub.com.
Buddhist Film Foundation website: www.buddhistfilmfoundation.org/filmmakers/call-for-entries/
(accessed December 2010).
The short films are available to purchase on the Kham Film Project's website:
http://www.thekhamfilmproject.org/purchase.php.
The Meridian Trust is a charitable organization founded in 1985 at the request of its patron, the Dalai
Lama, to preserve Tibetan Buddhist culture on film and video. According to its website, it has archived
2,400 hours of footage of prominent Tibetan lamas imparting Buddhist teachings which it makes
available to filmmakers and Buddhist practitioners. The Trust's DVDs are available through
international distribution networks (including Snow Lion). The Meridian Trust's website is
http ://meridian-trust. org.
31
footage of Tibetan Buddhist teachers, has produced a substantial number of instructional
or devotional DVDs available through an international distribution network. Even
though the Trust has not produced many documentaries for the film festival circuit, it is
worth noting that it enlisted Ritu Sarin and Tenzing Sonam to make their first major
documentary The Reincarnation ofKhensur Rinpoche (UK/India, 1991), effectively
launching their careers.16 Funding opportunities are also provided to filmmakers by large
established organizations of prominent Lamas. For instance, Neten Chokling's
previously mentioned Brilliant Moon was produced by the deceased Dilgo Khyentse
Rinpoche's sizeable organization to commemorate the 100th anniversary of his birth.17
The Pundarika Foundation, Tsokyni Rinpoche's non-profit organization, has used its
considerable resources to fund Victress Hitchcock's Blessings: The Tsokyni Nangchen
Nuns of Tibet; in return, half of the film's earnings go to one of the foundation's
beneficiaries, the Nangchen nuns.
Documentaries, as well as fictional feature films by Tibetans, do not generally benefit
from extensive theatrical exhibition and distribution. They are more likely to be screened
at international film festivals, universities and repertory theatres, but also at specialized
festivals such as the Toronto Tibetan Film Festival, held in April in 2010, and sponsored
in part by grassroots organizations supporting Tibetan autonomy or Tibetan
independence. However, screening films on the subject of Tibet can often raise the ire of
Chinese authorities. In January, 2010, Chinese government officials withdrew two of
16
17
18
According to their website at http://whitecranefilmsxorn/films/films-on-his-holiness-the-dalai-lama,
Sonam and Sarin worked with the Meridian Trust to document a number of visits the Dalai Lama made
to Britain between 1987 and 1990 for the Trust's archives.
Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche's website www.shechen.org and the film's website is
www.brilliantmoonmovie.com.
Victress Hitchcock's website is www.chariotvideos.com/documentarv/index.shtml.
32
their submitted films—Nanjing'. Nanjing! (Lu Chuan, 2009) 19 and Quick, Quick, Slow
(Ye Kai, 2009)—from the Palm Springs Film Festival to protest the festival's screening
of Tenzing Sonam and Ritu Sarin's recent documentary, The Sun Behind the Clouds:
Tibet's Struggle for Freedom (India, 2009).20
China has done its upmost, both internationally and at home, to restrict the number of
films that address its systematic and effective subjugation of Tibetans and their religion
and culture, and intimidate or punish the supporters and producers of the films. Chinese
authorities exert pressure on high profile Hollywood stars to silence criticism. Richard
Gere, Brad Pitt and Harrison Ford are among a number of stars who have been banned
from China or Tibet for publicly opposing China's repressive measures in Tibet or for
supporting film projects sympathetic to the Dalai Lama. Within its borders, the Chinese
government reacts punitively when filmmakers are critical of China's Tibet policies. It
was reported that one of the makers of the previously mentioned Leaving Fear Behind,
Golog Jigme, was tortured when he was first arrested in March 2008, and in January
2010, Dhondup Wangchen was sentenced to six years in prison.
Even film projects not
actively subversive or oppositional can generate severe punishment. The aforementioned
Ngawang Choephel, a musicologist and director of Tibet in Song (2009), was detained by
Chinese officials in August 1995 and was later found guilty of "espionage and counter19
20
21
22
Nanjing! Nanjing! was released internationally as City of Life and Death.
Cratke, "Chinese government fails to block Tibet screening at major festival in US", International
Campaign for Tibet, January 7, 2010. http://www.savetibet.org/media-center/ict-news-reports/chinesegoverment-fails-block-tibet-film-screening-major-festival-us (accessed July 6, 2010).
Lobsang Wangyal "Labrang monk Jigme Gyatso re-arrested", Tibet Sun. March 18, 2009.
http://www.tibetsun.com/archive/2009/03/18/labrang-monk-jigme-gyatso-re-arrested/ (accessed
January 26, 2011).
Jane Macartney, "Film-maker Dhondup Wangchen jailed for letting Tibetans tell their tale", The Times,
January 8, 2010. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article6978798.ece (accessed
July 22, 2010).
33
revolutionary activities" for videotaping Tibetans performing traditional folk music.
He was sentenced to 18 years in prison, but was released in 2002 after serving six and a
half years because of poor health.24 Consequently, any film—by Western or Tibetan
filmmakers—critical of China's repressive policies towards Tibet or openly supportive of
the Dalai Lama will have to overcome Chinese attempts to obstruct it.
A Survey of Feature Films by Non-Tibetans
Despite China's repressive measures, the cause of Tibetan autonomy was prominently
championed on several fronts in the West in the 1990s and a number of feature films
representing Tibet were released: Little Buddha (Bernardo Bertolucci, Italy, 1993);
Kundun (Martin Scorsese, USA, 1997); Seven Years in Tibet (Jean-Jacques Annaud,
USA, 1997) and Himalaya. In varying degrees, all these films deal with the prospect of
Tibetan culture and its unique brand of Buddhism either being eradicated by the
authoritarian and hegemonic policies of China or being attenuated by foreign influences.
Kundun and Seven Years in Tibet illustrate the blatant imperialism of Chinese
aggression and its deleterious impact on Tibetan culture. While both films deal with the
fourteenth Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, and Tibet's responses to the Chinese invasion,
they avoid detailed enunciations of the tenets of Tibetan Buddhism. Written by Melissa
Mathison, Kundun could be defined as a hagiographic depiction of the Dalai Lama's
early life until he seeks asylum in India in 1959. It delineates the Dalai Lama's crucible
of reluctantly assuming power as an inexperienced teenager to ameliorate Chinese
23
Amnesty International website. www.amnestv.org/en/library/info/ASA 17/006/2002/ PDF download,
(accessed August 18, 2010).
34
aggression and control, and possesses some notable features that will be discussed more
thoroughly in Chapter Three.
Seven Years in Tibet takes a similar approach by focusing on the personal challenges
of the main protagonists, at the expense of explaining key elements of Tibetan Buddhism
to uninformed viewers. However, as noted in the introduction of this thesis, it moulds
Tibetan Buddhism into a peculiar blend of humanist psychology and Eastern mysticism.
The film is based on German mountain climber, Heinrich Harrer's memoir of the same
name, and details his adventures in Tibet: escaping from British internment camps; his
ordeals surviving the hostile Himalayan environment; and his role as the adolescent Dalai
Lama's unofficial tutor. The film differs from the book on a couple of key points. Unlike
the portrait Harrer paints of himself in the book, the film portrays him as troubled, driven
and uncaring. He is intent on climbing mountains even if it means abandoning his
pregnant wife, using people to his advantage and going to physical extremes to attain his
goals. Harrer's estrangement from his wife and young son—prominent in the film—is
never mentioned in the book where he recounts instead his adventures, the ethnography
of Tibet and his relatively short stint teaching the Dalai Lama about the West. By
focusing on Harrer's personal transformation into a compassionate human being and his
informal relationship with the Dalai Lama, the film suggests that he is as much the Dalai
Lama's pupil as he is the Dalai Lama's teacher. Thus, the portrayal accentuates the
film's humanist message that Tibetans can learn about and benefit from Western
technology and scientific knowledge and in turn, the West can learn compassion and
personal actualization from the Dalai Lama, Buddhism and Tibetan society.
35
That Seven Years in Tibet and Kundun were released the same year is not a
coincidence as both films reflect the West's heightened public interest in the Dalai Lama
during the 1990s. After the Tibetan leader won the prestigious Nobel Prize for Peace in
1989, many Westerners began taking an avid interest in him—reading his numerous
books, attending his speaking engagements, and following news reports about his
meetings with international political leaders. In this period, Tibetan autonomy became a
cause celebre in the West: the Dalai Lama became its venerated figurehead and the
popular Tibetan Freedom Concert festivals raised aid money internationally for Tibet
between 1996 and 2001.
Equally relevant is how Seven Years in Tibet reiterates the Dalai Lama's ethos of pancultural and ecumenical inclusivity—a secularized Tibet Buddhism that he often
disseminates when addressing predominately Western audiences. It is not unusual for
the Dalai Lama to sidestep a discussion about the distinctive characteristics of Tibetan
Buddhism by stating that his religion is kindness. His overall project—to underscore the
universalizing principles of Tibetan Buddhism and religion in general—is evident in the
following statement from one many of his public lectures.
The main aim of different religions is to cultivate positive feelings and increase
positive human qualities, and to reduce the negative ones. Therefore every
major religion teaches us love, compassion, forgiveness and a sense of
brotherhood and sisterhood. Although there are different explanations and
different shades of meaning given to love and compassion, broadly speaking
every faith teaches the same essential thing. And so far, I have found along
with some friends of mine who belong to other religions that through dialogue
and through constantly exchanging our views and experience, we can develop
mutual respect and mutual learning [...] Some of my Christian friends already
36
practise certain Buddhist methods and likewise there are many things we
Buddhists can learn from our Christian brothers and sisters.25
A casual perusal of many of his speeches will find them remarkably free of any mention
of the more shamanic or esoteric aspects of Tibetan Buddhism. He proposes a universal
application of Tibetan Buddhism by repeatedly stressing that people and the world's
religions are essentially the same, and Buddhism's emphasis on inner peace and
compassion can help anyone regardless of whether he or she is Buddhist or not. To the
extent that the Dalai Lama tailors his message to make it comprehensible and palatable
for Westerners, it is not surprising that Seven Years in Tibet similarly offers a more
ecumenical portrait of Buddhism, one which is more in keeping with the Dalai Lama's
humanist message.
However, a closer look at Tibetan Buddhism suggests that it is more multifaceted than
the ecumenical Buddhism the Dalai Lama often promulgates. The Dalai Lama is revered
as a highly skilled Buddhist master and customarily imparts sacred Tibetan Buddhist
teachings like Dzogchen to large gatherings of lamas, monks and lay people. To the
Tibetan Buddhist community, which now includes a substantial number of Westerners,
his knowledge and wisdom are not only profound, accruing from years of academic
study, but also innately esoteric. One simply has to go to Dalai Lama's official website27
and read about the controversy in the Tibetan community regarding the veneration of the
wrathful deity Dorje Shugden (also known as Dolgyal) to see the salient esotericism
25
26
27
The Dalai Lama, Dzogchen: Heart Essence of the Great Perfection, trans. Geshe Thupten Jinpa and
Richard Barron, ed. Patrick Gaffhey (Ithaca and Boulder: Snow Lion Publications, 2004), 225.
Dzogchen, also known as the Heart Essence of the Great Perfection, is a central teaching of the
Nyingma school of Tibetan Buddhism. It was brought to Tibet from India around the eighth century by
one of the founders of Tibetan Buddhism, Padmasambhava.
www.dalailama.com/messages/dolgyal-shugden/his-holiness-advice (accessed July, 2010).
37
characteristic of Tibetan Buddhism.
Hence, the Dalai Lama's religious role within the
Tibetan Buddhist tradition is far more mystical than the more ecumenical and
ambassadorial role he plays in the West.
Arguably, Eric Valli harboured few, if any, reservations about revealing the more
shamanic aspects of Tibetan Buddhism in his film Himalaya. Chronicling the
competition between the old chief Tinle and his younger rival Karma as they race their
caravans southward over the dangerous Himalayan passes, the film documents the way
of life of the Dolpo-pa. Valli clearly intended the film to be an ethnographic depiction of
the threatened culture in the Himalayas by including, for instance, the time-honoured
practice of transporting locally procured salt by yak caravans to Nepal's southern valleys
to trade for food. In the "Making-Of' documentary, Valli addresses the Tibetan cast of
non-actors and tells them, "Your country's culture is [...] melting away like snow under
the sun. If we all work together and do a good job, our children's children, a long time
after we're gone, will be able to see and understand how you lived."
Reflecting the film's ethnographic aims, Valli focuses on the ancient and more arcane
rituals of Buddhism: the lamas perform divinations for a safe departure date for the yak
caravans; the Dolpo-pa chant mantras to provide protection from the demons residing in
the mountain passes; the old chief Tinle performs a divination to accurately predict a
dangerous snowstorm. While Valli risks exoticizing the Dolpo-pa as a backward and
superstitious people, he has also provided a reasonably accurate ethnographic portrayal
28
Dolgyl-Shugden is said to be the malevolent manifestation of a rival of the Fifth Dalai Lama. The
Fourteenth Dalai Lama has strongly urged Tibetan Buddhists to stop propitiating Dolgyal-Shugden,
stating that it is a form of sectarian spirit worship and is "detrimental to the welfare of beings in general
and the Tibetan government headed by the Dalai Lama in particular."
www.dalailama.com/messages/dolgyal-shugden/his-holiness-advice (accessed July, 2010).
38
of Tibetan Buddhism and underscores its centrality in Dolpo-pa life. The film
incorporates numerous extra-narrative sequences of less shamanic and esoteric Buddhist
rituals as well, such as a lama performing funeral rites and an extended scene of lamas
performing ritualistic prayers. Ritualistic practices are also inscribed within the film. At
one point, the film's musical score is a rendition of the renowned sacred mantra of Tibet,
"Om mani padme hung". The film's depiction of Tibetan Buddhism is somewhat
superficial and exoticizing, but it fittingly situates Buddhism as one of the community's
central unifying elements. However, unlike Norbu, Chokling and Scorsese, the directors
examined in Chapters Two and Three, Valli does not creatively employ cinematic
devices to cultivate or reinforce Buddhist themes but focuses instead on plot and
character development.
Unlike Himalaya, Buddhism is central to the narrative and formalistic elements of the
2001 film Samsara, shot in Ladakh with a Tibetan cast by Indian director Pan Nalin.
The film's title is a Sanskrit word which means the "cycle of existence" and is one of
the central tenets of Buddhism, namely, the belief that one can be freed from the cyclical
existence of the births and rebirths of samsara and ultimately find liberation in nirvana
(the cessation of suffering). The film's circular narrative structure—the protagonist's
departure from and return to monastic life—reiterates the notion of samsara. The
protagonist is Tashi, a monk since childhood, who finds himself being pulled by strong
erotic desires that threaten his religious vow of celibacy after he meets a beautiful young
woman named Pema. Once she becomes the object of his desire in a series of powerfully
29
Sanskrit is an ancient, now defunct, Indie language. Tibetan Buddhist texts and terms were originally
translated from Sanskrit.
39
erotic dreams, Tashi renounces his vows and pursues his sexual passions, leaving the
monastery and working on the farm of Pema's father. Soon thereafter, he and Pema
marry, have a family and become wealthy farmers. Eventually, repulsed by his allconsuming lust, Tashi realizes he must abandon his worldly life and return to the
monastery. In a letter to Pema, he explains that his departure mirrors Buddhism's
foundational story of the historical Buddha leaving his wife and child to pursue a
monastic life.
Samsara is an intensely spiritual film, thematically and aesthetically articulating many
of the essential principles of Buddhism. Its formal structure underscores Buddhist
themes. Instances where dream and reality overlap reaffirm the Buddhist tenet that the
powerful passions that we construe as real are in fact illusory. In a key scene, after Tashi
has abandoned Pema, she suddenly and inexplicably appears as he turns a corner. She
tells him that no one ever remembers the name of the Buddha's wife or recounts how she
had to inform their son of his father's departure. Just seconds after Tashi realizes the
pain he has caused and he says that he will return to her, she walks away. Then as she
reaches for the reins of her horse, her image dissolves in a swirl of dust, inferring that not
only is Pema an illusory manifestation of Tashi's overpowering erotic passions, but
concomitantly, his passions are also illusory.
Bernardo Bertolucci's Little Buddha is the most didactic of all the feature films listed
above—unapologetically so. It has two very distinct and simultaneous storylines. The
first one centers on a little American boy in Seattle who is possibly, along with two other
children, the reincarnation of an exiled Tibetan lama. Despite his parents' initial
reluctance, he is taken to Bhutan to be put through a series of tests to ascertain whether
40
he is the lama's reincarnation. The second storyline is the cinematic visualization of a
children's picture book given to the boy to introduce him, and the viewers, to the
essential tenets of Buddhism. It retells the foundational story of the Buddha, including
the details of his birth, his introduction to death and suffering, and finally his struggle to
achieve enlightenment.
The film stands out for its ability to convey the multidimensional aspects of
Buddhism in accordance with Robert Thurman's explanation of "ordinary" and
"extraordinary" perception previously mentioned in the introduction of this thesis. These
two levels of perception are established and underscored by the film's use of two
divergent aesthetic styles, each one representing a different level of perception.
