Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 initially caught my eye because of how much I enjoyed the humor-filled interstellar action of the first two films in the series. And while I knew beforehand that this movie would center more on Rocket—the anthropomorphic raccoon who is both a Guardian and former mercenary—I came away pleasantly taken aback by its explicit engagement with animal rights and liberation. In a Marvel franchise characterized by irreverence and flashy galactic battles, the third installment carries the unexpected and bodhisattva-like message to save all beings, even the nonhuman ones.

The movie opens with a cage full of baby raccoons in a dark, dingy lab. One kit is pulled from the cage for experimentation, and the scene then transitions out of the past to present-day Rocket Raccoon, revealing metal implants and scars all over his body. Rocket is critically injured shortly thereafter but cannot receive treatment due to a proprietary “kill switch” wired into his heart by the bioengineering company that created him. While his fellow Guardians race to unlock the code that would allow them to treat Rocket’s wounds and prevent his death, the movie fills in his backstory as an escaped laboratory experiment for the High Evolutionary, a scientist seeking to perfect the universe. The High Evolutionary created a planet called Counter-Earth with the aim of populating it with peaceful and intelligent humanoid inhabitants, but he first needs to recapture Rocket so he can harvest his highly intelligent brain and perfect his latest batch of specimens. And even though a perfect society is sought, viewers are pushed to consider if it’s worth the cost of countless animal lives discarded along the way as failed experiments.

Like some of the other main characters—such as Gamora and Drax—Rocket’s past is filled with suffering and pain. Yet unlike the others, Rocket’s story also highlights concerns surrounding nonviolence and compassion for all beings, beckoning viewers to consider their positions regarding the treatment of those who aren’t human and how they might work toward saving them. Buddhist ethics regarding the treatment of nonhuman animals generally follows the same perspective concerning human animals, grounded in the first of the five precepts—don’t take life, don’t cause life to be taken, and don’t encourage or facilitate the taking of life—and ahimsa (nonviolence), often phrased as “do no harm.” In his chapter on animal ethics in The Oxford Handbook of Buddhist Ethics, Paul Waldau indicates that committing to the first precept amounts to “a conscious effort to refrain from intentional[ly] killing any living being” and that it “requires one to notice, and then take seriously, one’s nonhuman neighbors.” That’s certainly a unique imperative to consider in a series predicated on the protection and guarding of the galaxy’s inhabitants—since many of them aren’t human—and the focus on caged animals that demand the same level of compassion as humanlike species illustrates this well.

Ever since Rocket’s initial escape from the lab many years ago—during which he witnessed the murder of his friends and fellow test subjects—he shut out his painful past and even distanced himself from identifying with his own kind, becoming enraged if anyone called him a raccoon. It’s not until the end of the movie that Rocket decides to stop running from the suffering of his past so he can rescue others. After the Guardians board the High Evolutionary’s ship, he tells them to “save all the higher life-forms” while he heads to the control room. As he’s wandering through the ship, he finds himself face-to-face with cages of animals waiting to be experimented on—including a cage filled with baby raccoons that is all too reminiscent of his own imprisonment years earlier. In Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh’s book on Buddhist ethics, For a Future to Be Possible, he explains that it’s through suffering that compassion is born. “Our real enemy is forgetfulness,” he states, so we must stay in touch with that suffering and nourish an awareness of it so compassion can grow, which is exactly what stirs Rocket to action in that scene and shifts his perspective: a palpable reminder of the similarly grisly treatment he had pushed away. With tears in his eyes, Rocket uses the same key card he created for his own escape—having held on to it his whole life—and frees the raccoons and other animals along with the latest Counter-Earth candidates: children of a species that look and act very human.

Once all the children are off the ship and the High Evolutionary is defeated, Gamora tells the Guardians that they need to go, but Rocket replies, “We have to save them.” Peter Quill, the group’s leader, tells him they already have “all the kids on board,” to which Rocket replies, “No, Pete. The rest of them.” When all the additional animals start jumping onto the Guardians’ ship, one of the crew members assisting with the rescue remarks, “I thought we were limiting ourselves to the higher life-forms.” “Me too,” Quill replies, suggesting he still isn’t convinced that their rescue is warranted. Even Rocket’s fellow Guardians, who flew across the galaxy to try to save him, fail to extend compassion to the other nonhuman animals aboard the ship—and Rocket comes to the realization only after he encounters the room full of cages. In many ways, Rocket’s journey symbolizes the bodhisattva vow to save all beings and the cultivation of bodhicitta (arising of the awakening mind)—which is foundational along that path—as self-concern gives way to selfless concern for others. And his newfound dedication to taking seriously that shared, interrelated preference to avoid suffering and experience joy noticeably aligns with the outlook of biocentric ethicists: the recognition of inherent worth of all beings, of which humans are merely one species among many.

Resonating with Thich Nhat Hanh’s remarks above, the movie also points to the need to maintain a close connection to the suffering that exists in the world if we are to work toward transforming it. Animal testing isn’t public for a reason. It’s characteristically inhumane, and seeing it take place can be harrowing. But that’s also exactly why organizations like People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), Animal Liberation Front (ALF), and Last Chance for Animals (LCA) include footage of their raids or undercover operations in their campaigns and rescue announcements—to not only demonstrate what’s actually taking place but also to appeal to the emotive response of a public seeing what discreetly, if not secretly, takes place in the industries structuring our societies. 