"Ordinary" perception, referring to our perceptions of the material world acquired
through our physical senses, is clearly established in the film's depiction of the boy's
"ordinary" life with his parents in Seattle—he goes to school, does homework, plays
soccer and dresses in jeans—and is stylistically reflected by the cool grey tones that
suffuse the scenes shot in the urban fast-paced Seattle. The camera work is brisk, with
numerous cutaways showing Seattle's monorail, the boy's ultramodern house,
skyscrapers and urban vistas. In sharp contrast, the scenes depicting the Buddha's story
reflect "extraordinary" perception, in other words the reliance on intuition, dreams and
divinations to perceive elements of an unseen and immaterial universe. The transitions to
a mystical place and time are made evident by the formal aesthetics—the languid pace
and golden hues of the scenes—and the narrative depicting the "extraordinary" events
that occur during the scene of the Buddha's birth. Confirming that this is indeed a
magical realm, the film meticulously stages the miracles of his birth: a tree that bends to
41
support the Buddha's mother; his ability to speak and walk moments after his birth; and
the lotus blossoms that spring up in his footsteps. Reinforced by the film's formal
devices, these miracles situate the Buddha's birth in a mythical timeless cosmos in
contradistinction to the little boy's modern life in Seattle.
It is also important to note the film's connection to Khyentse Norbu, who was one of
the religious advisors for the film and the director of The Cup {Phorba,, India, 1999) and
Travellers and Magicians (Bhutan, 2005). The central preoccupation of Little Buddha—
how Tibetan Buddhism can accommodate global integration and modernity as long as
the integrity of the Buddha's teachings is maintained—can also be found in Norbu's
films. Obviously influenced by Bertolucci, Norbu also used distinctive cinematic styles
in Travellers and Magicians to represent the "ordinary" and "extraordinary" dimensions
of Buddhism. This aspect of the film will be discussed at length in Chapter Two.
The documentaries and feature films examined to this point vary widely in their
understanding of Tibetan culture and Tibetan Buddhism. Whereas the instructional
documentaries focus exclusively on Buddhist teachings and practices, the vast majority
of documentaries carefully examine Buddhism's centrality in Tibetan life, with only a
few made by Westerners—Duffy Wang's Tibet Diary—reducing Buddhism to a cultural
artefact of a disappearing culture. The feature films produced by Westerners also vary in
their depictions of Buddhism. Concerned with documenting the culture of the Dolpo-pa
before it disappears, Himalaya, for instance, frequently references Buddhism in relation
to wider social and cultural practices. In contrast, Buddhist themes form the backbone of
Samsara and are reinforced by the film's cinematic elements. The feature films by
42
Tibetan filmmakers also exemplify divergent perspectives on Buddhism, as I will discuss
below.
A Short Survey of Films by Tibetans
The first Tibetan feature length films to be made were Windhorse (Lungta, Paul
Wagner and Thupten Tsering, USA, 1998) and Norbu's The Cup. In the following
decade, a cohort of young directors produced seven more features. Only a few of these
successfully secured international distribution deals, and were screened at small
international film festivals. The Cup may have triggered this spurt of Tibetan film
production since it was widely screened and enjoyed considerable success in the West.
However, along with Norbu's other film, Travellers and Magicians (Bhutan, 2005) and
Neten Chokling's Milarepa, The Cup is an anomaly within this corpus with its profusion
of non-politicized Buddhist themes because it circumvents the issue of the Chinese
occupation entirely.
Interestingly, even the Tibetan feature films that tend towards overt politicization
address Buddhism, and—in varying degrees of intensity—recognize it as an integral part
of the social fabric. Co-directed by an American, Paul Wagner, Windhorse stridently
opposes the Chinese occupation, which is not surprising considering that the film's codirector and co-writer, Thupten Tsering, is a Tibetan activist. Even the circumstances
surrounding the film's production were politically charged. This collaborative effort of
Americans and Tibetans—a number of the crew and the bulk of the cast were Tibetan—
43
was filmed with a three chip digital camera and later transferred to 35mm film,
enabling Western crew members to pose as tourists and clandestinely shoot the majority
of the film's outdoor establishing shots in Lhasa and rural Tibet, in direct contravention
of Chinese government dictates. In the behind-the-scenes-featurette included in the
film's 2005 DVD release, Thupten Tsering states that the filmmakers' intention was to
show candid images of Tibet to a younger generation of the diaspora, many of whom
have never seen Tibet. Wagner asserts in the DVD's featurette documentary that
"through this collaboration with the Tibetan community, we were able to give a little bit
more of an inside[r's] perspective. It's really true that the film has been authored by the
Tibetan people."
Despite Wagner's overarching conclusions about authorship, the film
provides an interesting—and pointedly biased—depiction of the political situation inside
Tibet, and is designed to appeal both to Tibetan and Western audiences.
Windhorse focuses on the impact of the Chinese political apparatus on the youngest
generation of a Tibetan family living since childhood under occupation. It opens with
siblings Dolkar and Dorjee and their cousin Pema playing in their small village when the
police come to their home to summarily execute their grandfather for his political
resistance. The film picks up the story eighteen years later after the family has moved to
Lhasa and depicts how each copes with the repressive occupation. Dolkar has opted for
complete assimilation, becoming a rising pop star and singing Chinese propaganda
songs. Dorjee is unemployed, disillusioned and spends his days playing pool and
drinking beer with his friends. Pema, who has become a nun, is the most politically
30
Windhorse. Directors Paul Wagner and Thupten Tsering. 1998. New Yorker Video, 2005. DVD:
Featurette documentary.
44
engaged and is arrested by the Chinese secret police for defiantly shouting the slogan,
"Tibet belongs to Tibetans! Long live the Dalai Lama!" in a crowded Lhasa market.
When the Tibetan guards overhear her singing a Tibetan protest song in her cell, they
brutally beat her and then release her to her family to die. The remainder of the film
tracks the politicization and resistance of Dolkar and Dorjee as they try to smuggle a
videotape of Pema's account of her torture to India.
The film situates Pema's monastery as the main axis of resistance, effectively turning
the practice of Tibetan Buddhism into a political act of defiance. At one point, early in
the film, the monastery is put under strict orders not to display or possess any pictures of
the "counter-revolutionary Dalai Lama." The edict also forbids any thoughts of Tibet's
spiritual and temporal leader. During a surprise inspection in the middle of the night,
Pema and her roommate tear down the banned pictures of the Dalai Lama in their room,
but when the search uncovers a single photo of the Buddhist leader, the nun who admits
responsibility is arrested and thrown into jail. Windhorse situates Tibetan dissent largely
within the monastic community to emphasize its non-violent and non-threatening nature.
Generally speaking though, the film is more concerned with spurring the Tibetan lay
community and Westerners to political action than it is in portraying spiritual essence of
Tibetan Buddhism.
Another political feature-length film is Dreaming Lhasa (India/UK, 2004)—a rarity
for its directors, Tibetan exile Tenzing Sonam and his wife Ritu Sarin, who are better
known for their documentaries like the recent The Sun Behind the Clouds (India, 2009).
Dreaming Lhasa's primary focus is the Tibetan struggle for political autonomy; however
Buddhism still occupies a prominent place in the film. Taking place in Northern India, it
45
follows a young American-Tibetan woman Karma who is interviewing nuns and monks
for a documentary she is making about torture in Chinese prisons inside Tibet.
One of
her interview subjects is Dhondup, a former monk who wishes to return home to Tibet
after he delivers a charm box at the behest of his deceased mother to her friend Loga
whom he has never met. The film is essentially a road movie as Karma and Dhondup
travel in Northern India to meet with Tibetans—some of whom have been engaged in the
resistance against China—in order to learn of Loga's whereabouts. Buddhism is
frequently inscribed in the film with numerous shots of prayer flags and prayer wheels.
Buddhist rituals—a monk filling water into bowls on a shrine, a funeral ceremony—
punctuate the narrative, appearing regularly and infusing expositional scenes with a
uniquely Tibetan religiosity. Buddhism is so central to the Indo-Tibetan identity in the
film that withdrawing from political activism to embark on a spiritual retreat is not
regarded as betraying the cause of Tibetan independence. In this way, the film construes
Tibetan Buddhist monasticism as a viable form of resistance against the Chinese policy
of Marxist secularity.
We 're No Monks (Pema Dhondup, India, 2004) is perhaps the most polemical film by
an Indo-Tibetan filmmaker because it challenges the standard notion that all Tibetan
political activists are pacifists. The film tells the story of four friends living in
Dharamsala who ultimately resort to acts of terrorism—one becomes a suicide bomber—
as a means to end Chinese rule. Before the film's release, Pema Dhondup and the
production company issued a press release, describing what the film was attempting to
32
In the DVD's Special Features, the filmmakers state that the video clips of Tibetans describing thenexperiences of torture in Chinese prisons was actual documentary footage.
46
address: "Caught between the expectations of a traditional society and the realities of the
present world situation, these four friends attempt to reconcile their dreams and
aspirations with the social and political influences that push them down the path of
terrorism, which is naturally against the non-violent teachings of the Dalai Lama."33
Even though the film considers the possibility that Tibetan protest could eventually
become violent, Dhondup remains acutely aware that the characters breach the
fundamental Buddhist tenet of non-violence, a point incidentally not lost on its audience.
Mara Matta, a freelance writer and researcher, saw screenings of the film in Naples and
Rome in 2004 and recalls: "Part of the audience reacted very strongly to what they
regarded as an act that could not possibly be committed by a representative of the
'peaceful Tibetans' and vented their anger at the director, accusing him of
misrepresenting his own culture".34 Matta's anecdote indicates to what extent some
audience members associate Buddhism and Tibet, thus making it difficult to accept that
Tibetans are capable of violence.
The low-budget digital films Phun Anu Thanu (Two Exile Brothers, India, 2005) and
Richard Gere is My Hero (India, 2007) by Tashi Wangchuk and Tsultrim Dorjee are
romantic comedies, depicting characters not completely steeped in Buddhism.
The first film tells the story of two brothers trying to win the hearts of two sisters, and the
second details the lives of four young Tibetans who question the expectations and
traditions of their parents respectively. In a scene of the second film, traditional Tibetan
33
34
Pema Dhondup and Rupin Dang, "The first Indo-Tibetan digital feature film," Press release (Summer
2003), http://www.wildfilmsindia.com/press_wmn.htm (accessed July, 2010).
Mara Matta, "Rebel with a cause: debunking the mythical mystical Tibet", lias newsletter, Number 47
(Spring 2008), http://www.iias.nl/files/IIAS_NL47_32.pdf (accessed January 13, 2011).
47
shamanism is good naturedly lampooned when three of the young friends approach a
monk who uses divinations to cure people. One of the friends asks him whether Tibetan
medicine is as effective as Western medicine in treating his friend's grandmother. The
monk replies affirmatively and then assures them that a treatment of mantra butter on the
grandmother's ailing leg followed by his prayers will cure her. The young men dissolve
into laughter, admitting the grandmother died several years ago. The film's irreverent
treatment of traditional Buddhist divinations suggests that Buddhism still plays a pivotal
and defining role in the formation of cultural attitudes among older and younger
Tibetans.
Tibet in Chinese Films
Predictably the Chinese government has never celebrated Tibetan Buddhism,
vociferously condemning the Dalai Lama's theocratic governance of pre-invasion Tibet,
and promulgating its position that Buddhism is incompatible with Communism. In his
examination of the collision of Communism and Buddhism in Asia during the 1960s,
Ernst Benz delineates the key points of conflict with the following assessment:
Buddhism counters the Communist call for class hatred, revolution and world
conquest by its own commandments of kindness, friendliness, sympathy and
tolerance. Buddhism begins reforming the evils of the world not by outward
measures, but by purifying the heart; that is the premise for all social reform.
The peaceful methods of tolerance and goodwill, not hatred and violent
revolution, must be employed to bring about the improvement of social
conditions.35
Ernst Benz, Buddhism or Communism: Which Holds the Future of Asia, trans. Richard and Clara
Winston (Garden City: Anchor Books Doubleday and Company, 1965), 171.
48
The Chinese government has repeatedly stated that the goal of its invasion of Tibet has
been to "liberate" Tibetans from the feudalism and inequality that had plagued Tibet for
centuries. For instance, in 2008, the Information Office of China's State Council
released a policy paper on Tibetan culture alleging that:
The Dalai and his clique are the chief representatives of the backward feudal
serfdom system and culture of theocratic rule and religious despotism that used
to prevail in Tibet. The Democratic Reform in 1959 abolished the feudal
serfdom system and overturned the unfair ownership and distribution system of
Tibetan cultural resources, which had been monopolized by a small number of
feudal serf owners. Furthermore, the reform removed theocratic rule and
religious despotism over social and political life, cleared away the decadent
and backward cultural scum which had been obstructing social progress and
development, accomplished the democratization and modernization of Tibetan
culture, and freed the productive forces of Tibetan culture, enabling Tibetan
culture, protected and carried forward as a common spiritual wealth of all
Tibetans, to keep up with the times and develop prosperously.36
Furthermore, the Chinese government has often been openly hostile towards Tibetan
Buddhism. Many exiled Tibetans have accused the Peoples Liberation Army of
destroying the vast majority of Tibet's monasteries and killing untold numbers of monks
and nuns during and after the invasion. Many Tibetans feel that their religious freedoms
have been consistently circumscribed by official government policies. As a result,
Tibetan Buddhism is either glaringly absent or is unsympathetically represented in the
few Chinese feature films about Tibet, overtly reinforcing the government's secularist
and political policies. In these films Tibetan culture is inordinately backward and
superstitious and in dire need of political and social reforms. For instance, The Serf"(Li
Jun 1963) tells the story of a young Tibetan boy whose parents are killed by a cruel
"Protection and Development of Tibetan Culture" The Information Office of China's State Council.
Published September 2008. Reproduced December 10, 2008 at
http://chinatibet.people.com.cn/96058/6550857.html (accessed September 1, 2010).
49
landowner and is consequently forced to work for slave wages. Near the point of
starvation, he steals some barley cakes from a Buddhist shrine and is severely beaten by
monks. The film ends with a series of battles in which the People's Liberation Army
puts an end to feudalism in Tibet, thereby freeing the boy. 7 Although the film pits the
Buddhist Theocracy and the nobility against the Tibetan peasant, Tibetans resisted the
film's politicization of Tibetan Buddhism. Exiled political activist Jamyang Norbu
writes in a blog that Tibetans in Lhasa referred to the film as The Torma Thief {torma
refers to the barley cakes that were stolen from the shrine). Norbu states that the "theft of
a religious object (even a negligible one as a tsampa cake) assum[ed] more significance
TO
in the Tibetan mind than the class struggle and revolutionary aspects of the film."
More recent films generally appear to be far less propagandistic and portray Tibetan
culture and Buddhism in a more neutral light. One such film is The Horse Thief'(1986)
by Chinese filmmaker Tian Zhuangzhuang—incidentally the first feature film about
Tibet to be released and acclaimed in the West.
According to Jamyang Norbu, the film
avoided depicting Tibetans in the same racist or disparaging terms as earlier Chinese
films yet "presumed without question, that Tibetans were savages. Perhaps a noble
savage in the case of [the protagonist] Norbu (who is often shot in profile, posing
dramatically against the Tibetan skyline) but savages nonetheless."40
Perhaps the most auspicious indication of a budding Chinese tolerance may be the
recent emergence of the promising Tibetan director Pema Tseden (Wanma Caidan in
37
38
39
40
Jamyang Norbu, "The Happy Light Bioscope Theatre and Other Stories (Part 2)", Shadow Tibet,
February 22, 2010, www.iamvangnorbu.conV.../the-happv-light-bioscope-theatre-other-stories-part-2/
(accessed July 8, 2010).
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
50
Chinese). Tseden now lives in Beijing, but he was born to Tibetan Nomads in an area of
Tibet once known as Amdo (now called Qinghai in Chinese).
1
He was the first Tibetan
admitted to the Beijing Film Academy and started his filmmaking career in 2003 with
two short fiction films, The Silent Holy Stones and A Day of the Little Living Buddha.
He has also made a couple of documentaries, The Grassland (2004) and Love Story
(2005). To date, he has directed two feature films, The Silent Holy Stones (2005) and
The Search (2009). In an interview conducted by the Asia Society of Columbia
University at a screening of his feature films and later posted on YouTube, he stated,
"Tibet has always been my theme. All my actors are Tibetan. I shoot on location in
Tibet and the dialogues are all in Tibetan. My films reflect Tibetan thinking. So since
my short films, we've been trying to find our own film language."42 He has described
his work as employing a "traditional Tibetan aesthetic" which he derives from Tibetan
thangkas, or religious wall hangings.43 In The Search, the Tibetan style is characterized
by a very static camera, long takes and a predominance of long shots.44
In interviews with the Western press, Tseden frankly admits that filmmakers in China
are limited in the topics they can film. However, Buddhism figures prominently in both
of his feature films despite the Chinese government's antipathy towards it. In The Silent
Holy Stones a 10-year-old monk temporarily leaves his monastery to visit his parents in
their village for Losar (Tibetan New Year); but once he sits in front of the family TV and
41
42
43
44
"Pema Tseden: Tibetan Films for Tibetan People", Asia Society, April 10, 2010, http://asia
society.org/arts-culture/film/pema-tseden-tibetan-films-tibetan-people (accessed February 11,2011).
YouTube. www.asiasociety.org/arts-culture/film/pema-tseden-tibetan-films-tibetan-people (accessed
July 6, 2010).
Louisa Lim, "Director Seeks To Capture Life in Modern Tibet", Canada Tibet Committee Newsletter,
July 2, 2009. www.tibet.ca/en/newsroom/wtn6988 (accessed July 6, 2010).
Tenzing Sonam, "Some Thoughts on Pema Tseden's The Search", Phayul, June 19, 2010,
www.phayul.com (accessed July 6, 2010).
51
VCR he becomes completely engrossed in a Chinese television series called Journey to
the West, refusing to turn off the TV to attend a traditional Buddhist opera staged by the
villagers. While the film depicts Tibetans adjusting to the alien cultural practices
imposed by the Chinese, it quietly laments Buddhism's diminishing influence. A similar
theme is found in his latest film The Search. It chronicles the story of a Tibetan
filmmaker who travels to various Tibetan villages to cast a movie based on a revered
traditional Tibetan opera, Drime Kunden. The opera recounts the story of a bodhisattva45
named Prince Drime Kunden who sacrifices everything—his wife, children, and even his
eyes—so that he can help others.46 The film follows the protagonist as he holds
auditions in bars, night clubs and construction sites for singers who can still perform the
roles of the opera. Many of the aspiring performers cannot remember the songs and
frequently the best candidate for the role is either unavailable or unwilling. In the case of
one singer, renowned for performing the role of Drime Kunden, he angrily refuses
because he detests it. By the end of the film, the filmmaker finds a performer who is
willing and capable but is unable to take a leave of absence from his job as a public
employee. Indo-Tibetan filmmaker Tenzing Sonam notes that even though Tseden's film
does not directly address the Chinese presence in Tibet, the audience senses "the changes
that are taking place in terms of the dissolution of traditional culture in the face of the
encroachment of the modern world. Along the way, the director begins to question his
own faith in the spiritual purity of Prince Drime Kunden's sacrifice. The film has an
45
46
A bodhisattva renounces enlightenment to remain within the cycle of rebirth and pledges to help all
sentient beings achieve enlightenment.
Tenzing Sonam, "Some thoughts on Pema Tseden's The Search", Phayul, June 19, 2010,
www.phayul.com (accessed July 6, 2010).
52
elegiac quality to it; a loving farewell to a fast-disappearing way of life tinged by a sense
of apprehension at what is to come."47
As noted at the beginning of this chapter, the aim of this survey is to demonstrate the
centrality of Buddhism within this diverse corpus of films dealing with Tibet. Drawing
on Grunfeld's list, I have identified the general categories and trends within the relatively
large number of documentaries on Tibet and the Tibetan diaspora: public talks and
biographies of the Dalai Lama and other prominent lamas; Tibetans in exile or under
occupation. Yet this overview is partial and provisional because a more comprehensive
account would exceed the scope of this thesis.
In contrast, the much smaller canon of feature films, directed and written by Tibetans
and non-Tibetans, is far easier to catalogue and analyse in terms of their treatment of
Buddhism. There are Chinese films like The Serf Xhat depict it as a negative force in the
lives of Tibetans, reinforcing the official narrative. Himalaya adopts an ethnographic
perspective of Dolpo-pa culture to preserve it for posterity and does not cultivate
significant Buddhist themes. Kundun and Seven Years in Tibet combine a historical and
political perspective on the invasion of Tibet, yet also emphasize different aspects of
Buddhism. Dreaming of Lhasa and Windhorse exemplify Tibetan films that pursue the
political, societal and cultural ramifications of the Chinese invasion and situate
Buddhism as a marker of Tibetan national identity and as a site of resistance to Chinese
authority. However, the most interesting films, both thematically and formally, explore
the enigmatic and multidimensional facets of Tibetan Buddhism. Tibetan Buddhism is
central to Nan Palin's film Samsara, forming the core of its subject matter and themes.
53
Furthermore, its circular narrative structure underscores the Buddhist notion of samsara
and the Buddhist concept of illusory perception is reiterated formally in the film when
the final image of Pema self-consciously dissolves. Pema Tseden is going a step further
by forging a new cinematic aesthetic based on traditional Tibetan thangkas and
thoroughly exploring in his films how Buddhism is being systematically eroded in
Chinese occupied Tibet. The films I examine in depth—The Cup, Travellers and
Magicians, Milarepa and Kundun—are not only thoroughly grounded in Buddhism; they
use cinematic techniques and conventions to underscore their Buddhist themes far more
extensively and ambitiously than the other feature films mentioned in this survey. The
following chapter will probe the two films of Khyentse Norbu—The Cup and Travellers
and Magicians—to elucidate how Buddhist themes structure the cinematic language of
his films.
54
CHAPTER TWO
Khyentse Norbu: Film as a Modern Day Thangka
In The Cup (Phorpa, Khyentse Norbu, India, 1999), the young monk Orgyen
watches as two novice monks are helped into their Buddhist robes for the first time.
"You'll get used to it," he tells them, "It's a 2,500 year old fashion." Orgyen's little joke
draws attention to the radical transformation the novice monks have just undergone,
discarding baseball caps, running shoes and jeans for shorn heads and traditional monastic
garb. In a monastery where monastic rituals and protocols have remained relatively
unchanged for centuries, the sight of monks looking at sexy pinups or watching soccer on
television may appear incongruous or even dismaying; however, as Tibetan Buddhist
scholar Reginald Ray opined, "Buddhism is a particularly interesting tradition because it
has one foot in the past and one in the present." Khyentse Norbu's two feature films,
The Cup and Travellers and Magicians (Bhutan, 2005) address the problems encountered
by a traditional Himalayan culture navigating the changes wrought by an intrusive
modern world. They address the collision of the past and present but importantly, they
establish the unchanging tenets of Buddhism as a bulwark against the potentially
deleterious effects of Western modernity. The modern world Norbu depicts in his films is
grounded in the timeless ultimate reality of the Buddha's teachings. This belief in an
ethereal and timeless domain reflects a multidimensional concept of time and reality that
1
Reginald Ray, Indestructible Truth: The Living Spirituality of Tibetan Buddhism (Boston and London:
Shambhala, 2000), 2.
55
is quintessentially Tibetan and anchored in Buddhism. Never portraying modernity as a
threat to monastic traditions or Buddhism itself, Norbu's films reaffirm Buddhism's
capacity to accommodate modernity within the Tibetan monastic culture.
In his dual role as a filmmaker and venerated Buddhist lama known as Dzongsar
Jamyang Khyentse Rinpoche, Khyentse Norbu exemplifies a fusion of past/present,
tradition/modernity, preservation/change, and East/West. Norbu has never been
afraid to stray off the path of tradition, augmenting his Buddhist studies with a
Western education from the London School of Oriental and African Studies, and film
school. His first foray into filmmaking was as an advisor in Bernardo Bertolucci's
Little Buddha (1993) and then went on to direct a number of short films—Etto Metto,
9 1/2 and The Big Smoke—before his first feature film The Cup. Despite the
apparent incongruity of his two roles, he views his filmmaking activities and
teaching responsibilities as an incarnate lama as complimentary: he uses the modern
medium of cinema to teach the core principles of Buddhism. He defends his
distinctively modern didacticism by stating: "In its 2,500 year history, we can see
that Buddhism has adopted many methods of expressing the dharma [Buddha's
teachings]—through painting, sculpture, architecture, performing arts. [...] So there
is an old tradition in Buddhism of using images, and film can do that, too." Indeed,
in forging a uniquely Tibetan/Bhutanese cinema, using Buddhist themes, meditative
slow pace, visual motifs, and aesthetics, Norbu has proven that the cinema is
particularly adept at modifying the aesthetics of the traditional Buddhist art forms.
2
Kelly Roberts, "What Changes and What Doesn't: An Interview with Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche"
Shambhala Sun, November 2000, www.shambhalasun.com (accessed July, 2010).
56
Norbu stated that he considers his films a "modern day thangka". What can we
interpret this to mean? A thangka is a highly stylised wall hanging that functions as an
aid to meditation. Depicting iconographic images of the historical Buddha, cosmic
buddhas, deities, or bodhisattvas, it uses symbolism to convey a specific aspect of the
Buddhist teachings. The thangka's formalistic elements take on the same vital role as
its content in espousing Buddhist concepts and illustrating celestial realms. In Norbu's
hands, the cinema becomes a thangka of sorts. Cinematic devices, such as slow pacing
and visual motifs, mimic the thangka's role as a meditative tool and its use of
symbolism. For instance, the numerous extra-narrative shots of Buddhist rituals in The
Cup create a slow pace that put viewers into a meditative state, encouraging them to pay
attention to the actual experience of watching the film, rather than becoming distracted
by an all-absorbing narrative. In Travellers and Magicians the image of storm clouds
gathering as the protagonists becomes lost in a world of illusion, becomes the symbol of
a mind clouded by unbridled passions and illusions, reinforcing the Buddhist idea that
our perceptions can cloud our minds and obscure the mind's true essence.
Norbu's admirable skill as a filmmaker is marked by his ability to use cinematic
devices to subtly draw attention to fundamental Buddhist principles. In a scene from
The Cup, for instance, he directs the viewer's eye to a statue of the Buddha on a distant
wall by simply changing the camera's focus from the foreground to the background,
subtly conveying the enduring relevance of the Buddhist teachings in the transitory and
material world of samsar a. In another scene, the visual motif of swirling smoke creates
a visual "passageway" from ephemeral cinematic images to the unchanging truth of the
3
Ibid.
57
Buddha's teachings by alluding to the incense smoke used in a ritual that facilitates the
transition to invisible celestial realms. Several sound bridges in Travellers and
Magicians connect two disparate worlds, referring to the existence of concurrent levels
of reality, reflecting the Buddhist belief that multiple levels of perception are possible in
a multidimensional universe.
Norbu also delves into the imaginary alternative world fostered by the narrative to
reiterate the Buddhist tenet that our perceptions and strong emotions are illusory—merely
ephemeral constructs of a deluded mind. In Travellers and Magicians, a monk recounts
the mythic tale of a man who believes his experience of a dream is real, thus the 'story
within a story' narrative structure of the film foregrounds the dangers of becoming lost in
the seductive illusions and passions of the mind. Lastly, by employing cinematic devices,
such as cutaway shots, Travellers and Magicians alludes to a Tibetan Buddhist reality
made up of visible and invisible elements and bridges the two narratives' disparate worlds
of myth and modernity.
In Norbu's films, cinematic language and conventions become as important as the
film's narrative and Buddhist themes in conveying Buddhist precepts. The Buddha's
timeless teachings provide a solid spiritual foundation for Norbu's characters who are
trying to navigate a tumultuous modern world, but the teachings also form the foundation
of the cinematic language of the films themselves. To ascertain how the cinema, as a
modern mode of representation, affects the elaboration of traditional Buddhist teachings,
this chapter explores how Norbu uses cinematic techniques and conventions in The Cup
and Travellers and Magicians to convey, sustain and underscore the films' Buddhist
themes.
58
The Cup (Phorpa): "Dharma is the tea and culture is the cup"
The Cup was shot at the Pema Awam Choegar Gyurme Ling Monastery in India, and
drew most of the amateur cast of monks and lamas from the monastery's residents. The
daily activities of the monks—washing up in the morning, playing a spontaneous game of
soccer with a Coke can, making tea, meditating, or chanting—not only form the backdrop
of the film, but also firmly situate it within a Tibetan Buddhist milieu. However the film
traces the incursion of modern technology into an otherwise traditional society as the
minimalist plot follows two young soccer-obsessed monks Orgyen and Lodo as they slip
off late at night to watch the television broadcasts of the 1998 FIFA World Cup
championship held in France. Except for the arrival of two young Tibetan exiles, Palden
and Nyima, very little happens in the cloistered world of the monastery, until Orgyen and
Lodo are kicked out of the only local venue for viewing soccer because they are too
noisy. Impelled by the prospect of missing the final game, they convince the monastery's
second-in-command, Geko, to appeal to the abbot to allow the entire monastic community
to rent a TV and satellite dish to watch the game. After they successfully obtain the
abbot's permission, they fail to garner enough donations among their fellow monks to
raise the entire rental fee. Orgyen then presses young Nyima to relinquish a watch his
mother has given him to secure a loan for the rest of the rental fee on the condition that
they pay it the following day or forfeit the watch. After all the monks pitch in and hook
up the TV and satellite dish, Orgyen leaves in the middle of the game, feeling a rising
sense of guilt at how deeply Nyima misses his treasured watch. Orgyen is searching his
cache of treasured items to trade for Nyima's watch when the concerned Geko enters his
room. Sympathetic to Orgyen's predicament, Geko assures the young monk that he and
59
the abbot will pay the remainder of the fee. Orgy en and Geko return just in time to view
France's soccer team celebrating their victory.
Upon watching the film, one is first struck by the playful irreverence of the main
protagonists, Orgyen and Lodo, towards Buddhist ceremonial practices. During the
recitation of prayers they pass notes about upcoming soccer games, make origami
figures and finger puppets or, as a practical joke, sew a sleeping monk's robe to a
cushion. Arguably they challenge the preconceived notions many of us have of
pious monks in Tibetan monasteries engaging only in serious study. In one scene,
Lodo shows his fellow monks—who have been studiously chanting prayers—the
advertisements in his soccer magazine of female models in body hugging sportswear,
while he remains on the lookout for Geko making his rounds. The young monks in
The Cup continually break the rules and avoid their studies. Their piety is quite
possibly superseded by their love of soccer. "This is my shrine," Orgyen says,
pointing to his bedroom wall, adorned with a collage of his favourite soccer players
which threaten to eclipse his wall poster of the Buddha. Moreover, Orgyen is not
above distorting Buddhist doctrine to justify watching the final game; impatiently
dismissing Nyima's request for his watch, by glibly saying, "Not now. Anyway,
Buddhists shouldn't be so attached." This comment refers to the Buddha's assertion
that desire and the attachment to emotions are the root causes of suffering. Thus, a
major tenet of Buddhism becomes an empty platitude for Orgyen to assuage his guilt.
More importantly, Orgyen and Lodo's impropriety extends to the wider monastic
community. Monks wrestle with the imperfections of human nature through the course
of the film; they make bets about which team will win the next game; they swear; they
60
fill a wall with graffiti; they make sarcastic comments about their Indian neighbours.
Thus, The Cup delineates the inevitable disjuncture that occurs when a group of human
beings try to implement what is regarded as a perfect, untarnished doctrine in a very
imperfect world. However, the monks' misdemeanours do not undermine their
fundamental goodness, which is borne out when Geko—impressed by Orgy en's
developing compassion towards Nyima—tells the young monk, "You're so bad at
business; you'll be a good monk." The monks may be all too human, yet this film is not
decrying the attenuation of Buddhist practice in a modern Tibetan monastery. By
looking at the monks' harmless transgressions, the film makes a distinction between
their superficial misdemeanours and their inherent goodness or what Buddhists refer to
as "buddha-nature". The essence of buddha-nature is the same in ordinary sentient
beings as it is in enlightened buddhas; it is simply manifested differently because it is:
[cjovered over by inessential, adventitious defilements. Yet, though these
superfluous stains cover and hide the Dharmakaya [the formless pure "mindessence" of the buddhas] within, they do not harm or taint that wisdom in any
way. No matter how confused, neurotic and even crazy we may be, the
Dharmakaya wisdom within us remains always itself, always full and
complete, utterly untouched by those stains.4
This idea that human behaviour can encompass many variations and still not
contravene basic Buddhist principles is reinforced in The Cup. The monks in the
film are fundamentally incorruptible; they do not always have to meet impossible
standards of saintliness and devotion to be considered good Buddhists.
By extension, culture is accorded the same level of flexibility: as long as Buddhism
forms a solid foundation for the moral principles, the community is invulnerable to
4
Reginald Ray, Indestructible Truth: The Living Spirituality of Tibetan Buddhism (Boston and London:
Shambhala, 2000), 436.
61
superficial and innocuous cultural permutations. Thus, the film presents a positive and
encouraging outlook on the modernizing cultural changes besetting the monastic
community. In one scene, empty Coke cans— the most ubiquitous symbol of modern
disposable culture—are rendered as suitable receptacles for the holy butter lamps an old
lama places on his shrine. In fact, there are multiple instances in the film when modern
practices are not only benign but necessary, particularly regarding the matter of personal
hygiene. At one point Orgyen tells the old monk whose body odour draws numerous
comments, that "this isn't Tibet; it's India. If you don't wash you'll get sick." Orgyen
also tells Palden, a recent refugee from Tibet, that now that he is in India, he cannot
bathe once a year any more, that in India, they have to wash every day. "You've got a
lot to learn from us," he tells Palden. In another scene, when the lights momentarily go
out during the final soccer game, one of the monks laments, "When will this country
ever develop?" These scenes instantiate the film's positive stance towards development
and its accompanying changes, however it is measured.
It is crucial to note that The Cup does not advocate modernizing or modifying
Buddhism itself. In an interview Norbu stated, "I totally oppose people attempting to
make Buddhism more adaptable to the West or to the modern world. It is not required:
Buddhism has always been up to date. From the moment Buddha taught, the essence of
the teachings hasn't changed, and it shouldn't change."5 According to the director, what
can be changed, are the outer manifestations or "external trappings" of Buddhism which
5
Noa Jones, "If I'm Lucky, They Call Me Unorthodox", Shambhala Sun, November 2003,
www.shambhalasun.com (accessed July, 2010).