After the young Rocket is first taken and experimented on, he’s returned to a cage with the top of his scalp exposed, implying that his brain had been subjected to some sort of manipulation. It’s at that moment when viewers hear his strained, first spoken word: “huurrttss.” This scene of a raccoon with a stitched and shaven scalp shaking in pain is eerily similar to one of the more famous rescues from the early days of documented raids: Britches, the stump-tailed macaque monkey whose eyes were sewn shut at birth and affixed to a device that “let out a constant screeching sound” as part of a sleep deprivation study. Although Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 is a work of science fiction, the use-value relationship between scientist and specimen continues every day, and the movie brings us closer to that very real suffering, violence, and taking of life. And it’s important to reiterate that Rocket’s shift from wanting to just save the “higher life-forms” to setting out to save “the rest of them” doesn’t occur until he stumbles into an all-too-familiar cage-filled room on the High Evolutionary’s ship and sees the trapped animals. But simply feeling compassion isn’t quite enough, Thich Nhat Hanh adds. “We have to learn to express it” through understanding and insight. 

Such an imperative might call for a mindful release of laboratory animals suffering in the confines of their cells. But we need to eliminate the possibility of even getting to that stage to begin with—and I think Rocket would agree. In a flashback scene showing the members of his test group coming up with names for themselves, viewers finally get an explanation for “Rocket”: “Someday, I’m gonna make great machines that fly, and me and my friends are gonna go flying together into the forever and beautiful sky; Lylla, and Teefs, and Floor, and me…Rocket.” 

As Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 brings us closer to the suffering of nonhuman beings—and animals that are experimented on—to remind us that they too deserve compassion and freedom from suffering, Rocket piloting those he cares about through a forever and beautiful sky becomes a great analogy for the bodhisattva-like resemblance suggested above. But until that requisite freedom is fully recognized—until we notice and take seriously our nonhuman neighbors in a way that the first precept entails—the world will continue to be built upon the violation of those who will never catch a glimpse of anything as endless or magnificent as what Rocket dreamed. 

The post Animal Liberation in ‘Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3’ appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

As an active Buddhist, a former video producer, and a lifelong pop culture junkie, it’s impossible for me to not see Buddhist themes and teachings in everything I watch. In some cases, it’s overwhelming, like in Everything Everywhere All at Once, which explored emptiness for two and a half hours, but in most cases, it’s a bit more subtle, like in Barbie.

(Warning: mild spoilers ahead, but none you can’t find anywhere else on the internet.)

Barbie is deliciously pink. A psychedelic, campy satire that at times is bittersweet with its commentary on gender equality and the patriarchy, it is radical to some, very funny to others, and thought-provoking for all. Director Greta Gerwig has managed to paint a broad enough pink landscape to allow for much interpretation—a hallmark of all great film and art. 

What has struck me most about the film is its deeper explorations of female suffering. The journey of Stereotypical Barbie, played by Margot Robbie, is in many ways akin to the historical Buddha’s journey toward enlightenment. The movie starts with Barbie living in an almost picture-perfect Barbieland. Her morning routine is effortless. She has no cellulite. She is living in an abundance of pink. 

It is not until she leaves Barbieland that she discovers how tragically imperfect the world actually is—how much suffering there is, specifically for women. During the most perfect disco-dancing party, Stereotypical Barbie asks, “Do you ever think about dying?” to both her and her other Barbie and Ken friends’ shock. 

We see a similar arc in the story of Siddhartha Gautama. As a wealthy prince, Gautama’s life is picture-perfect. He has unlimited resources, a family, and what most people during that time—or any time—could want. But something beyond his understanding called him to explore the “real world.” When he went beyond the castle walls, he quickly met the full spectrum of humanity that he hadn’t been privy to up until that point: sickness, old age, and death. 

As I watched Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling roller-blade down Santa Monica Pier in highlighter-yellow roller blades, searching for answers, I started to wonder if Gerwig was laying out much more than what appeared on the pink surface. Was this movie actually an existential fever dream dressed in pink and plastic?

In Barbie, once Stereotypical Barbie and Ken enter the “real world” for the first time, they quickly see and encounter suffering as did Gautama. But this suffering comes in different forms now. We see how Stereotypical Barbie suffers quickly and deeply much more than Ken as she gets sexually harassed by construction workers and feels suffering perhaps for the first time. On a quest to find her “owner,” she mistakes a teenager for her playmate, and instead of getting the warm welcome she was expecting, she instead gets reamed out for creating unmanageable expectations for women everywhere. 

The heart of the movie, somewhat hidden amidst all the clever farce, comes when Ruth Handler, the inventor of Barbie and a co-founder of Mattel, played by Rhea Perlman, explains to Stereotypical Barbie that the world is full of suffering, that this is part of being human. Of course, my little Buddhist heart couldn’t help but remember the first of the four noble truths—that suffering exists, plain and simple. As humans, we cannot escape it; it is part of our existence. But it’s our job to look deeply and transform it into something better than how we found it.