62
coalesce with "Tibetan culture and customs". He is careful to explain that there is a
fundamental distinction between culture and Buddhism, noting:
As the wisdom of Buddha traveled [sic] to different countries over different
ages, the culture and tradition of each particular time or place became intrinsic
to the teaching. Culture is indispensible because without it, there is no medium
to convey the teachings. Dharma is the tea and culture is the cup. For someone
who wants to drink tea, tea is more important than the cup. [...] If necessary, I
am ready to change the cup, and for that reason you can say I have a modern
mind.7
Consequently, and as the examination of Norbu's films in this chapter reveals, his work
gives priority to traditional Buddhist principles and represents the acceptance of
modernity as a purely cultural factor.
Impermanence of the Temporal World
Although the monastic community in The Cup may frequently seek out the cultural
accoutrements of modernity, its preservation of traditional Buddhist practices and
teachings is embodied by the abbot. Despite his advanced age and his longing to return
to Tibet, his amenability to change reveals Tibetan Buddhist culture's capacity to
modernize. While his complete immersion in traditional Tibetan culture is treated
humorously when Geko has to explain the alien game of soccer to him, he is
nevertheless able to assess the changes that are altering his community. In one notable
scene, as the young monks are transporting the TV and satellite dish back to the
monastery, the soundtrack features a voice-over of the abbot reciting a letter he is
6
7
Kelly Roberts, "What Changes and What Doesn't: An Interview with Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche"
Shambhala Sun, November 2000, www.shambhalasun.com (accessed July, 2010).
Noa Jones, "If I'm Lucky, They Call Me Unorthodox", Shambhala Sun, November 2003,
www.shambhalasun.com (accessed July, 2010).
63
writing to Palden and Nyima's family. He starts the letter with: "Things are not like
they used to be. These days, our young monks are exposed to many things that older
ones like myself never even dreamed of." The abbot then appears in profile writing the
letter. The background is out of focus until he dips his pen into the ink and the camera
reveals the Buddhist shrine behind him. With a small statue of the Buddha clearly
visible in the centre of the frame and the body of the old abbot in soft focus, he
continues: "Don't worry about your boys. I will make sure that they receive traditional
training. I hope they'll continue to uphold Buddha's lineage according to these modern
times." When the focus switches from the abbot to the shrine, the camera transforms his
clearly defined image into a vague outline of a human figure. By shifting from a
substantial body to one existing only as a ghostly presence in the foreground, the film is
formally alluding to his impermanence and undermines his agency as an individual.
Moreover, the film ascertains that despite his wisdom and prominent position, the abbot
is still materially affected by change and the only unchanging and ultimate reality
resides in the Buddha and the teachings.
The film's final scenes also foreground the Buddhist teachings' immunity to change
and decay. As the monks watch the final soccer game, the eerie two dimensional black
and white images on TV flicker and slip away—constantly disrupted by static—and
become a modern analogy of the ancient Buddhist teaching that our perceptions of the
world are insubstantial and illusory. However, as the French players celebrate, the
images are suddenly obliterated by static and the scene seamlessly changes to smoke
gently rising in the darkness from sticks of incense. Then the scene changes to the abbot
imparting a number of the essential teachings of Buddhism to a group of young monks
64
and as he talks, images of the monastery, prayer flags and a mantra wheel appear. As
the abbot's words continue in a voice-over, the camera follows a monk preparing for
and then performing a ceremonial dance. These images of ritual objects and devotional
practices coming directly after the TV images, suggest a connection: they could be
interpreted as the ephemeral outward manifestations of the more essential teachings we
hear on the soundtrack, or conversely, the images of devotional practices, coupled with
ageless Buddhist scriptures, could also be offering Buddhist teachings and ceremonial
rituals as a well-tested solution to impermanence and delusion. In either interpretation,
the transitory nature of existence is underscored. Moreover, the abbot's lesson is not
just a counterpoint to the images of impermanence and delusion; the timeless essence
and absolute truth of the lesson itself is an antidote to the painful mutability of
perception and existence.
Demonstrating his skill as a filmmaker, Norbu is also able to cinematically fuse the
temporal world with the Buddha's timeless wisdom through the visual motif of smoke.
Smoke conspicuously emanates from incense at three points in the film: when Orgyen
prepares incense for the morning prayers; the transition shot of incense at the end of the
final soccer game mentioned above; and a monk's ritualistic dance that compliments the
abbot's voice-over in the scene that follows. Orgyen preparing the incense is perhaps
the least significant since it fits seamlessly with the countless extra-narrative scenes that
simply depict life in the monastery. However, the use of smoke in the other two scenes
becomes deeply significant when interpreted in relation to Buddhist rituals. Smoke is an
65
important aspect of one of the most common rituals in Tibetan Buddhism, the lhasang,
which is performed for purification "for both mundane and supermundane purposes".9
Not only does the lhasang call upon the lesser spirits and deities dwelling in samsara
and the bodhisattvas and buddhas in the celestial realm, it can also be performed by
either lay people or lamas as a purification against internal or external negative energies.
But the ritual also performs a second function:
The fragrant smoke travels up to the heavens, attracting the higher beings of
samsara and the enlightened ones; thus the smoke becomes a kind of
passageway or lightning rod down which their blessings can descend, filling
participants with a sense of well-being, understanding, and happiness.
In the film, the smoke bridges the gap between the temporal and the timeless. Once the
TV images turn into static, they dissolve into the swirling smoke from sticks of incense,
thereby facilitating the transition from the mundane images of the soccer game to the
abbot's dissemination of Buddhist teachings to the monks. Literally and symbolically,
the smoke from the burning incense creates a visual "passageway" from the ephemeral
TV images to the unchanging truth of the Buddha's teachings, melding the two
apparently disparate worlds of samsara and nirvana. The ensuing cutaways of the
monk performing the ritualistic dance within a light haze of smoke swirling around him
emphasize Buddhist rituals' access to a spiritual realm. The monk is unequivocally
concrete and firmly rooted in samsara. The wisps of smoke moving around him,
conversely, refer to the Buddha realm in that they may seem insubstantial and formless
8
9
10
Lhasang means "higher purification offering " For a more complete description of the ritual,
see Reginald Ray's Indestructible Truth The Living Spirituality of Tibetan Buddhism
(Boston and London Shambhala, 2000), 57-61
Ibid, 57
Ibid, 58
66
but are nevertheless real and pervade samara. In both these scenes, the motif of smoke
either establishes the transition to a deeper reality or alludes to it.
The fusion of the mundane and supermundane realms is maintained by the
contemplative pace of the film during the numerous extra-narrative depictions of
Tibetan Buddhist rituals. Given Norbu's insider status as a Buddhist lama, these ritual
sequences are not merely ethnographic representations of a strange and mystical culture.
Their recurring insertion attempts to increase our level of awareness through a
meditative spectatorship. A case can be made that in theistic religions ritual facilitates
communication with an unseen being or beings which inhabit a realm that is "outside"
of us. However, in Buddhism all mystical beings and realms reside "inside" of us and
are accessible through the mind. We simply have to develop a pure awareness to
perceive this ultimate dimension of reality or what Buddhists sometimes refer to as the
void nature of the mind. Tibetan Buddhism has created a vast array of rituals and
religious practices that cultivate pure awareness by calming the many disturbances that
afflict the "ordinary" mind.11 The pace of the film has a similar effect. Often
suspending the narrative to depict ritual practices or simple day to day activities such as
making butter tea, the slow pace of the film forces us to be more attentive to what we
are watching, rather than getting mindlessly caught up in the narrative. Norbu is
encouraging us to become aware of the processes at work—our expectations, curiosity,
boredom—as we watch the film itself. Watching becomes a ritual of sorts, calming our
11
"Ordinary mind" is the term many Tibetan Lamas use to refer to the mind that is "temporarily
obscured and distorted by thoughts based upon the dualistic perceptions of subject and object."
The Dalai Lama, Dzogchen: The Heart Essence of the Great Perfection, trans. Geshe Thupten
Jinpa and Richard Barron (Ithaca and Boulder: Snow Lion Publications, 2004), 31.
67
minds and facilitating a small measure of mindfulness and, perhaps, helping us on our
path towards pure awareness and nirvana.
Travellers and Magicians: The Illusions of Dreamland
Norbu's second feature film Travellers and Magicians is far less meditative than The
Cup and arguably conforms more to general expectations of complex story-telling, which
could explain, in part, why it was able to secure a total budget of 1.8 million dollars. It
was filmed in Bhutan, a small nation nestled in the Himalayas between Tibet and India.
Premiering in the Bhutanese capital, Thimphu, on August 2, 2003 and appearing a little
more than a month later at the Venice Film Festival, Travellers and Magicians is
Bhutan's first full-length feature film in Dzongkha— the official national language
which, incidentally, is very similar to Tibetan.
Even though the film features a number of distinctly Bhutanese cultural practices, like
the national sport of archery, Travellers and Magicians can still be included in our project
of examining Tibetan Buddhist cinema for two reasons. First of all, Norbu is a Tibetan
exile born in Bhutan. "I'm recognized as a reincarnation of one of the great Tibetan
masters [...] in this life I'm Bhutanese," he explains. "I feel more Bhutanese than ever.
And in many ways I'm proud of being Bhutanese. But my Buddhist training comes from
the Tibetan tradition, so I feel very loyal and sympathetic to Tibetan culture and
10
people."
Secondly, Tibet and Bhutan share many of the same cultural and religious
practices. Reginald Ray, an instructor of Buddhist studies states that Tibetan civilization
12
Noa Jones, "Gentle Voice," A Newsletter ofSiddhartha 's Intent, October 2003,
www.siddharthasintent.org/gentle/GV20.pdf ("accessed July 29, 2010).
68
extended well beyond Tibet's political borders into the nearby countries, namely into
"portions of Assam in the east, Bhutan, Sikkim, and parts of Nepal to the south and
southwest; and Ladakh to the west. Although, heavily damaged in Chinese-occupied
Tibet, Tibetan Buddhism continues to be practiced in these other Tibetan cultural
locales."
Buddhism has unified Tibet and Bhutan ever since 747 C.E. when the Indian
saint Padmasambhava (also the patron saint of Bhutan) first visited Tibet and Bhutan,
bringing with him the unique practice of Tannic Buddhism.14 Furthermore, until the
spring of 1959, when the Tibetan uprising prompted the Chinese to shut down the
southern Tibetan border, Bhutanese lamas customarily travelled to Tibet to acquire their
higher religious education.15 After 1959, numerous Tibetan lamas were granted refuge in
Bhutan and established monasteries, thus completing the centuries old cycle of religious
exchange.
Despite its provenance and distinctive cultural perspective, Travellers and Magicians
also elaborates a Tibetan Buddhist sensibility. Aside from developing the universal
Buddhist theme of illusion, the film also draws upon the Tibetan Buddhist imagination
that consistently unifies the ordinary material world and the extraordinary immaterial
world, by integrating mystical elements—magic potions, visions and spells—into its
story-telling. Furthermore, the 'story within a story' narrative structure and stylistic
elements of the film draw attention to the Tibetan Buddhist worldview that is grounded in
13
14
15
Reginald Ray, Indestructible Truth: The Living Spirituality of Tibetan Buddhism (Boston and London:
Shambhala, 2000), 7.
First developed in India, Tannic Buddhism took root in the Himalayas when Padmasambhava
succeeded in turning the people of Tibet and Bhutan away from the indigenous and shamanic B6n
religion.
Ram Rahul, Modern Bhutan (Delhi, Bombay, Bangalore, Kanpur, London: Vikas Publications, 1971),
95.
69
and informed by a multidimensional universe. Indeed, Travellers and Magicians was
marketed as a Bhutanese film, but a thorough examination will reveal that its sensibilities
are no less Tibetan than those expressed in The Cup. Drawing on Norbu's use of
narrative conventions, the mise-en-scene, visual motifs, and transitional devices, we will
explore how Buddhist themes structure this film.
Storytelling: "Long, long ago—but not too long ago"
With its 'story within a story' the film's narrative is considerably more ambitious than
The Cup. The film opens with Dondup, a Bhutanese civil servant of an isolated sleepy
village, impatiently awaiting a letter from America. Missing the nightclubs, pretty girls
and fast pace of the city, he has been living unhappily in the village for only a month and
is hoping the letter will bring him news about job opportunities in America. Once he
receives the letter, he realizes that he has only a couple of hours to catch the biweekly bus
to Thimphu, Bhutan's capital city, and he still has to seek permission from his boss to
obtain leave from work. Under the guise of attending a religious festival, he is able to get
a week off; however his boss has taken so long deciding—pausing the meeting at one
point for an update on the day's archery contest—that Dondup misses the bus. As he
waits to hitch a ride by the side of the deserted gravel road, he is joined by an old man
carrying a basket of apples. Signs of a generation gap emerge as Dondup turns up the
volume of the rock music playing on his boom box, smokes cigarettes and rudely ignores
the old man. After Dondup travels up the road to improve his chances of getting a ride
alone, a monk carrying a bag and a traditional instrument—a dramyin—sits down and
tries to strike up a conversation by asking Dondup where he's going. Dondup ignores
70
him and stares at the road. The monk gently chides him, saying "There's no point staring
at an empty road. You know, Buddha said hope causes pain." Angered by what he
deems as the monk's "preaching" Dondup remains largely unresponsive. But later that
night as the three travellers sit together by the roadside eating a meagre meal by the fire,
the monk again asks Dondup where he's going. "I'm going very, very far away to the
land of my dreams," Dondup answers. "To a dreamland?" the monk asks, "You should
be careful with dreamlands because when you wake up, it may not be very pleasant."
The monk starts to tell him a story about a man who—like Dondup—was not happy with
village life and sought greener pastures elsewhere.
The film's narrative structure emerges at this point as a story within a story as the
monk plays his dramyin and begins his account: "Long, long ago—but not too long
ago." The monk's voice-over narration introduces Tashi and his younger brother,
Karma. Despite Tashi restlessly "daydreaming of faraway places", he has to remain in
the small village to finish his studies at a nearby school of magic. Assigned the job of
bringing Tashi his lunch, Karma—the brighter of the two—eavesdrops on the master's
lessons, quickly picking up a rudimentary knowledge of magic. One day, as a joke on
his older brother, Karma mixes up a potion and puts it in Tashi's wine. As Tashi
imbibes the wine, he says, "I wish I could travel far away, somewhere I've never been
before. This magic stuff is incredibly boring. Anyway, it never works; it's just
superstition." "How do you know it doesn't work?" Karma asks, teasingly. A moment
later, Tashi looks up at the family's donkey as it munches on grass and envisions a
spirited white horse in its place. Despite Karma's warnings that the "horse" is
unaccustomed to riders, Tashi impulsively mounts it and starts riding over the fields at
71
breakneck speed. Clouds gather and streak across the sky, as if propelled by an
approaching gale. Thunder crashes and lightning pierces the growing darkness, clearly
establishing that Tashi is now at the mercy of a potent magical force.
After riding a considerable distance through a violent storm, the horse throws him to
the ground and abandons him inside a thick forest. Sustaining an injury to his knee,
Tashi is still able to hobble through the forest in the slashing rain until he arrives at a
small cottage. The old man living there reluctantly agrees to give Tashi shelter for the
night. As he prepares for bed, Tashi notices what appear to be a young woman's bare
legs stretching out from under the blankets of the old man's bed. The next morning,
Tashi confirms that the old man's wife is indeed young and beautiful. Over breakfast,
Tashi learns that the taciturn old man, Agay and his wife Deki earn their living by
weaving kiras16 to sell at the market of a distant village. Agay reluctantly agrees to
allow Tashi to remain another day or two until his knee heals well enough to make the
long trek. However, the days pass and the sexual attraction between Deki and Tashi
grows, making it apparent that she is trying to prolong his stay.
Finally losing patience, Agay decides that he can spare the time to take Tashi at least
part of the way. But after Agay sends him on his way into the dense forest, Tashi gets
hopelessly lost and, as chance would have it, ends up back at the cottage.
Acutely
aware of Tashi's increasing infatuation with her, Deki gets Agay out of the way by
plying him with barley wine so that he spends most of his days drunk and oblivious.
Tashi and Deki enjoy an illicit affair until Deki informs him that she is pregnant and that
Agay will kill her if he finds out. She quickly hatches a pre-emptive plan to murder him
16
Traditional ankle-length dresses worn by Bhutanese women.
72
first after Tashi offhandedly mentions his limited knowledge of poisons. Tashi
reluctantly goes along with the plan and concocts a lethal potion which causes Agay's
slow and painful death. Horrified by his own culpability and Deki's transformation into
a cruel demonic spectre, Tashi flees into the forest followed by the sound of Deki's
plaintive pleas to return. He stops in his tracks when he hears Deki scream, off in the
distance. He backtracks to the river he has just crossed and finds her red shawl floating
on an eddy by the shoreline. As he cries out her name, the scene changes to Karma
asking Tashi who Deki is. Tashi looks up, tears streaming down his face and sees his
younger brother looking at him. He looks over Karma's shoulder and sees the donkey
standing quietly as before. Tashi slowly realizes that he has been experiencing a vivid
dream that seemed to last months, but was only an hour or so at most.
Tashi's mystical story is intertwined with the modern day road movie that makes up
Dondup's story. As the three roadside travellers spend the next couple of days catching
a variety of rides along the road to Thimphu, the monk continues the story at various
intervals. About the third of the way into their journey, they meet up with an old paper
maker and his beautiful young daughter Sonam. As the small party makes their way in
fits and starts to Thimphu, Dondu's anxiety about catching a plane to the United States
begins to wane and he spends more time with Sonam. Nearing the film's conclusion,
Dondup has become so lackadaisical about getting to the plane that when a bus arrives
with one remaining seat, he suggests the old man carrying the apples should take it.
After the monk's story concludes, he and Dondup hail a ride from a small tractor with
only enough room for two, but it is clear that the young civil servant will remain in the
little bucolic village of Bhutan to settle down with Sonam. As the monk and Dondup sit
73
in the back of the tractor, the monk says, "Let me tell you another story. A long time
ago, in a very beautiful village, there lived a man. And although he was a government
officer, he wanted to go to America to pick apples. But along the way, he met this very
beautiful girl." Dondup starts to laugh and finishes the story: "And so he forgot all
about going to America." In the film's last shot we watch the tractor rounding a corner
to disappear behind the vast Himalayan Mountains.
Discerning the Illusion: "Watching a movie, knowing it's a movie"
Given that Dondup eventually rejects the allure of America, the film can mistakenly be
construed as a critique of modernity's impact on Bhutan's traditional society, particularly
if we examine the film in relation to the public debate that surfaced in the late 1990s in
Bhutan around the question of unchecked material progress. The debate started in 1998
when the government implemented its official policy of the "Gross National Happiness"
to counteract the standard international measurement of development, the Gross
Domestic Product. Thus, Bhutan's king prohibited TV transmissions, along with
advertising and other consumer items such as Coca-Cola, in an effort to stave off rampant
consumerism and preserve the nation's religious and traditional values. However,
bowing to public pressure in 1999, TV was eventually introduced, inundating Bhutan
with 46 channels of 24-hour programming provided by Rupert Murdoch's Star TV
network. The ensuing fallout led to a feature story four years later by The Guardian on
the burgeoning crime statistics and the social upheaval attributed by many Bhutanese to
74
i ~j
the advent of satellite TV.
Many of the Bhutanese interviewed by The Guardian
expressed concern for the generational rift which was developing, as one government
official noted: "My generation, the ministers, lamas and head teachers have our
grounding in old Bhutan and can apply ancient culture to this new phenomenon. But the
ordinary people, the villagers, are confused about whether they should be ancient or
modern, and the younger generation don't really care. They jettison traditional culture
1a
for whatever they are sold on TV."
We can see the reverberation of this concern in Travellers and Magicians, primarily in
the opening scenes which carefully delineate Dondup's enthusiastic embrace of Western
cultural forms to the point where he is obviously out-of-step with the tranquility of
village life. He is first seen with earbuds on, listening to music tapes, oblivious to the
traditional archery game going on a few yards away. The overtly sexual pin-ups of the
Western calendar models on the wall in his room, a secular shrine to the images of the
West, effectively mirror Bhutanese TV's mediated representation of the West. He dances
wildly to the Western style music on his boom box in the isolation of his room. He has
also adopted many of the trappings of the West: his hairstyle is fashionably long; he
wears white high top running shoes and a t-shirt with the American slogan "I love New
York" emblazoned on it; and he's the only Bhutanese to smoke in the film. However by
the film's end, his boom box has stopped functioning because the batteries are depleted.
He also discards his package of un-smoked cigarettes and realizes that his dream of living
Cathy Scott-Clark and Adrian Levy, "Fast Forward Into Trouble", The Guardian, June 14, 2003,
www.guardian.co.uk (accessed March 18, 2011).
75
and working in the United States is no longer worth entertaining. Although these details
suggest a generalized disenchantment with modernity, foreign media and Western
consumer culture, Norbu's perspective is far subtler and affirms a key Buddhist principle
that ordinary reality is illusory.
Norbu's film is not a critical analysis of modernity or—more specifically—the
televised or cinematic images of Western corruption and materialism. It is more
concerned that people will misinterpret all of their perceptions as an unmediated reality
when, in fact, they are not. This concern originates in one of the foundational principles
of Buddhism that is the illusory nature of our perceptions and thoughts. Tibetan
Buddhist master Dilgo Khyentse explains that all phenomena:
[a]re like magical illusions. Nowhere in the whole universe is there a single
permanent, intrinsically existent entity to be found [...] Everything is like a
drama in which actors play out wars, passions, and death. Everything is like a
dream, sometimes good and sometimes a nightmare.
In Travellers and Magicians, Dondup and Tashi are convinced that their aspirations for a
more exciting life are not merely dreams or illusions but can actually be realized and
generate lasting happiness. However, when Dondup and his two travelling companions
board a truck and discover a drunk sitting in the corner, the film conveys that such
imaginings are little more than seductive illusions generated by a troubled mind. After
the drunk asks them where they are going, the monk replies that two of them are going to
Thimphu, but the third one, Dondup, is going to a dreamland. "A dreamland?" echoes
the drunk, "I want to go too." The monk laughs and says, "Looks like you're already
there." This exchange clearly establishes that Dondup's desire to go to America—or "a
19
Dilgo Khyentse, The Heart Treasure of the Enlightened Ones (Boston and London: Shambhala,
1992), 41.
76
dreamland" as the monk calls it—arises from an impaired and imperceptive mind. The
point is underscored when Tashi makes the trek to the forest under the spell of Karma's
hallucinogenic potion and becomes infatuated with Deki. Tashi is completely under the
illusion, literally, that the intensity of his experience makes it real. Murdering Agay
leaves him with an overwhelming sense of guilt and anguish which subsides only when
he realizes that his intense passions were the insubstantial delusions of his intoxicated
mind. In Travellers and Magicians it is the supposition that the images we perceive are
real which is considerably more harmful than the images themselves.
The story-within-a-story is a metaphor establishing that our ordinary experience of
life is as illusory as a fictional narrative but, perhaps more importantly, it conveys the
message that attaining happiness and well-being depends primarily on our ability to
discern the fiction that we habitually construct. Tellingly, the two protagonists display
markedly divergent levels of awareness. Dondup is far more aware than Tashi since he
knows Tashi's story is indeed a story, but he still makes the blunder in believing that the
United States is the land of plenty, choosing to ignore that he will have the demeaning
job of picking apples and lose the prestige he enjoys in the village. As Norbu once said
in an interview: "There's a big difference between watching a movie without knowing
it's a movie and watching a movie knowing it's a movie[...] if you know it's movie and
then watch it, there's leisure, there's humour, there's a readiness to let go."
Dondup
gradually realizes that his desire to go to America is just as fanciful as a fictional story,
so that when the monk says, "Let me tell you another story: a long time ago [...] there
20
Siddhartha's Intent website, http://www.sidhartasintent,org/gentle/GVII-3 .htm (accessed July 29,
2010).
77
lived a man. And although he was a government officer, he wanted to go to America",
Dondup is able to laugh at himself and finish the story. This valuable insight allows
him to realize the illusory nature of his desires to go America and he starts living
happily in the illusory here and now.
Delusions of a Cloudy Mind
Unlike Dondup, Tashi is plunged into the murky depths of a deceptive world
governed by passion, jealousy and obscuration, devoid of insight and happiness. The
film's mise-en-scene incorporates the Buddhist trope of clouds to denote his passage
into an all consuming world of delusion. Tibetan Buddhists describe the true nature of
the mind as made up of nothing more than clear light, often comparing it to a cloudless
sky. Conversely, the "ordinary" or unsettled mind, according to Buddhist master Dilgo
Khyentse is "constantly changing, like the shapes of clouds in the wind",
and Jamgon
Kongtriil calls the mind disturbed by emotional upheavals the "cloudy mind"22. The
scuttling dense clouds which begin amassing as soon as Tashi sips the potion,
eventually obscuring the entire sky, illustrate the increasing confusion that clouds his
awareness and judgement. A counterpoint to the metaphor of a cloudless sky is the
dense forest with its dense undergrowth and innumerable trees. It symbolizes the
obscuring thoughts and passions that make it impossible for Tashi to think clearly and
navigate his way out of the chaos. While in the forest, he experiences an intoxicating
21
22
Dilgo Khyentse, The Heart Treasure of the Enlightened Ones (Boston and London: Shambhala,
1992)104.
Jamgon Kongtriil, Cloudless Sky: The Mahamudra Path of the Tibetan Buddhist Kagyii School
(Boston and London, 1992), 82.
78
manifestation of samsara, the "state of ignorance characterized by suffering",
becoming a prisoner both of the environment and his passions. Unable to see his
obsession for Deki as an invention of his confused mind, he commits the monstrous act
of murdering Agay. His journey into the nether regions of his mind, clouded by
passions and delusions, brings nothing but suffering and offers no hope of liberation
from the nightmare until Karma's potion wears off. Drawing on the metaphors extant in
Buddhist philosophy, the film's mise-en-scene effectively draws parallels between the
physical setting of Tashi's chimerical world and a mind clouded by the ignorance and
delusion rife in samsara.
Not simply demarcating Tashi's world of magic and delusion and Dondup's world of
modernity and materiality, Travellers and Magicians employs several cinematic devices
to create portals that bridge the two disparate worlds. At first, the aesthetic features of
the monk's story only seem to create a symbolic space, conspicuously distinguishing it
from Dondup's world by saturating the sequences with golden and bluish green hues.
The film literally and figuratively offers a representation of reality through a lens or
filter, reinforcing the well-known Buddhist simile that life is like a dream. But the film
also evokes two co-existing levels of reality—mystical and empirical—that reiterates a
Tibetan Buddhist world view, as Reginald Ray points out:
In the classical Buddhist view, the world is defined not only by what we can
perceive with our physical senses and think about rationally. It is equally made
up of what cannot be seen, but is available through intuition, dreams, visions,
divination and the like. The senses and rational mind provide access to this
immediate physical world, but it is only through the other ways of knowing
Ibid., 131.
79
that can one gain access to the much larger context in which this physical realm
is set.24
Even though the film's aesthetics seem to demarcate two divergent worlds, several
disruptive sound bridges and a cutaway shot connect them in a brief overlap. The first
sound bridge occurs when Tashi is lost in the forest trying to find the nearest village and
the jarring sound of a truck engine starting is heard a full second or two before the visual
track cuts to a truck's smoking exhaust in Dondup's world. The second sound bridge
occurs when Tashi is watching Deki bathe and loud and disconcerting rock music
initiates the transition. The film belatedly cuts to Dondup hearing the music blasting
from an approaching car and as he rushes to flag it down, a brief cutaway reveals that the
car's driver is Deki dressed in modern attire. Deki's crossover into Dondup's empirical
world suggests that a permeable line divides the mythic and modern worlds, thus creating
the possibility for more convergences and exchanges.
The characteristics of cinematic sound enhance the notion of two simultaneously
occurring levels of reality. Since sound is insubstantial and can be heard whether we
see its source or not, the film's audio track is actually able to traverse two visual spaces
at once. Because they do not emanate from a visible source initially, the two sound
bridges in Travellers and Magicians are startling and disconcerting. Sound with no
obvious visual corollary has been used effectively in horror films to evoke a mysterious
realm that is not anchored by materiality—a ghostly, magical realm. Yet Norbu's
choice of sound to effect the transition from Tashi's magical world to Donup's more
prosaic one implies that the magical realm is governed by some of the principles that
24
Reginald Ray, Indestructible Truth: The Living Spirituality of Tibetan Buddhism (Boston and London:
Shambhala, 2000), 17.
80
affect sound: inherently intangible and invisible, mystical phenomena can still resound
in our material world whether we see the forces that produce them or not.
To instantiate the connection between the immaterial and material worlds, Travellers
and Magicians employs Buddhist iconography as another transition device. The opening
and conclusion of the penultimate instalment of Tashi's story is bridged by a shot of a
rock painting of the eighth-century tantric yogi Padmasambhava (also known as Guru
Rinpoche). While Padmasambhava is a historical figure known for establishing tantric
Buddhism in Tibet and Bhutan, he is chiefly celebrated for magically subduing the
indigenous Bon religion's wrathful deities, obligating them to become protectors of
Buddhism, an achievement which still resonates with Tibetans today. As Tibetan
Buddhist scholar Angela Sumegi notes, the deities are still "treated with caution, and in
daily religious practice they are continually reminded of their defeat and their sworn
promises. Each ritual invocation recalls the past struggle, renews the oath, and most
importantly enacts, in the present, the victory of the Dharma over the obstructing forces
of indigenous loyalties."
Not only is Padmasambhava's subjugation of the deities
ritually re-enacted to this day, he is also thought to be still living and, according to the
Dalai Lama, Tibetans "believe that any ruler of Tibet must have some special relationship
with Padmasambhava".
His role is exceptionally liminal: he is a historical figure, a
human being, whose mythical role is still part of a timeless and ongoing narrative.
Consequently, when the image of Padmasambhava frames the sequence of Agay's
25
26
Angela Sumegi, Dream Worlds of Shamanism and Tibetan Buddhism (Albany: State University of
New York Press, 2008), 77.
Thomas Laird, The Story of Tibet: Conversations with the Dalai Lama (New York: Grove Press,
2006), 57.
81
poisoning, Tashi's story becomes an eternal narrative about how we must always be
aware of our passions, obsessions and strive to subdue them. In the final chapter of the
monk's story, just when Deki emerges from the cabin to tell Tashi about the poison's
progression, her face has a bluish hue, evoking the many blue-faced wrathful deities of
Buddhist iconography. By visually drawing parallels between Tashi's personal struggle
with his conscience and inner demons and Padmasambhava's battle with the pernicious
deities that once plagued Tibet and Bhutan, Travellers and Magicians highlights a
struggle that is at once personal, universal and timeless.
In conclusion, after The Cup was released, an interviewer suggested to Khyentse
Norbu that he was trying to show something profound about the ordinary lives of the
monks in the film. Norbu responded: "Whatever I do, I have no profound motivation. I
just wanted to make a movie." The interviewer persisted, "But your film contained quite
profound teaching." Norbu again skirted the issue by saying, "That depends on the person
watching. Not everybody sees it the same way."
This exchange encapsulates what
makes Norbu such an interesting filmmaker. His films are fundamentally grounded in
Buddhism, but one never gets the sense that he is sermonizing or re-creating a rigid
Buddhist schematic. Addressing universal themes—becoming an adult in an ever
changing world, seeking a better life in greener pastures, or falling prey to all-consuming
emotions—Norbu's films retain a broad appeal, enabling viewers to approach them
without a thorough understanding of Buddhism. Notwithstanding, the director has taken
traditional Buddhist art in a new direction by innovatively employing modern cinematic
27
Kelly Roberts, "What Changes and What Doesn't: An Interview with Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche",
Shambhala Sun, November 2000, www.shambalasun.com (accessed July, 2010).
82
techniques—mise-en-scene, aesthetics, visual motifs, pacing—to disseminate the 2,500year-old Buddhist teachings to the West, and in the process of modifying traditional
aesthetics, Norbu has managed to forge an inspiring and unique Tibetan Buddhist cinema.
83
CHAPTER THREE
Milarepa
and Kundun: The Magic, Miracles and Mystery of
Tibetan Buddhism
While Khyentse Norbu's films focus on universal themes that elaborate a distinctive
Buddhist perspective and aesthetic, Neten Chokling's film Milarepa: Magician,
Murderer, Saint (2006) and Martin Scorsese's Kundun (1997) are grounded in a uniquely
Tibetan esoteric cosmology. While they are hagiographic depictions of revered Tibetan
icons, Milarepa and the Dali Lama, respectively, they are not conventional dramatised
depictions of real-life figures in the vein of countless Hollywood "biopics" such as Erin
Brockavich (Steven Soderbergh, USA, 2000) or Milk (Gus Van Sant, USA, 2008) which
focus on the tangible social achievements of ordinary but exceptionally capable
individuals. Patently eschewing the more pragmatic and historical approach of many
Hollywood biographies, both films reflect a Tibetan world view that not only foregrounds
but normalizes magical and mystical events. Attaining astonishing spiritual proficiency,
Milarepa and the Dalai Lama are portrayed as being able to straddle the mundane and the
extraordinary because of their exceptional understanding of the supernatural forces that
are intrinsic to Tibet's indigenous shamanism and Tibetan Buddhism. Furthermore,
Milarepa and Kundun do not merely mythologize the lives of their subjects, altering
historical events to create a more dramatic effect or impart a sense of ineluctable destiny.
Instead they mine a richer territory by underscoring the magical elements that imbue the
lives of all Tibetans. The films reveal that Tibetans' experience of the physical world is
84
not limited to what can be perceived by the senses and the rational mind; there is an
added unseen dimension accessible through "intuition, dreams, visions, divination".1
Moreover, the films are consistent with Tibetan beliefs that inanimate objects—rocks,
trees, streams, mountains—can be inhabited by malevolent or benign nonhuman beings,
thereby shaping the Tibetan experience of the world into a synthesis of materiality and
immateriality. Before elaborating on how these beliefs are represented, a brief
explanation is in order.
As noted in the introduction of this thesis, the Tibetan world view is marked by
"ordinary" and "extraordinary" modes of perception. Buddhist scholar and former monk
Robert Thurman explains that Tibetans "live in a multidimensional universe" which
allows them to cultivate "ordinary perception" and "extraordinary perception" of history.