The film then goes on to explore the idea of perfection, in both a capitalist and feminist way, and perhaps unbeknownst to Gerwig, taps into one of the great teachings: buddhanature. Stereotypical Barbie and her other Barbie friends start embodying imposter syndrome, cultivating a narrative that they are simply enough. But Ruth reminds Barbie, while they float in white space (a dramatic reprieve from all the glorious pink), that Barbie has always been perfect, that she was, in fact, made perfect. This seemingly simple statement—that our most authentic, natural selves are perfect in a world made of plastic—isn’t just a brilliant move here, but a profound one.

The teachings continue to reveal themselves as Ken begins his existential crisis after trying to turn Barbieland into a patriarchy and confronting his attachment to his own identity. The attachment to self and our own egos—when we fail to grasp that, as Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh says, we all inter-are—is, of course, one of the many ways suffering is born. Ken breaks down, cries, and, much as Barbie does, begins to feel the full spectrum of emotions that come with living a life that is filled with suffering. After trying to bury his tears, he then goes into a dance number about his manhood, and, truly, his identity. 

Ken screams at the top of his lungs and chiseled chest, asking Barbie who he is if he isn’t Ken? He goes through the many different kinds of Kens, trying to find more meaning in who he is. In response, Barbie practices compassion by sharing with him that he is “just Ken.” It isn’t until he lets go of this deep attachment of self that he realizes he is good enough, simply as is—in his buddhanature—and sports a tie-dyed sweatshirt that says, “I’M KENOUGH.” 

For me, the most poignant moment in the film is when Ruth invites Barbie to feel. And feel she does, opening herself up to life, with all of its flaws and imperfections, joys and sorrows. Feeling might be painful, but in the end, she would rather feel than not. Despite the treacherous journey we have as not just humans but as women in a world that has taken away our autonomy, which forces us into a box and shackles us with expectations and twisty-ties, Barbie realizes that this plight we call humanity is still worth it.

As a feminist and a Buddhist, I found this realization to be the most striking part of this summer blockbuster. Stereotypical Barbie chose the most complex, challenging, oppressive, and beautiful experience of all—being human.

The post What ‘Barbie’ Teaches Us About Suffering appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

You’re out hunting in the Texas wilderness when you come across a scene from a nightmare: shot-up bodies and the signs of a drug deal gone wrong, where everyone ended up dead. So where’s the money? You follow tracks and find a final body, still grasping a bag that contains more cash than you’ve ever seen. You have a choice: take the money with the chance to make a new life, while knowing that someone will come after you; or leave it and return to your old struggles. Everything you’ve ever done has led you to this point. You take the chance and start running.

That’s the crucial scene in No Country for Old Men, the novel by Cormac McCarthy, who has just died at age 89, and the Oscar-winning Coen brothers’ 2007 film. Llewelyn Moss, who discovers the money, is hunted by an inexorable pursuer, Anton Chigurh, played by Javier Bardem in the movie, who kills anyone who crosses his path without anger or mercy. From the moment he took the suitcase, Moss’s fate was sealed. 

McCarthy’s novels are typically blood-soaked explorations, written in shimmering prose, of the illusions that sustain ordinary life. They seek wisdom, telling us, as Virginia Woolf said of Joseph Conrad, “something very old and perfectly true, which had lain hidden but is now revealed.” For all their bleakness, the books resonate with me as a Buddhist. In the case of No Country, the Buddhist connection is overt, as the novel is essentially a reworking of The Pardoner’s Tale, by Geoffrey Chaucer—one of the greatest of all short stories—while the ultimate source of The Pardoner’s Tale is a Buddhist Jataka tale. To trace these influences and see what they tell us about McCarthy, it’s simplest to start at the beginning. 

A Jataka describes a previous life of the being who will eventually become the Buddha. In our sources he is called the bodhisatta, the Pali version of the better-known Sanskrit term bodhisattva. In each life the bodhisatta learns a lesson or develops a moral virtue that will eventually prepare him for enlightenment, and The Jatakamala contains 547 such stories. Many are well-known within Asian Buddhist culture, but they’re much less popular in Western cultures, where we may be put off by the centrality of rebirth or the simplicity of their morality.

In the Vedabbha Jataka, the bodhisatta is apprenticed to a brahmin who knows the powerful Vedabbha Mantra, a spell that can make jewels rain down when recited at a particular conjunction of the moon. Robbers take the two men hostage and send the bodhisatta to fetch a ransom for his teacher. Sensing danger, the bodhisatta warns the brahmin, “Whatever you do, don’t use the mantra.” But while he’s away, the brahmin notices that the conjunction has occurred and thinks to himself, “I could conjure up the jewels and pay the ransom that way.”

The robbers get their money, and everyone is happy until the whole band is captured by another group, who demands that the brahmin repeat his feat. When the brahmin tells them he can produce jewels only when the planets align, the robbers chop him in two and a huge fight breaks out between the gangs. Eventually, all but two are dead, and these survivors hide the treasure in a jungle lair. One goes to town to buy some rice, and as he walks into town decides to poison the rice so he can keep all the wealth for himself. The second, who is guarding the treasure, has the same thought, kills the first robber when he returns, eats the rice and dies. 

The bodhisatta returns to find the body of his teacher, the dead robbers, and the treasure, and he understands the whole story. He reflects that the disaster occurred because the brahmin did not heed his advice, and he concludes: “One who desires profit by wrong means comes to harm.” In her 2006 translation of the story, Sarah Shaw suggests that the bodhisatta’s role as a clearheaded interpreter capable of reconstructing the sequence of events makes this “one of the earliest counterparts of the detective story.”

We don’t know how the story of the Vedabbha Jataka found its way to Europe, but we can imagine it being retold around campfires along the trade route between India and the Middle East, where a version appears in The 1001 Nights. Perhaps pilgrims or crusaders heard it on their travels to the Holy Land and retold it when they returned to a 14th-century England, where memories of the Black Death were fresh. Somehow it reached Geoffrey Chaucer as he gathered materials for The Canterbury Tales. One of Chaucer’s stories is told by a pardoner (an individual licensed by the Church to pardon people for their sins), and scholars long ago noticed that The Pardoner’s Tale shared features with the Vedabbha Jataka. 

Chaucer’s story starts with three young men drinking and gambling in a tavern. They hear that a friend has been killed by a character named “Death,” who has also killed many others, and they set out to punish him by killing Death. They ask an old man where they can find Death, and he tells them they will find him beneath a nearby tree. When they arrive, they discover a hoard of treasure and forget their original mission. One is dispatched to buy food and wine, and, as in the Jataka, he decides to poison the wine so he can have all the money. For the same reason, the other two decide to kill the first. The moral drawn by the Pardoner is radix malorum est cupiditas, which we could roughly render as “Craving is the origin of evil.”

Chaucer’s invention of the old man is a brilliant touch, as is placing the fable in the mouth of the Pardoner, who tries to use its power to extract money from his listeners. But the biggest difference between Chaucer’s version and the Jataka is the youths’ desire to seek out death and the irony that they do indeed find him, only not in the form they imagined. The story’s meaning expands from the effects of greed to our relation to death, and that’s also a link to No Country for Old Men. 

The Pardoner’s Tale helps us understand the significance of Chigurh. As a psychopathic killer, he is scarcely believable, but the comparison with Chaucer lets us see him as Death personified. “How dangerous is he?” someone asks a person he’s hired to stop Chigurh. “Compared to what,” he replies, “the bubonic plague?” 

It’s no good asking why Chigurh kills, as people do throughout the story. That’s what Death does. We try to bargain with death, but the most Chigurh will do is toss a coin to decide whether he’ll kill you.

Chigurh says that the source of his power is that people want to prevail over death while simultaneously refusing to acknowledge its existence. 

You could see No Country as an unsparing version of the Buddhist teaching of karma. Chigurh tells one victim, “Every moment in your life is a turning and everyone a choosing. Somewhere you made a choice. All followed to this. The accounting is scrupulous.” Moss is condemned by the same moral logic that catches the victims in the two precursor stories, and the novel’s corpse-strewn opening recalls the Jataka. Like the bodhisatta, Moss—the Josh Brolin character who finds the bodies—understands exactly what has happened, but unlike him, Moss doesn’t learn the lesson the scene so vividly teaches. 

In fact, McCarthy’s message is subtler. Having taken the money, Moss returns to the crime scene to give water to a wounded man, and it’s the combination of the two actions that dooms him. We suffer because we’re entangled in the world, wanting both to be good and to get what we want. We imagine that life is on our side when, as Buddhism says, it is characterized by suffering, impermanence, and insubstantiality. Chigurh says that the source of his power is that people want to prevail over death while simultaneously refusing to acknowledge its existence. 

That’s a grim reckoning, and Buddhism adds that the fruit of seeing through our delusion is wisdom, compassion, and liberation. There’s little of that on the surface of No Country for Old Men or McCarthy’s other writing, but it’s there if we dig deep enough. The counterpart to the bodhisatta of the Vedabbha Jataka is Bell, the police officer, played by Tommy Lee Jones, who tracks Chigurh and figures out the whole story. What he learns sobers him deeply, and he understands better the importance of living well and letting go of illusions. 

At the very end of both the film and the book, Bell describes a dream. He’s following his father on horseback through the mountains and sees that his father is carrying fire in a horn and traveling ahead to create a refuge of light in a dark landscape. For me, that’s an image of how hope survives. It’s also an image for the wisdom of ancient tales that’s passed down through the generations, crossing continents and leaping genres. 

That wisdom burns afresh in McCarthy’s clear-eyed, prophetic novels, even as we bid him farewell. They’re sources of light in a dark time.

The post Cormac McCarthy’s Buddhist Inspiration appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

I’ve long wanted to make a movie on something like the sneeze that goes around the world, or the dollar bill that goes from hand to hand. A cinematic display of the layers of interconnection large and small that make up our lives every single day, through joys and sorrows and complacent idylls and wild shatterings of expectations like lockdowns and COVID. A movie about how even in the most turbulent times, some things remain true. Maybe that sneeze started in Battery Park in New York City, and by the time we see someone’s nose start to wiggle in just-about-to-sneeze mode in Dubai, we have settled back into the most salient truth of all of our lives: We are all connected. 