Tibetans are able to perceive the "extraordinary" or mythical dimension of seemingly
"ordinary" events because they "believe that every event in the life of an individual and
of a nation is susceptible to such a multileveled analysis of meaning."4 Consequently,
there are countless historical or "ordinary" narratives in Tibetan lore that are burgeoning
with supernatural or "extraordinary" incidents, whose veracity and reliability is never
questioned.
The Tibetan propensity to fuse "ordinary" and "extraordinary" perception into a
seamless convergence of history and apparent myth is probably most evident in the
biographies of illustrious Buddhist figures such as the Buddha or Padmasambhava, one of
2
3
4
Reginald Ray, Indestructible Truth: The Living Spirituality of Tibetan Buddhism (Boston and London:
Shambhala, 2000), 17.
Ibid., 27.
Robert Thurman, Essential Tibetan Buddhism (Edison, New Jersey: Castle Books, 1997), 6.
Ibid., 7.
85
the founders of Tibetan Buddhism. On the "ordinary" level, Tibetans see a figure like
Padmasambhava as a yogi who established Tantric Buddhism in Tibet in the eighth
century; but on the "extraordinary" level, he defied death and continues to live in " 'a
pure land', the Copper-Coloured Mountain that exists outside of ordinary time".5
Tibetans venerate Padmasambhava as an important historical figure and yet also interpret
the metaphysical facets of his biography quite literally.
The cinematic representations of Milarepa and the Dalai Lama in the films directed by
Chokling and Scorsese teem with metaphysical occurrences that are not didactically
explained within the context of Tibetan Shamanism and Buddhism nor put into a more
rational framework adaptable to Western positivism. Magic, premonitions, divinations
are simply shown to exist in a world in which such occurrences are almost commonplace,
thus provoking a broader question: how do Chokling and Scorsese use the medium of
film to represent the Tibetan perception of a multidimensional mysterious reality that
may appear perplexingly alien to Western viewers? As I will argue, the directors avoided
the overtly didactic protocols of documentary and some of the expositional devices of
fiction films. Instead of employing the conventions of voice-over narration or
expositional dialogue, Chokling and Scorsese simply "show" the Tibetan protagonists
straddling the ethereal and material dimensions of the Tibetan universe.
I have chosen one key sequence from each film to illustrate how arcane Tibetan
religious practices are inscribed in the films and how cinematic devices are used to reveal
a Tibetan worldview characterized by magic, miracles and invisible beings. In Milarepa,
5
Reginald Ray, Indestructible Truth: The Living Spirituality of Tibetan Buddhism (Boston and London:
Shambhala, 2000), 107.
86
the scene in which malevolent Bon deities confer upon Milarepa the power to conjure
devastating storms, best exemplifies the uniquely shamanic Tibetan belief systems.
Cinematic devices, such as extreme close-ups, camera movement, a self-conscious
formalist style, are able to convey an interior state of mind that represents another
dimension of reality. In Kundun, I examine the extended sequence of the Dalai Lama's
flight from Tibet with its multiple cross-cuts to the Kalachakra initiation ritual which
obliquely refer to a Tibetan prophesy and concomitantly to a multidimensional universe.
Milarepa: An Exploration of a Mystical and Magical Universe
Perhaps nothing situates Milarepa more firmly in the Tibetan magical universe
than the filmmakers' strategies to overcome the numerous obstacles they faced. An
article posted on the film's website by the first assistant director and associate
producer Isaiah Seret describes the behind-the-scenes religious practises of the
Tibetan filmmakers to ensure the project's success. According to Seret, there had
been countless attempts to turn Milarepa's life into a film, leaving "[a]t least a dozen
scripts, a number of treatments, and one half-finished film [...] floating around, none
of which have seen the light of day."6 He asserts that Tibetans blame this
unfortunate track record on two sorts of supernatural beings: female deities called
dakinis who are protective of Milarepa and will only allow worthy projects about
him to proceed; and the dons which are "supernatural harmful spirits who try to
impede all actions that could bring goodness into the world, such as making a movie
6
Isaiah Seret, "The Making of Milarepa and the Madness of Mo", Milarepa, the Movie,
www.milarepamovie.com (accessed July 5, 2010).
87
about a sinner turned saint".7 To harmonize these disparate metaphysical forces, the
film's production was inaugurated by:
An enormous puja (Tibetan offering and meditation ritual), filled with many
juniper bonfires billowing dense white smoke, instruments invoking the
deities, chanting, offering cakes, bottles of whiskey poured onto the flames,
o
and lots of maroon-robed monks.
Seret also relates how the filmmakers often resorted to asking the Mo (a Tibetan ritual of
divination) to answer crucial questions related to the technical and artistic elements of the
production such as: "what film stock to use, where to rent cameras, who should be the
cinematographer, who should play the leading role, and so on."9 At one point, when two
cameras jammed, it was discovered through a number of Mos that several negative
"spirits" were responsible and round-the-clock pujas were performed to pacify them.10
The fact that the film's website posted a five-page article detailing the more esoteric
aspects of its production, underscoring the importance accorded to these behind-thescenes supernatural occurrences and rituals, indicate that the Tibetans involved with this
project considered them an important aspect of the filmmaking process.
Thus the
Tibetan shamanic and Buddhist world view is not only embedded in the film's diegesis
but also in its very production.
Despite their efforts to propitiate negative forces and remove obstacles, the
filmmakers were often stymied by insufficient financing. In interviews promoting the
film's release, Chokling repeatedly stated that raising the money for the 1.5 million
7
8
9
10
11
Ibid.
Ibid
Ibid.
Ibid.
In the end-credits, Mo is also credited with doing the casting for the film.
88
dollar budget was a major stumbling block, although most of the cast and crew were
monks volunteering their time to keep production costs down. At one point, he had to
stop filming to raise funds to pay the international crew and was forced to delay post
production for several months to attract more investment. Lack of finances may have
also played a role in limiting the scope of the project. Milarepa: Magician, Murderer,
Saint was intended to be the first of two instalments, the second slated for release in
2009, yet two years later there is still no word that production will resume, looking less
likely that it will ever be made. Even though the director was optimistic during an
i o
interview in 2006
that he could start shooting in 2009, indications are that he has been
unsuccessful in generating sufficient interest in the film to raise adequate funds.
Nevertheless, in an interview posted on the film's website, Chokling hints at
practical and financial reasons for dividing the story of Milarepa into two parts. With
only two months to prepare a script, assemble an international film crew and cobble
together enough funding to start the project, he expressed his disappointment that the
film's "tight budget" and his inexperience as a director could not elevate the film to
match the "splendour and beauty of the [Milarepa] biography".13 Given that the second
half of Milarepa's life contains even more magical deeds, undoubtedly requiring
expensive special effects, one has to wonder if Chokling did not want to scrimp too
Larry Jaffee, "The Monk Who Would be a Director: Neten Chokling on 'Milarepa'", Student
Filmmakers Magazine, October 2006, http://studentfilmmakers.com/news/how-to/The-Monk-WhoWould-Be-a-Director Neten-Chokling-on-Milarepa-2.shtml (accessed January 21, 2011).
89
much on production values and hoped that the earnings from the first film
would help
finance the story's costlier conclusion.
If expeditious storytelling had been Chokling's primary goal, the relatively
uncomplicated story of Milarepa could have been told in a single feature-length film.
The story begins with his father's premature death when Milarepa is still a boy. The
family fortune is left in the care of Milarepa's uncle and aunt who greedily steal it and
force Milarepa, his mother and sister live in near destitution, working like slaves.
However, once Milarepa comes of age, his mother sends him to learn the art of black
magic, giving him the ultimatum that she will commit suicide in his presence unless he
acquires these new skills to vanquish his aunt and uncle and exact revenge on the
village. Returning to the village after he has learned the art of conjuring hailstorms,
Milarepa unleashes a massive storm that causes wanton destruction and kills dozens of
people. As his mother gleefully celebrates her revenge, Milarepa surveys the ruin he
has caused. Filled with immeasurable remorse, he discovers that the only way to
eradicate his negative karma is to pursue the path to liberation under an enlightened
Buddhist master. The film ends as Milarepa sets off to find the famed yet
unconventional master, Marpa the Translator.
However, the traditional version goes on to relate in considerable detail Milarepa's
relationship with Marpa. At first, Marpa pretends to reject his entreaties but craftily
sends Milarepa on a course of penance, ordering him to build and then demolish several
towers over the course of a few years. Convinced that he will never receive the
Buddha's teachings after his efforts to build a third tower fail to gain favour, Milarepa is
14
The film had a dismal showing at the box office, eventually bringing in only $200,000 (US) worldwide.
90
about to commit suicide when Marpa finally relents and openly acknowledges him as
his disciple. Under the master's guidance, Milarepa retreats to a cave to meditate,
enduring great privation and sustaining himself with nothing more than nettles and the
odd donation of food. During this time, he is able to cultivate yogic powers which,
among other things, keep his naked body warm in the middle of winter and enable him
to fly through the air. After a dozen years or so, Milarepa finally achieves the rare feat
of enlightenment in one life time, becoming renowned throughout Tibet as a great yogi
and the founder of the Kagyu sect of Tibetan Buddhism.
The chronicle of Milarepa is steeped in a timeless and limitless world of Buddhist
mysticism, black magic, miraculous deeds, telepathy and premonitions, all of which
eclipse the revenge theme of the story. Yet, in an interview on the DVD's Special
Features, Chokling reports how he found Milarepa's "ordinariness" appealing, stating
that "some people think that dharma can only be practiced by monks and nuns.
Milarepa, himself, was an ordinary person who had killed many before he became
enlightened [...] We know from his life story that ordinary people [...] can become
enlightened."
5
Indeed, the fact that he was an ordinary man who overcame enormous
odds gives Milarepa's story its power and lasting appeal. Nevertheless, the miraculous
elements are essential to the narrative and cannot be effaced without diminishing
Milarepa's stature as a yogi. A specialist in Tibetan Buddhism, social and cultural
anthropologist Geoffrey Samuel explains that magic is seen as a "natural by-product of
Milarepa: Magician Murderer Saint. Director Neten Chokling, 2006. Cinequest, 2007, DVD.
91
yogic practice itself'16 and can also be seen as an indicator of the practitioner's spiritual
development.17 Accordingly, Milarepa's forays into magic are regarded as evidence of
his spiritual proficiency and were likely instrumental in establishing his fame as a great
yogi and saint. Furthermore, his magical exploits have broader cultural and religious
ramifications and have been used to illustrate a number of distinctions between the
shamanic practices of Buddhism and Tibet's indigenous Bon religion. Tibetan Buddhist
scholar Angela Sumegi recounts a contest of magic between Milarepa and a Bon priest.
Culminating in a race with Milarepa outmatching his opponent by flying effortlessly to
a nearby mountain summit, the contest champions Buddhist shamanism. In the story's
conclusion, Milarepa's superior magical abilities are largely credited to "the nature of
his enlightened mind".
Milarepa's skilfulness in magic is both celebrated in the story
and presented as a proof of Buddhism's pre-eminence.
Magical elements also pervade the film adaptation and are not limited to the exploits
and accomplishments of Milarepa, but establish the mystical Tibetan perspective
informing the film. For instance, the first incident of magic occurs relatively early with
an anonymous traveller arriving at Milarepa's family home and asking to stay the night.
As he eats the simple meal Milarepa's mother has prepared, the nearby butter lamp goes
out, enshrouding the room in total darkness. Just as Milarepa's mother goes to fetch
some more butter for the lamp, the room suddenly lights up. Startled, she looks back to
see that the traveller is still nonchalantly eating his meal, and she quickly surmises that
16
17
18
Geoffrey Samuel, Tantric Revisionings (Burlington, Vermont: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2005),
88.
Ibid., 64.
Angela Sumegi, Dreamworlds of Shamanism and Tibetan Buddhism (Albany: State University of
New York Press, 2008), 75.
92
he was able to reignite the lamp through a mysterious act of magic. This ostensibly
superfluous scene foregrounds magic as a fairly conventional aspect of daily life since
Milarepa's mother is neither amazed nor alarmed when she observes the traveller's
mysterious talent; rather, she shrewdly regards it as an opportunity to inquire later about
lessons of magic for her son. Magic is almost an ordinary occurrence in Milarepa.
There are numerous instances of magicians performing phenomenal feats—
materializing out of thin air, performing telekinesis, enveloping a band of horsemen in
thick mist, communicating through telepathy, and taking minutes to accomplish what
should be a three-day journey. The prevalence of these extra-narrative supernatural acts
in Milarepa situates magic within the Tibetan ethos, and effectively highlights it.
Proselytizing Buddhism through Cinema
Although it is always hazardous ascribing intentionality to a director's work, we can
safely contend that Chokling did not make this film to simply portray the state of
sorcery in Tibet during the Middle Ages. Chokling adapted the story of Milarepa to
disseminate one of the most cherished Tibetan Buddhist stories in a popular modern
format to the world. Chokling remarked in an interview that:
The Buddha always said, 'Help according to the time and in that moment,
whichever way is the best way to help.' In his generation, of course they didn't
have movies or anything like that to reach people and help them learn about
Buddhism. Now we do. We have this incredible way to reach many people in
a way that is both informative and entertaining, with the possibility of making a
real emotional connection.19
"Interview with the Director", Milarepa, The Movie, www.milarepamovie.com (accessed July 5,
2010).
93
Like Khyentse Norbu, Chokling is inspired by cinema's potential to proselytize
Buddhism in an entertaining format. His comments indicate that he regards cinema
primarily as a teaching tool to impart the essential teachings of the Buddha around the
globe to both the initiated and uninitiated. The film's artistic director, Orgy en
Tobgyal—who also performs the role of the sorcerer Yungton Trogyel—goes a step
further and associates the cinema's ability to forge emotional connections with a
capacity to transform viewers' way of thinking on spiritual matters. He explains that if
"you see Milarepa in moving pictures, it will be imprinted in your mind and you won't
forget it [...] And if you can retain [it] in your mind and remember [it] again and again,
it could bring more benefit." These comments reveal that Chokling and Tobgyal were
eager to exploit the popularity of cinema to explore new dimensions of Milarepa's story
in a way that would also resonate with international audiences and enhance their
spiritual development.
Moreover Tibetans believe that Milarepa's name and story possess inherent mystical
properties which have an impact all their own. In an accompanying DVD, which can be
purchased with the film,20 Tobgyal states that "[fjrom a spiritual point of view, it is said
that those who are connected to Milarepa will not be reborn in the lower realms. It is
believed that [this] is due to the blessings of Milarepa's practices and
accomplishments." Right before his death, Milarepa is said to have bestowed blessings
on all those who were to hear his name spoken. Thus, the makers of Milarepa believe
Teachings on Milarepa, Cinequest, 2007, DVD. It features interviews and lectures about Milarepa
by Tibetan Buddhist masters, such as Sogyal Rinpoche and Ani Pema Chodron.
94
that the audience is actually able to receive a very real spiritual blessing just by seeing
Milarepa's story on the screen.
The decision to adapt Milarepa's biography to film also stems from the venerated
and highly visual Tibetan tradition of storytelling. Milarepa may be a modern
cinematic representation of the traditional story, but there has been a long standing
tradition of iconographic depictions of Milarepa—often recognizable by his long hair
and skeletal, half naked body— in thangkas which have been edifying and engaging
Tibetans for centuries. It is worth briefly noting that illustrated renderings of Milarepa's
story have even also been embraced by Western students of Tibetan Buddhism. In 1991,
Dutch artist Eva Van Dam retold the story of Milarepa in English in an illustrated, large
format book in the style of Western comics which became an entertaining method to
teach my own children about Milarepa when they were growing up. Moreover, the
Dalai Lama recounts how, as a youth, his introduction to Milarepa's story quickly
assumed a visual dimension. He remembers that he used to look at the thangkas of
Milarepa and the founders of the Kagyu school, hanging them in front of him as he
read their biographies. His account gives the impression of a "low-tech" cinematic
experience since he describes that the overall effect was "almost like a show or
entertainment to look at these paintings [...] So I would look at the painting and then
read the biography, back and forth, for hours. Often I would cry when I read these
21
22
Eva Van Dam, The Magic Life of Milarepa: Tibet's Great Yogi (Boston and London: Shambhala,
1991).
The lineage of the Kagyu school actually starts with the Indian yogi Tilopa, followed by Naropa,
Marpa and then Milarepa.
95
stories, because they were so moving, especially Milarepa's story, which was very
moving to me."23
The Representation of Internal and External Dimensions
Chokling and Tobgyal not only drew on a rich visual and literary tradition to retell
Milarepa's story cinematically, but used cinematic devices which distinguish the film
version from traditional modes of representation. As previously mentioned, cinematic
conventions severely limit feature films' ability to provide extra-narrative exegesis,
giving viewers considerable latitude in interpreting subtly conveyed notions, themes,
and sentiments. Arguably, feature films are much better at "showing" what is
happening on screen than offering explanations, and in the case of Milarepa the
protocols of narrative cinema are used effectively to convey the character's point of
view or state of mind.
Formalism in Milarepa serves to visually represent various states of mind by simply
"showing" them. Devices associated with this style are crucial to vividly depict
"ordinary" perception and "extraordinary" perception in the scene of Milarepa
performing the secret rites that will empower him to accomplish black magic.