Watching the film The Same Storm, which came out in September 2021, it struck me that writer and director Peter Hedges had just made my longed-for film about interconnection and intersectionality, and made it with great skill. The film consists of twenty-four actors filming vignettes on laptops and iPhones during the early days of the pandemic. No film crews and no trailers involved. “The Same Storm revolves around our ache to connect and the extraordinary lengths we go in order to,” the filmmakers say. “We crafted a multi-protagonist story that explores how—in spite of the pandemic and the havoc it has caused in a nation convulsing on multiple fronts—we remain connected through various technologies and platforms that have quickly become a critical part of our daily lives.” 

Interconnection tips over into intersectionality—we are each more than one thing, not so easily reduced or even categorized. Maybe that nurse on the screen, in addition to having a patient, has a mother, and a racial identity, and a lot of longing in his heart to not feel so alone. Everyone is kind of complicated that way. Some facets of our being are sources of power, some of disconnection, some of clarity, some of confusion. These unchanging truths greet us as we swirl through the extreme change of our recent traumatic experiences of the pandemic. 

How close to the time of a traumatic event one can write or produce or create a work that is more art than trauma is a subject of much debate. I’ve gotten various pieces of advice from different people about that topic, along with watching varied cultures around the world work on healing in real time while sometimes also producing some of the greatest literature the world has known, and sometimes producing, in terms of public art … pretty much nothing. Any healing on any level itself is an awful lot. We go down the chakras, as a friend of mine cleverly said. Sometimes our main job is just to survive. And brava that we do.

A lot of people don’t want to look back at all right now, and you can read that in the dismissive language chosen in some of the reviews of works done soon after a traumatic time. But I’m so glad that Peter, who is a friend, and his producers, who are also friends, did, and that those amazing actors got a chance to perform, despite the reported awkwardness of the technology or having to do their own makeup. Acting on that level really is a matter of the soul, and there we were at that point in time, so often cut off, more and more isolated from one another, and for those for whom making art means collaboration, mostly out of luck. 

The actors in The Same Storm include Mary Louise Parker, Sandra Oh, Ron Livingstone, Jin Ha, Daphne Rubin-Vega, Raul Castillo, Joel Delafuente, Noma Dumezweni, and Elaine May (in her first film performance in twenty-one years!) The performances are luminous. This isn’t a mere recounting (which in the end wouldn’t be all that enticing.) This level of storytelling reveals that there could be a way forward. There must be, please, and look! There is.

It has something to do with empathy, and compassion.

I once heard the Dalai Lama on creativity, as part of a panel at Emory University, responding to a question about suffering, transformation, and art. 

He was quite interesting. He said that in Tibet, beautiful art was considered so because of the inner transformation artists went through during the act of creation. Had they become more enlightened, kinder, more deeply aware? To him, that’s what made a poem or a sculpture or painting more valuable, worthy of being held in higher esteem. Alas, we tend to have different criteria. 

Watching The Same Storm I’m tempted to ask Peter Hedges what he thinks of the Dalai Lama’s answer. Gratefully seeing the extant hope shimmering across the screen, remembering the despair, I have a feeling I know the answer.

♦

This article was first published on November 18, 2022. 

The post ‘The Same Storm’: A Lockdown Look Back appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

Each evening a crisply attired maître d’ welcomes a small group of people to a wooded island as they disembark from a ferry that has brought them from the mainland. This is an island that has been terraformed into a destination restaurant. Ushering them along the shore with a steely hauteur, the maître d’ (Elsa, played by a marvelous Hong Chau) explains with pride how all the ingredients of the evening’s meal will have been harvested from the island’s delicate natural systems—the tide pools, the forests, the gardens, and the fields. What then surfaces is a bitter mélange of systemic violence, both visible and invisible. The Menu, directed by Mark Mylod, provides Buddhist viewers with a way to reflect on the three poisons in their systemic form, and on the ecological implications of dharma as a vehicle for transformation that integrates the personal and the social.  

What unfolds is a grand guignol indictment of contemporary grind-work culture with an ethical slant relevant not just to a 20th-century Christian moral framework, but to contemporary Buddhism as well. Moving inland, the steely Elsa guides the diners through the kitchen staff’s Spartan living quarters—two rows of beds, as straight and spare as a military barracks. Hawthorne is not just a restaurant, she explains, it is a family. So far we have been keeping company with Hawthorne fanboy Tyler (Nicholas Hoult) along with his date Margot (Anya Taylor-Joy), whose name Elsa does not find on the evening’s reservation list. This discordant note points toward the horror-movie genre, linking Margot to the final girl, the one left standing at the end, the one who survives. As it turns out, the horror in The Menu is one we all are more familiar with than we might wish—how the high-end luxury market of our new Gilded Age is often fueled by extravagant suffering.

Once they are seated and chatting amiably, we are introduced to the evening’s guests: a pretentious restaurant reviewer with her sycophantic companion, a trio of shark-like finance bros looking for any opening to throw their weight around, an older wealthy couple masking their genteel rage at each other with a pleasant smile, and an over-the-hill action movie star (memorably played by John Leguizamo) who has sold his soul to commerce, dining tonight with his young assistant and lover. Finally, Chef Julian Slowik, the Prospero of this Fantasy Island, appears. Drifting ghost-like through the kitchen in his white coat, he calls his guests to attention with a thunderous clap. Played with a haunted reserve by Ralph Fiennes, Slowik has designed the evening’s menu as a single culinary narrative—a hallmark that sets Hawthorne apart from all the other Michelin destinations around the globe. 

Beginning with the amuse-bouche, each course is announced with one of Slowik’s deafening claps, along with a brief statement explaining how it fits into the evening’s menu. The dozen members of Hawthorne’s kitchen staff labor to make each presentation Zen-elegant, echoing the spare compositions cinematographer Peter Deming used earlier to frame the island’s landscapes. And yet Mylod does not go overboard lampooning the preciousness of restaurant culture, offering just enough foodie porn so that our mirror neurons respond when one of the guests finally samples the fare. 

Initially, at least, the film instead emphasizes the spiritual dimension of food. He tells the guests that they are “eating the island itself.” “Taste,” Slowik instructs, “savor… be mindful.”  Explaining his adulation to the skeptical Margot, Tyler states that chefs are more worthy of worship than movie stars or musicians because “they play with the ingredients of life itself,” and work “at the edge of the abyss, where God works too.” 

Tyler’s obsequiousness is appalling to Margot. “You are paying him to serve you,” she points out, drawing the reality of the power relationships at Hawthorne into the light. As if taking its cue from her, the spiritual aura Slowik has conjured begins to dissipate with the menu’s second course. Bread has always been the food of the poor, he explains, and so tonight, since Hawthorne’s guests are not poor, they will get no bread. The diners are scandalized and titillated as the servers distribute elegant platters of condiments sans the bread itself. Food as a history of class, we are told, is among Slowik’s favorite themes. 

The only one who sees through the odd gesture of the breadless bread course is Margot, and it is here that she and Slowik first cross swords. When he demands to know why she is not eating, she sensibly replies that she is perfectly capable of deciding when it is time to eat. 

Dejected, Slowik retreats to a table in the corner where an older woman sits alone, drinking. When Slowik next introduces the menu’s third course, we learn that this woman is his mother and that she is, indeed, an alcoholic. One night when he was a boy, Slowik explains, his enraged, drunken father tried to strangle his mother with a telephone cord. Slowik saved her by stabbing him in the thigh with a pair of kitchen scissors—and this memorable event is commemorated in the barbecued chicken thighs served up next! Each serving is brought to the tables with the chicken thigh impaled by a pair of tiny scissors. The chicken, it turns out, is part of Slowik’s trademark taco dish, for which the guests have been issued tortillas laser-printed with images pointing toward crimes they have committed. Examining a tortilla embossed with incriminating accounting data, one of the finance bros laments “a taco that could hold up in court.” 

Despite the familiar way in which we discover that this seemingly random collection of strangers is not so random after all, and that Slowik is there to enact justice for their sins, The Menu continues to deliver its surprises with droll confidence. “All a part of the menu,” is the refrain Slowik uses to calm his guests as the evening darkens. The casting pays off here, as Fiennes portrays the chef as a man who has already died and is just waiting for the news to finally register. 

Chef Slowik adheres to the philosophy of serving his customer, quite literally it turns out, and he has planned this evening’s menu to be his final masterpiece and swan song. “You represent the ruin of my art and my life,” he tells his guests with a taut, genial smile. The deep pain in Slowik’s eyes speaks to us—having met his mother we understand how childhood trauma has left him defenseless against the service economy’s predatory imperatives. 

Violence comes first in The Menu, but the film’s real taboo is this element of class conflict. Confronting Margot in the women’s room where she has gone to sneak a cigarette, Slowik bemoans his life of unrelenting pressure. Slowik’s misguided devotion to “pleasing people he will never know” has elevated Hawthorne to a price point where he now only feeds those who, like hungry ghosts, can never be satisfied. We sense here a systemic dimension of Slowik’s woundedness—he is a victim, finally, of the consumer economy. Margot too, it turns out, is a refugee from the implacable economic imperatives producing the luxury and excess on display at Hawthorne. Like Slowik and his staff, she is a “shit shoveler,” a service industry worker who knows what it is like to have to serve bad customers. 

A capacity to shine a light on the dynamics of wealth has been creeping back into popular entertainment recently after being banished for several decades. Mylod is a veteran of the acerbic series Succession, for example, and in The Menu he again leavens the sociopolitical critique with humor. How, The Menu asks, are we being harmed by our passive complicity with social and economic systems that enact violence on others and on the planet itself? The film’s early evocation of the link between the alimentary and the ecological returns now to underscore our complicity in the harms that system causes. 

The post What Do You Hunger For? appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

“When there are problems, we must be able to provide help, because the purpose of [the Tibetan Children’s Village] is to serve the Tibetan children,” says Jetsun Pema, younger sister of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, in the opening sequence of Amala. Filmmaker Geleck Palsang’s graceful, succinct documentary about Jetsun Pema’s life and work is currently touring film festivals and will soon be available to wider audiences.

Alternating between historical footage and recent interviews with Jetsun Pema and the children of Tibetan Children’s Village (TCV), the organization serving Tibetan orphaned and refugee children in India that she ran from 1964 to 2006, the film recognizes Jetsun Pema’s decades of work on behalf of the Tibetan people. The message of the documentary is clear: without Jetsun Pema’s remarkable leadership, the Tibetan Children’s Village would not be what it is today. 