"Ordinary" perception is depicted in the sequence of flashbacks accompanying the shot
of Milarepa sitting in a stone enclosure. The images of Milarepa playing by a pond as a
boy, his father's death, and talking to his childhood friend Zezay can be understood as
distracted memories derived from "ordinary" perception. "Extraordinary" perception is
23
Thomas Laird, The Story of Tibet: Conversations with the Dalai Lama (New York: Grove Press, 2006),
83.
96
cinematically represented just moments after his teacher checks on his progress,
establishing that Milarepa's visions are not just the delusions of a distracted mind. The
teacher warns that "in the dark, the mind has no leash. Thoughts become strong and
reckless and visions emerge from chaos. If you are trapped by these illusions, you will
accomplish nothing." The warning underscores the differing levels of awareness, some
of which are delusory. However moments later, when Milarepa is meditating with his
eyes closed, the camera zooms in slowly onto his face, the drumbeat of the musical
score speeds up and becomes louder, and his eyes suddenly open to stare at the camera.
There is a brief cut to the teacher standing outside Milarepa's enclosure, witnessing
beams of effulgent light emanating through the crevices of the enclosure. These beams
of light signal that Milarepa's "ordinary" perception is dissolving to allow subtle—
"extraordinary"—perception to emerge.
In this scene, the dazzling light acquires the function of an indispensable visual motif
because Tibetan Buddhism characterizes consciousness free from discursive or
conceptual thought as pure light. This idea is described in a famous quotation by the
Buddha: "The mind is devoid of mind, [fjor the nature of mind is clear light".24 To
clarify this enigmatic axiom, the Dalai Lama explains in one of his books that there are
several experiences of clear light, two of the main ones caused by the "dissolution [of
ordinary perception] due to the influence of liberation and dissolution due to the
influence of confusion".25 The first experience of clear light occurs only after the
Buddhist practitioner has utterly mastered meditation and yoga practice and experiences
24
25
Dalai Lama, Dzogchen: The Heart Essence of the Great Perfection (Ithaca, New York: Snow Lion
Publications, 2004), 126.
Ibid., 167.
97
pure awareness; the second is experienced normally by unenlightened human beings at
the point of death when "the coarser levels of mind—sensory faculties, sensory
consciousness and the coarse levels of mental consciousness—are all dissolved."
Although Milarepa is neither experiencing the pure wisdom of a Buddha nor dying in
this scene, his ordinary mind of delusory thinking is dissolving to the point where he is
able to discern subtle manifestations of reality.
The scene's formalism situates us within Milarepa's interior state of mind. After the
brilliant light signals Milarepa's transition to the "extraordinary" mode of perception,
the camera moves into a tight close-up of his face. His features become less distinct as
they dissolve into a bluish haze of smoke, only his eyes are visible for a moment or two
until they disappear into smoke. By this point, the sequence's transition to formalism
conveys that we are no longer watching the "ordinary" reality of the flashbacks. The
film's abrupt change in style, coupled with the extreme close-up of Milarepa's eyes,
initiates the transition from an "outward" to an "inward" perception of reality. It is
important to note that the musical score at this point is evocative of the chanting,
ceremonial horns, cymbals and drums of Tibetan Buddhist rituals, suggesting that
Milarepa is undergoing a ritualistic transition to a mystical dimension.
Then, out of the bluish smoke three dancing figures emerge in the background and
subsequently disappear. One deity with a reddish face appears in close-up, a distorted
voice emanates from it until the deity transforms into a dynamic amorphous pinkish
light. In a long shot, Milarepa seems to emerge out of the smoke, sitting in meditation.
The pink light circles around his head and hovers for a moment before it enters
26
Ibid., 168.
98
Milarepa through the crown of his head and is absorbed into his body in a blinding
white flash that ends the scene.
This scene dramatizes a process which is very similar to a practise in Tannic
Buddhism, called Guru Yoga which at "its essence is what is called 'purification of
perception'. The student resolves to reverse the normal critical outlook on the world,
and to find all faults caused by his or her own failure of perception".
The process is
quite complex but one of its key elements involves the Buddhist practitioner visualizing
his or her "ordinary form dissolving, then arising as a deity", initiating a transformation
that changes his or her outlook "from ordinary perception to a clearer state of purity".
The process culminates with the practitioner visualizing his or her guru (teacher)
dissolving into light and flowing into the student through the crown of the head so that
9Q
the student and guru become indivisible in "body, speech and mind".
Furthermore, at
one point the practitioner visualizes the guru surrounded by a "whole pantheon of
enlightened beings" which later "melt into light and dissolve into the mentor".
Guru
Yoga allows the student to merge with the enlightened beings and derive the benefits of
their wisdom and compassion. There is a similar transference of power in the film when
the deity transforms into pink light and subsequently dissolves into Milarepa, giving
him direct access to the extraordinary powers extant in the universe but normally
invisible to "ordinary" perception. In this manner, the film provides a dynamic visual
representation of this very real but unseen dimension.
28
29
30
Robert Thurman, Inside Tibetan Buddhism: Rituals and Symbols Revealed {San Francisco: Collins
Publishers, 1995), 62.
Ibid., 65.
Ibid., 67.
Ibid., 65.
99
Film's unique characteristics—shot composition, style, symbolic visual motifs—
deftly lend themselves to representing the "ordinary" and "extraordinary" minds states
extant in Tibetan Buddhism. These cinematic devices allow us to glimpse a
representation of a dimension that is normally inaccessible to us. We have an
immediate sense that we are seeing what Milarepa is seeing and experiencing as we
watch it unfold through his point of view. Apart from the cinema, there is no other
Tibetan Buddhist art form that gives us the impression of experiencing first-hand an
individual's state of mind by simply "showing" us what is being perceived. Thus,
Chokling is able to use the cinema to powerfully convey what it is like to experience a
deeper level of reality, one that reflects the multileveled Tibetan perception of the
ordinary and extraordinary.
Kundun: "You don't just hear about the dharma, you see them living it"
Kundun renders a mystical and nuanced treatment of the Dalai Lama's role as Tibet's
spiritual teacher, mining the symbolic dimensions of Tibetan Buddhist rituals and
prophesy to effectively develop multiple levels of meaning. Unlike Seven Years in
Tibet, (Jean-Jacques Annaud, 1997) which, as mentioned in Chapter One, downplays
some of the more shamanic aspects of the Dalai Lama's role, Kundun reveals his visions
and his participation in esoteric rituals.
Despite their contrasting treatments of Tibetan Buddhism's magical elements, the
directors of Seven Years in Tibet and Kundun faced many of the same obstacles
bringing the Dalai Lama's story to the screen. To begin with, both were forced to shoot
outside of Tibet—Morocco was the principal location for Kundun and Seven Years in
100
Tibet was shot primarily in Argentina—because of the Chinese government's vocal
resistance to the films' sympathetic treatment of the Dalai Lama. It is worth noting that
just after Disney Studios agreed to distribute Kundun—when the film was still in
production—the Chinese government threatened to curtail Disney's economic expansion
"> 1
into China if they did not shelve the film.
The threat of Chinese retaliation paled in comparison to the filmmakers' problem of
authentically representing Tibetan culture and religion without making the films
inaccessible to American audiences. While Scorsese and Annaud sought to render a
reasonably accurate depiction of indigenous Tibetan culture and featured Tibetan casts,
they opted for shooting in English, probably to appeal to the films' target audience,
American movie-goers, who tend to avoid subtitled films. However the filmmakers'
decision can also be viewed negatively in so far as it "Americanizes" Tibet by
undermining its cultural authenticity for purely economic reasons. Another key problem
the filmmakers faced was how to seamlessly introduce Tibetan culture, details of the
Dalai Lama's biography and historical facts of the Chinese invasion to an international
audience without being too didactic.
Kundun deliberately avoids enumerating some of the key tenets of Tibetan Buddhism
and the details of the historical relationship of Tibet and China for the edification of
Western audiences. Scorsese remarked in an interview that he was drawn to the project
because "it wasn't a treatise on Buddhism or a historical epic in the usual sense. It's
just too much to know about Tibet and China and their relationship over the past fifteen
31
Robert W. Welkos and Rone Tempest, "Hollywood's New China Syndrome", Los Angeles Times,
September 1, 1997. http://articles.latimes.com/1997/sep/01/entertainment/ca-27816 (accessed
June 22, 2011).
101
hundred years. That was all incidental. What you really dealt with was the child and
the child becoming a young man—his spiritual upbringing."
Clearly, Scorsese felt
that Kundun should focus on the universal and emotional aspects the Dalai Lama's story
and reject overt didacticism. In another interview—for a BBC Television series
available on YouTube—Scorsese was even more pointed in his assertion by stating: "we
weren't about to explain the culture of Tibet. We weren't about to explain Tibetan
Buddhism. We weren't about to explain Tibetan history."
Instead, he opted to shoot
the film from the Dalai Lama's point of view by using numerous low angle and point of
view shots because "the outer trappings of the [Tibetan] culture are so foreign that the
only way we could make a Western audience—particularly an American audience—
identify with it would be to deal with the people and to [...] just see what the little boy
[the Dalai Lama as a child] sees [...] or understand what the little boy understands,
which isn't much at first."34 The result is a very subtle rendering of the Tibetan
worldview that attempts to "show" viewers the Dalai Lama's perspective of Tibetan life
rather than "explain" it.
Possessing no previous knowledge of Buddhism before she started writing the
screenplay for Kundun, scriptwriter Melissa Mathison researched her topic diligently,
spending "a lot of time in Dharamsala interviewing people. Also we went to Tibet. The
story got deeper and deeper [...] and I was able to make it more detailed and
Gavin Smith, "The Art of Vision: Martin Scorsese's 'Kundun'", Film Comment, Volume 34,
Issue 1, January, 1998, 23.
Mark Cousins, "Scene by Scene with Martin Scorsese", Scene by Scene. BBC Scotland, 1998.
http://www.voutube.com/watch?v=3B21xaflzIV (accessed on YouTube, June 23, 2011).
102
interesting."
Moreover, as her knowledge increased and she recognized Tibetan
Buddhism's centrality to the Dalai Lama's story, Kundun became "more profound and
descriptive" leading her to remark: "My understanding of the dharma influenced my
writing, because what we had to do was make the teachings obvious in the life of the
people: you don't just hear about the dharma, you see them living it".
Like Scorsese,
Mathison wished to allow events to seemingly "unfold" in front of the camera without
resorting to undue exegesis.
From the start, Mathison was interested in "the story of this boy [the Dalai Lama]
who was destined to have an extraordinary life"37 and when she pitched her idea to the
Dalai Lama, she stated that she did not want the film to exist only as "a history and a
biography of him", but to "cover the stages of his life from infancy to young adulthood,
that within the context of his upbringing and Tibet's history, it was a microcosm for the
ages of man, the ages of child."
We can only speculate whether the Dalai Lama was
persuaded by Mathison's desire to highlight the universality of his story, but he
approved the project, granting her numerous interviews, interpreting events, and
verifying the accuracy of the script. In keeping with Mathison's original vision, the film
provides a relatively uncomplicated narrative tracing the Dalai Lama's early years—
from toddler to teenager—in Tibet. For instance, it re-enacts the series of tests he
underwent at two years of age to affirm his reincarnation as the Fourteenth Dalai Lama.
Also included are scenes of the Dalai Lama as an older child, learning Buddhist
35
36
37
Angela Pressburger, "The Making of Kundun", Shambhala Sun, January 1998,
www.shambhalasun.com (accessed April 30, 2011).
Ibid.
Ibid.
103
scripture with his tutors and witnessing political power struggles between a few of the
senior monks. A considerable portion of the film delineates his failure to negotiate fair
terms with the Chinese which eventually forces him to flee to India. The mystical
dream-like tenor of the film deepens during the last 30 minutes, with surrealistic images
of the Dalai Lama's prophetic visions: blood spilling into a goldfish pond; hundreds of
blood soaked monks lying at his feet; defeated guerrilla fighters hanging lifelessly from
their bloodied horses. The film culminates in an extended sequence—to be discussed in
depth later in this chapter—that merges scenes of his escape, images of the esoteric
Kalachakra ritual and a voice-over narration of Buddhist scriptures into a subtle
allusion to Tibetan Buddhism's unique combination of magic and religion.
The Enigmatic Prophesies of the Kalachakra Tantra
When I first saw Kundun, I thought the film did not articulate a complex or clearly
defined Tibetan Buddhist sensibility. While Tibetan Buddhist rituals, like the Nechung
oracle,39 admittedly receive considerable attention, I saw them as an exotic backdrop to
the larger story of the Dalai Lama's personal and political crucible of assuming power
as a teenager in the midst of the Chinese invasion. Moreover, I mistakenly surmised
that Buddhism functioned in the film only to delineate the deep-rooted cultural
differences between Tibet and China, and illustrate the blatant imperialism of the
Chinese invasion and its deleterious impact on Tibetan culture and political
39
The role of the Nechung Oracle (also known as the State Oracle of Tibet) is performed by a monk
who enters a trance and becomes possessed by the deity Dorje Drakden, a protector of Tibetan
Buddhism. Aided by monks from the Nechung monastery, the Nechung Oracle prognosticates the
future and advises the Dalai Lama during a secret ceremony. For a thorough exploration of the
Nechung Oracle, see John F. Avedon, In Exile from the Land of Snows (New York: Alfred A.
Knopf, 1984), 191-217.
104
independence. It took me several viewings to realize that Kundun actually integrates the
Tibetan concepts of "ordinary" and "extraordinary" perception into its interpretation of
the Dalai Lama's biography, thereby making it a profoundly complex film.
It was while watching the scene near the end of the film—when the Dalai Lama and
his retinue make the decision to flee Tibet for the sanctuary of India—that I began to
suspect the film's deeper connotations. Since the Dalai Lama's flight is intercut with
the Kalachakra initiation ritual, I decided to research the ceremony's essential
principles and its significance in relation to the film. Admittedly, I was ignorant about
the more complex elements of the Kalachakra Tantra. I only knew that it is a 12-day
initiation, often performed by the Dalai Lama involving the creation a phenomenally
intricate sand mandala,40 and unlike most initiations, is open to thousands of Buddhist
practitioners. It was only when I read Robert Thurman's explanation of the Tibetan
notion of "ordinary" and "extraordinary" levels of perception41 that I became aware that
Kundun is much more informed by Tibetan Buddhism than I first realized.
In his explanation, Thurman uses the example of the Chinese invasion of Tibet to
illustrate the Tibetan belief that every phenomenon can simultaneously lend itself to
"ordinary" and "extraordinary" levels of interpretation. He starts by situating the
invasion within the "ordinary" or factual level: "[I]n the last forty-six years, Tibet has
41
The sand mandala of the Kalachakra Buddha deity is over six feet in diameter, containing three
palaces—the body, speech and mind of all the buddhas—and 722 deities. After several days of
initiations and rituals, all the sand of the mandala is swept up and placed in an urn. The ceremony
is completed after the sacred sand particles are released into a body of water, their blessings to be
carried far and wide by the currents. See Robert Thurman, Inside Tibetan Buddhism: Rituals and
Symbols Revealed (San Francisco: Collins Publishers, 1995) for a brief description of the
Kalachakra initiation and colour photographs of the sand mandala.
Robert Thurman, Essential Tibetan Buddhism (Edison, New Jersey: Castle Books, 1997), 7-8.
105
been invaded, occupied, and annexed by the People's Republic of China."
He goes on
to enumerate the effects of the Chinese invasion on Tibet's eco-system, the Tibetan
people, their religion and culture. Subsequently, he suggests that the invasion can be
explained on the "extraordinary" level in relation to the prophesy from the Kalachakra
Tantra, stating that in the next couple of centuries there will be a materialistic
dictatorship that is inimical to all spiritual practices. A spiritual human realm that is not
of this world called Shambhala will emerge "from behind an invisible barrier" and
eventually conquer the dictatorship's military, and "the enlightened people" of
Shambhala will usher in a golden age of spirituality that will last for eighteen hundred
years. According to Thurman, Tibetans believe the "destruction of the Buddhist
institutions in their homeland is a sign of the nearing of the age of liberation, for the
whole world, not just for Tibet."44 Incidentally, the prophesy also states that anyone
who has received the Kalachakra initiation will have an advantageous rebirth during the
age of Shambhala, which Thurman concludes, is the reason so many Tibetans undertake
difficult pilgrimages to attend the ceremony.
While there are no expositional references to the profound significance of the
Kalachakra initiation or its prophesy in the film's narrative, scenes of its rituals are
intercut with scenes of the Dalai Lama's escape. The frequent juxtaposition of these two
disparate visual and narrative streams effectively allows the "ordinary" and
"extraordinary" levels of interpretation to coalesce in a uniquely Tibetan way. The Dalai
Lama's flight remains anchored within an "ordinary" or historical interpretation because
42
43
44
Ibid., 7
Ibid., 8.
Ibid., 8.
106
the film realistically depicts the ordeals of his escape. Given that the inserts of the rituals
of the Kalachakra ceremony are extra-narrative, they shape our interpretation of the Dalai
Lama's escape without distorting its basic details. While the sequences of the Dalai
Lama's escape could stand alone as a historically accurate, "ordinary", portrayal of his
ordeal, the integration of images of the initiation ritual suggests that on the
"extraordinary" level the Chinese invasion and Dalai Lama's subsequent exile is a
reiteration of the prophesy: the anti-religious dictatorship has begun, but it will ultimately
fail. Furthermore, since the Kalachakra initiation is often associated with world peace,
its use in the film insinuates that escape—rather than staying and mounting an armed
insurgency—is the Dalai Lama's only moral and constructive response to Chinese
aggression.