The majority of the documentary consists of engaging, original interviews with Jetsun Pema’s friends; her older brother Gyalo Thondup; teachers from Tibetan Children’s Village who also grew up there as children; and Jetsun Pema herself. Fascinating details about Jetsun Pema’s life as the sister of the Dalai Lama abound. As the first sibling in the family born after her brother was enthroned in the Potala Palace, Jetsun Pema was also the first child whom the Dalai Lama named, following the Tibetan tradition where parents request a lama choose the name for their child. His Holiness was 6 years old at the time. He later personally guided his sister’s education: after she graduated from Catholic boarding school in India, having been described as a “sober” young woman by her friends, she went to study in Switzerland on His Holiness’s specific advice. He told her that she would be better able to serve the Tibetan community if she had additional education. In 1964, he gave her the special task of directing the Tibetan Children’s Village.

In the process of depicting the personal trajectory of Jetsun Pema’s life, Amala also documents the development of the Tibetan Children’s Village. Beginning as a nursery for orphaned refugee children, it grew over time into a network of schools organized around a unique family model in which groups of 20 to 25 children live in homes cared for by foster parents assigned to each house. The schools became a critical agent of preserving Tibetan language and culture by educating the children in both. Cognizant that the children living in exile have both the opportunity and the responsibility to maintain the language and culture denied to their counterparts in Tibet living under the rule of China, Jetsun Pema personally translated textbooks into Tibetan and eventually helped open the Tibetan Language Institute for higher learning.  

The film also captures painful moments in TCV’s history, including early on when the organization lacked the facilities and medical care the children sorely needed. At one point, Jetsun Pema describes the year (1964–65) when 150 children arrived after walking to India from Nepal, all extremely ill. Swiss Red Cross doctors volunteering for TCV did their best, but in one night alone, four children died. In the days that followed, a child died every three to four days because of the lack of adequate medical facilities.

The documentary also covers Jetsun Pema’s leadership of the third fact-finding delegation to Tibet in 1980 that revealed horrific abuses of the Tibetan people by the Chinese government. “We spent 105 days in Tibet, over three months, and during all that time, I shed buckets and buckets of tears,” she says in the film. Personal tragedies, such as the death of Jetsun Pema’s husband and one of her daughters, are mentioned too, but only briefly. What is notable, however, in the representation of these personal losses, is that friends recount that even after the death of her husband, when her children were still young, and after the death of her daughter, she did not let her pain affect her work. 

Overall, Geleck Palsang balances heartbreaking moments with interviews by TCV graduates and teachers as they describe what the school has meant to them. A particularly moving and heart-lifting scene shows TCV alumni gathering to formally honor Jetsun Pema, and weeping as they sing to her and pray for her long life.

It’s no wonder that she is known as Amala, or “mother,” to the thousands of children who grew up at TCV. Indeed, Jetsun Pema’s own daughter says that her mother was equally mother to all of the children there as much as her own.

By celebrating Jetsun Pema in this documentary, Geleck Palsang honors both the accomplishments of an intrepid and resourceful leader, and the contribution of the Tibetan Children’s Village itself. Not only has the center provided a safe and loving home and education for thousands of Tibetan children over decades, but it has also helped preserve Tibetan language and culture for current and future generations. While viewers may leave wanting to know even more about Jetsun Pema’s personal story and fascinating life, it is likely that this film features her just as she would prefer: as a dedicated servant for the Tibetan people and the preservation of their unique culture in the face of a challenging and increasingly integrated world. 

The post New Documentary ‘Amala’ Pays Tribute to Jetsun Pema, Sister to the Dalai Lama appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

Here at Tricycle, we read a lot of Buddhist books, keeping our eyes peeled for any titles that may interest our readers. But like anyone with a Netflix (or Hulu, or HBO Max, or Disney+) subscription, we also end up watching a lot of shows. Although references to Buddhism in Western TV and film are typically scant or nonexistent, we still often find ourselves drawing connections to Buddhist wisdom. So we assembled a list of recently watched shows or films that called Buddhist themes or principles to mind—some more directly than others. Take them as suggestions the next time you’re struggling to find something to watch.

***

Marcel the Shell with Shoes On (2021)
Directed by Dean Fleischer Camp

You may or may not be familiar with Marcel, the anthropomorphic one-inch-tall shell outfitted with a singly googly eye and pair of pink sneakers, who first captivated viewers in 2010 through a series of short YouTube videos that garnered millions of views. Now, he’s the star of the recently released A24 film Marcel the Shell with Shoes On, which premiered in festivals in 2021 before its wide release in July of 2022. The stop-motion-animated film is shot as a mockumentary, with director Dean Fleischer Camp playing a fictionalized version of himself as a recent divorcee and documentary filmmaker who moves into an Airbnb and discovers that he’s not its only resident. Camp stumbles upon Marcel (voiced by actress and comedian Jenny Slate) and his grandmother, Nana Connie, two tiny shell creatures who have lived unnoticed in the house for generations. 