The multiple cuts to the Kalachakra initiation in the film's final scenes elucidate
Kunduri's intricate rendering of time. The juxtaposition of the Dalai Lama's escape
with his performance of the ritual highlights the frequent convergence of the temporal
and timeless in Tibetan Buddhism, and suggests Dalai Lama is able to simultaneously
straddle both realms. The temporal is borne out by the historical fact that the Dalai
Lama fled Tibet in the early spring of 1959. However, he concomitantly re-enacts the
timeless role of the Buddha because it was the Buddha who first gave the initiation to
the King of Shambhala and his 96 minor rulers. The Kalachakra initiation is also called
the "Cycles of Time" or "Wheel of Time" because "it shows the Buddha as emanating
himself in the form of a 'time-machine' or 'history machine,' an embodiment of what
the unenlightened perceive as the flow of time, adopting such a form to show his
107
commitment to the future enlightenment of all beings."
Thus the use of parallel
editing in the closing sequence emphasizes that the Buddha is still actively continuing
his commitment to beings through the human agency of the Dalai Lama, associating the
Kalachakra Tantra and the Dalai Lama even though the deeper spiritual elements of
"ordinary" and "extraordinary" perception are not explained.
A thorough knowledge of the intricate details of the Kalachakra initiation would
undoubtedly enrich our understanding of the final sequence and provide illuminating
insights into the esoteric worlds of Tibetan Buddhism. Yet, the lack of exegesis of the
initiation's significance should not be considered a weakness of the film. Kundun
operates within the conventions of narrative cinema whereby detailed explanations are
limited for the sake of narrative progression. Notwithstanding, the film manages to
allude to the ordinary and extraordinary levels of perception, primarily through
crosscutting and extra-narrative inserts. In this way, the film creates an entry point to
the mystical dimension of the Kalachakra initiation, and reinforces it by means of the
Dalai Lama's voice-over quoting Buddhist scripture and his surreal visions—such as the
image of blood seeping into the goldfish pond. The poetic tone of the quotations and
dreamlike quality of the images suggests that the film is not simply depicting historical
events but requires a more intuitive interpretation. These devices encourage the viewer
to make the transition to the multidimensional universe represented by the Kalachakra
rituals. In addition, editing constructs multiple layers of meaning, and by means of the
images of the ritual, offer the viewer a glimpse into the deeper mystical levels of the
Ibid., 8.
108
Tibetan worldview. While the Kalachakra ceremony scenes have no practical bearing
on the historical or "ordinary" representation of the Dalai Lama's escape, they are a
poetic, extra-narrative rendering of the mystical Tibetan imagination.
Directors cannot regulate how their films are going to be interpreted or received; they
can only anticipate what the reaction will be. When Chokling was asked in an interview
whether he had any particular aspirations for Milarepa he answered:
The story of Milarepa itself is beautifully inspiring with lots of wonderful
teachings [...] If this film inspires just a single person to become more
compassionate, tolerant and patient towards others, I will be more than happy.
From a Buddhist point of view, this is the most precious gift that we can offer
the world.46
Chokling clearly hoped that by expressing universal Buddhist principles—compassion,
tolerance, patience—in a compelling film adaptation of Milarepa's life, viewers would
grasp its spiritual message. However, that message may have fallen flat because of the
film's reliance on narrative conventions instead of extra-narrative exegesis to get the
message across. By portraying more arcane Tibetan practices, the director was indeed
able to endow the film with a spiritual sophistication and complexity that non-Buddhist
viewers may not have been able to grasp, such as the relationship between Milarepa's
procurement of power from invisible entities and the Tibetan Buddhist practices like
Guru Yoga. Cinematic conventions dictate that Buddhist concepts, such as the pure
light essence of mind, can only be alluded to. Yet, without any further contextualization,
the Western viewers' understanding of the nuanced and multi-layered Tibetan
worldview informing this key scene remains limited. A similar challenge exists for
46
"Interview with the Director", Milarepa, The Movie, www.miIarepamovie.com (accessed
July 5, 2010).
109
viewers of Kundun. In light of Thurman's Tibetan interpretation of the Chinese
invasion according to "ordinary" and "extraordinary" perception, the Dalai Lama's
flight from Tibet is situated within an esoteric Tibetan Buddhist universe of such
complexity that it is conceivably lost upon most Western viewers. As well, the
nuanced meaning arising from the juxtaposition of the Kalachakra initiation and the
Dalai Lama's flight from Tibet may be puzzling to Western audiences unfamiliar with
the prophesy it perpetuates.
By making reference to the esoteric religious practices, Chokling and Scorsese took a
calculated risk because these arcane aspects of Tibetan Buddhism project a distinctive
worldview that is almost inaccessible to non-Buddhist viewers. The issues raised by the
directors' choices are addressed in the pages that follow by means of a comprehensive
examination of the reception of Milarepa and Kundun and the Western viewers'
difficulties with the films' more esoteric and multidimensional elements.
110
CONCLUSION
Towards a M o r e Inclusive Methodology
We have not addressed in any depth whether there is a limit to what a film can simply
"show" of a foreign culture's religion without some contextualization and still engage
viewers. As noted in the previous chapter, by depicting events Tibetans consider
comparatively normal—black magic, omens, telepathy, prophesies, visions, spirit
possession, and reincarnation—Milarepa and Kundun may have been too esoteric and
difficult for Western audiences to grasp, a point supported by the fact that neither film did
well at the box office. Milarepa reportedly earned just over $200,000 (US) worldwide
and Kundun earned less than six million dollars in North America. A sample of reviews
posted on the internet indicates that the overall reaction to these two films was mostly
negative. The reviews posted on the website Rotten Tomatoes reveal that both films also
elicited tepid responses, although several were more pointedly critical. One reviewer of
Milarepa, Phil Villarreal from The Arizona Star opined, "Buddhism teaches suffering is
inseparable from existence. Suffering is certainly inseparable from the experience of
watching Milarepa"1 Kundun drew the following disparaging review from John Nesbitt
on his website Old School Reviews: "Recitations on the Four Noble Truths may excite
1
Phil Villarreal, "Milarepa", Arizona Daily Star, October 25, 2007.
http://azstarnet.com/entertainment/article 8cal80el-5085-568e-9fld-306594fb2c2.html
Ill
devoted Buddhists and students but will send more viewers to oblivion than
enlightenment."
However, the negative reactions of these reviewers may speak less directly to the
films' quality—or lack thereof—and more to their subject matter. As Ryan Cracknell
wrote of Kundun on his website, "There's no denying the artistry of Kundun. Its heart
also appears to be in the right place. But for those like me who don't have a versed [sic]
history in the modern history of Tibet or Buddhism, the scope is ultimately too large."3
Cracknell's frustration may have stemmed from the fact that Kundun avoids spelling out
Tibetan Buddhism's doctrine. Most likely the average Western viewer unacquainted
with Tibetan Buddhism or Tibetan history is unable to construct a richly meaningful and
nuanced reading of Kundun or Milarepa. In addition, Tibetan Buddhism's cosmology
of unseen multiple realms of existence inhabited by nonhuman supernatural beings
contravenes widely held Western attitudes, even those of Western practitioners of
Tibetan Buddhism. As Reginald Ray observes:
Many [Western Buddhists] have felt unable to entertain the ideas of
reincarnation or of the six realms [of existence]. For them, many of the
traditional Tibetan rituals dealing with other beings and other realms do not
make sense. Sometimes this extends to thinking that even talk of nonmaterial
buddhas, bodhisattvas, and protectors is "symbolic" and that there is really
nothing that corresponds to these designations.4
Indeed, the cosmologies of East and West are so dissimilar that their respective
worldviews appear to be difficult to bridge or reconcile.
2
3
4
John Nesbitt, "Kundun", Old School Reviews, posted August 1, 2002.
http://oldschoolreviews.com/rev_90/kundun.htm (accessed April 29, 2011).
Ryan Cracknell, "Review: Kundun", Movie Views, posted October 30, 2006.
http :mo vie views .com/2006/10/3 0/revie w-kundun (accessed April 29, 2011).
Reginald Ray, Indestructible Truth: The Living Spirituality of Tibetan Buddhism (Boston and London:
Shambhala, 2000), 56.
112
A concrete example of a Westerner resisting the enigmatic elements of Tibetan
Buddhism is American journalist Thomas Laird's account of his interview with the Dalai
Lama. Incredulous of the myths of Padmasambhava (one of the founders of Tibetan
Buddhism) visiting an incalculable number of people and places as an emanation of his
physical form and flying on the rays of the sun to avoid death, Laird asks the Dalai Lama
to explain these miraculous phenomena. The Dalai offers the following elucidation:
I know that it is difficult to accept for Americans. However, for us as
Buddhists, depending on our level of experience and belief, there are no
difficulties for us to explain the resurrection of Jesus Christ. We can easily
accept this because of the fact that we accept that there are these two levels [the
ordinary and extraordinary]. From a Buddhist viewpoint there are no
difficulties to accept the resurrection of Jesus Christ at the second
[extraordinary] level.5
Interestingly, the comparison of Padmasambhava to Jesus Christ allows Laird to
understand how Padmasambhava simultaneously straddles the "ordinary" and
"extraordinary" in the Tibetan worldview. The Dalai Lama's reference to Christianity
illustrates as well that all religious traditions, including those of the West, allow for the
occurrence of miraculous events. Notwithstanding, these events are often explained and
understood in culturally specific terms so their intercultural universality is not always
readily apparent or translatable. For instance, Tibetans believe shamans, lamas and
yogis can routinely perform miraculous feats, whereas Laird's scepticism about the
myths of Padmasambhava is perhaps shaped by Western notions that only exceptional
religious figures or saints can perform such deeds and only on rare occasions.
Thomas Laird, The Story of Tibet: Conversations with the Dalai Lama (New York: Grove Press, 2006),
61.
Yogi is a term given to individuals who live outside of the monastic community, often meditating for
long periods in caves or remote hermitages, and are often able to execute magic. Milarepa is
considered a yogi.
113
At stake here is the challenge posed by Milarepa and Kundun of cinematically
representing the Tibetan perception of a multidimensional reality without the benefit of
alluding to recognizable cultural reference points, or resorting to an explanatory text or
narration to clarify perplexing concepts. Unlike documentaries, there is a general
disinclination against overt didacticism in feature films, arguably for the purpose of
facilitating and preserving the spectators' emotional involvement, leaving it up to the
viewer to discern nuances or detect cultural allusions. For feature films that are either
foreign made or based on a little known historical event, strategies are often developed to
compensate for the viewers' inability to infer subtle but important information. Dramatic
re-enactments, for instance, often compensate for the lack of exposition by situating their
subjects within a comprehensible context, providing background information either
through dialogue, an introductory text, voice-overs, or flash-backs. Although these
strategies tend to effectively compensate for the gaps in the viewers' knowledge,
problems may still arise.
Milarepa and Kundun open with introductory written texts situating their respective
true-life subjects within a historical context, but with differing results. Milarepa locates
the narrative within a magical dimension. With the statement that "11 th Century Tibet
was a land of Buddhists and mystics, where lamas and sorcerers roamed and yogis were
seen flying through the sky", the film sets up a framework for the enigmatic and
mysterious events that follow. The introductory text in Kundun steers clear of the
familiar, straight forward facts about the Dalai Lama's role as Tibetan Buddhism's
spiritual leader and his peaceful efforts to reinstate Tibetan self-determination in
Chinese occupied Tibet. Instead it declares that he is "the human manifestation of the
114
Buddha of Compassion" and that upon the discovery of his reincarnation a "Buddha had
been reborn". Arguably, it is a mental leap for many Westerners to envision the gentle
smiling Dalai Lama occasionally seen on television news broadcasts visiting foreign
dignitaries, as a "human manifestation of the Buddha of Compassion". There is no
further elucidation about the Dalai Lama's role or, for that matter, who or what is the
Buddha of Compassion, leaving viewers to sort out whether the Dalai Lama is a human
being or a god or a combination of the two. The confusion arising from blending well
known factual details with the more esoteric aspects of Tibetan Buddhism conceivably
makes it difficult for Western audiences to create a single cohesive narrative while
watching Kundun. Spectators may be unable to ascertain whether they are to view the
cinematic biography of the Dalai Lama as a factual representation of modern historical
events, as a magical allegory, or a fusion of history and myth.
Since there are numerous reasons for the financial failure of a film, it is problematic to
contend that box-office returns are an indication of audiences' difficulty working through
the cultural nuances of a film. In the cases of Milarepa and Kundun, we also have to
gauge how religious films usually perform in the market place to determine what other
factors may have affected the films' lacklustre reception rather than relying on broad
claims about the unpopularity of religious films. In fact, this assumption is problematic
because it overlooks the tradition of religious films as popular entertainment. Georges
Melies' first film was Christ Walking on Water (1898) and Cecil B. De Mille made
countless religious films during the silent era. Recently several Hollywood films—such
as Bruce Almighty (Tom Shadyac, USA, 2003), and The Passion of the Christ (Mel
Gibson, USA, 2004)—have reinterpreted popular religious narratives and have done well
115
at the box office. Moreover, religious genre films in India pervaded screens long before
the days of Bollywood and attracted large audiences. It remains unclear whether today,
religious films remain consistently popular given that they represent only a fraction of
Hollywood or Bollywood's total output. Only Nigeria's nascent Nollywood is the
exception to the rule, producing a substantial number of well-received video-films with
strong religious themes. Often pitting evangelical Christian pastors against the shamans
of indigenous religions in a dramatic "showdown", these films appeal to the Christian
sensibilities of many southern Nigerians. However, a sub-genre of Christian video-film
that represents a small portion of Nollywood's total output is produced by many of
Q
Nigeria's large evangelical churches and marketed directly to their lay communities.
These examples of targeted marketing suggest that explicitly religious films, focusing
more on specific religious doctrines, are more likely to appeal to smaller niche audiences.
From this perspective, it is worth noting that The Cup and Travellers and Magicians
were popular with the relatively small film festival and art-house audiences rather than
with the general public. Moreover, Chokling's recent documentary, Brilliant Moon
(2010), commissioned by deceased Tibetan Buddhist master Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche's
organization to commemorate the 100th anniversary of his birth, bypassed the
international film festival circuit and large distribution deals in favour of limited
screenings and marketing the DVD directly to Dilgo Khyentse's followers. Consequently
it is debatable whether Milarepa and Kundun could have countered the niche trend and
7
8
Rachel Dwyer, Filming the Gods: Religion and Indian Cinema (New York and London: Routledge
Taylor and Francis Group, 2006).
Asonzeh Ukah, "Advertising God: Nigerian Christian Video Films", Journal of Religion in Africa, 33,
2. 2003. www.jstor.org.proxylibrarv.carleton.ca (accessed April 15, 2010).
116
found a large audience of Buddhists and non-Buddhists, in spite of the optimism of their
filmmakers that the Buddhist elements would not alienate or confuse viewers.
Undoubtedly, filmmakers take a risk of alienating viewers when they approach films
from a religious perspective if only for the reason that religion can be a deeply divisive
topic. A religious film's accessibility is even more complicated when the religion is
esoteric, complex, or reflects an uncommon, little understood worldview. As we have
seen, there are multiple aspects of Tibetan Buddhism which are culturally specific with
no evident parallel in the major theistic world religions, making it somewhat
inaccessible to non-Buddhist viewers. Thus, are we to expect filmmakers to make only
films with universal religious themes, reinforcing the idea of a single meta-religion? In
the name of diversity, I hope not. Films that attempt to delve into the deeper spiritual
dimensions of human experience can touch us in profound ways. Accordingly, they
have a place in cinema whether they are understood and appreciated by a vast number
of viewers or not. So how do we approach these films?
First and foremost, it is incumbent on us to know and understand the philosophy,
tenets and cosmology of the religion in question. In order to discuss the popularity of
religious films in India, the United States and Nigeria, it is not enough to examine the
films' religious perspective solely in relation to audience reception and the wider social
context. Had I taken this kind of approach, and only regarded the films as exemplars
and products of culture, I would not have perceived the multidimensional Buddhist
concepts extant in The Cup, Travellers and Magicians, Milarepa and Kundun. Thus, in
accordance to theologian John Lyden's framework previously mentioned in the
introduction of this thesis, the films themselves and the religion that informs them were
117
the starting points of my analysis. Secondly, I attempted to avoid cultural relativism by
promoting inclusivity and celebrating diverse perspectives. In my examination of
Martin Scorsese's Kundun, the primary aim was to demonstrate that not only Tibetans
can promulgate an "authentic" Buddhist perspective.
I also undertook the study of the highly spiritual films of Khyentse Norbu and Neten
Chokling in hope that their unique perspectives could reveal the heart and soul of a
2,500-year tradition and give us a cinematic rendering of a world governed by
compassion and wisdom. And most importantly, I wanted to celebrate the multiple
perspectives that infuse this diverse corpus of films about Tibet and the Tibetan
diaspora. Each one of these films brings us a richer understanding of what it means to
be human in this ever-changing world of samsara.
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