While the movie is both sweet and laugh-out-loud funny, it doesn’t shy away from heavier themes of loss and death. Marcel reveals to Camp that his community of shells used to be much larger, but due to an unexplained tragedy, they have been missing for years. This loss of community drives the plot of the film as Camp and Marcel set out to find the shell’s family with the help of the internet. I could go on about how the film explores sensationalism in the digital era, astutely highlighting the difference between an audience and a community, but that’s not what touched me the most about Marcel’s story. Rather, it’s how Marcel deeply understands and appreciates his place in the world, even as a tiny, one-inch mollusk. In the film’s final moments, Marcel shows us one of his favorite spots in the house, a quiet windowsill where the breeze flutters in. As he stands there, he notes how he can hear the wind blowing through his shell, showing him that he’s a small but indispensable part of the world’s beauty. “I like the way I sound in the world,” he whispers. 

Though it may come across as a children’s film, Marcel the Shell with Shoes On tempers its sweetness with deep wisdom. Marcel bestows upon audiences the importance of community, love for the little things, and quiet reflection on our interdependence. 

—Amanda Lim Patton

How to Change Your Mind (2022)
Directed by Alison Ellwood and Lucy Walker, starring Michael Pollan

How to Change Your Mind is a four-part Netflix documentary series based on Michael Pollan’s 2018 book, How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence. In the show, as in the book, Pollan aims to destigmatize psychedelics like LSD, psilocybin, mescaline, and MDMA, and investigates how they might be used to understand the mind and treat health conditions like depression and anxiety. Many of the show’s interviewees describe their experience with psychedelics as deeply healing and spiritual. In the first episode on LSD, one researcher named James Fadiman explains how his first trip awakened him to the reality of our interdependence. “I took LSD and that was the day that my life was transformed, where I realized that Jim Fadiman, for all of his benefits and flaws, was a subset of a larger being. And that larger being was connected to all other beings. In other words, a classical mythical experience of awareness of the unity and the interweaving of all things.” 

Though Pollan isn’t Buddhist himself, he says that his personal experiences with these drugs led him to a regular meditation practice, and his research explores many Buddhist themes, including questioning consciousness, the ego, and the self.

—Alison Spiegel and Amanda Lim Patton

The Midnight Gospel (2020)
Created by Pendleton Ward and Duncan Trussell

The Midnight Gospel is not a casual watch. Or, I suppose it could be, but then you’d either be missing out on all the absurd details of its animation or the nuances of the philosophical conversations. Granted, it’s often difficult to focus on both at the same time. Co-created by Adventure Time creator Pendleton Ward and comedian Duncan Trussell, The Midnight Gospel is an animated Netflix series that follows the cosmic adventures of a spacecaster (video podcaster in space) named Clancy Gilroy. In each episode, Gilroy (voiced by Trussell) travels to a new planet and interviews one of its inhabitants for his spacecast, often asking guests about their life philosophies as the pair navigate an impending apocalyptic disaster. 

Uniquely, each episode’s spacecast interview is adapted from earlier episodes of Trussell’s own podcast, The Duncan Trussell Family Hour. A Tibetan Buddhist himself, Trussell’s selected guests within The Midnight Gospel include an array of spiritual teachers, such as Tibetan teacher David Nichtern, Vipassana teacher Trudy Goodman, and the late American spiritual leader Ram Dass. My favorite episode of the series is the last one, in which Gilroy interviews his mother, voiced by retired psychologist and Trussell’s late mother Deneen Fendig. The two embark on an emotional journey through the cycle of birth, life, and death, which is made more acute given that Fendig had late-stage breast cancer at the time of the interview. Gilroy asks his mother what advice she would give to people who are dealing with heartbreak around death. She replies, “I would tell them to cry when they need to cry. And to turn toward this thing that’s called death… Even if you’re afraid to turn toward it, turn toward it. It won’t hurt you. And see what it has to teach you. It’s a tremendous teacher, free of charge.” As I said, the show is not a casual watch. But it’s definitely worth watching. 

—Amanda Lim Patton

Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba (2019-)
Produced by Ufotable

Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba is a thrilling, action-packed anime about—you guessed it—slaying dangerous demons. Despite the gore, the show manages to be lighthearted and funny. This combination may be the reason it’s one of the most popular anime series running right now. In fact, the sequel film Demon Slayer: Mugen Train (2020) is now the highest-grossing Japanese film of all time. 

When a demon attacks a rural family of charcoal makers, only two survive: Tanjiro and his little sister, Nezuko, who is tragically turned into a demon. To avenge his family and find a way to transform his sister back into a human, Tanjiro joins the Demon Slayer Corps, a group of elite swordsmen dedicated to protecting humans from their hungry demon adversaries. 

Over the course of the series, both of the siblings develop a kind of bodhicitta—a strong desire to alleviate the suffering of others and to deal with their demons (both internal and external) skillfully. Motivated by her own willpower and love for her brother, Nezuko learns to control her demon impulse to kill humans and instead fights alongside Tanjiro as a demon slayer. By envisioning all of humanity as her close family, she’s able to use her own demonic powers to protect others. And, unlike his demon slayer comrades, Tanjiro develops compassion for even the most despicable, terrifying demons and maintains a gentle spaciousness in his heart amidst immense loss. Many of the demons that Tanjiro fights are moved by his kindness and are able to recall their “past lives” as humans—along with their trauma or conditions that led them to become a demon. Thanks to Tanjiro’s compassion for all beings, the demons are able to discover a sense of peace in their final moments.

—Aidan Speckhard

Bouddhisme, La Loi du Silence (or Buddhism: The Unspeakable Truth) (2022)
Directed by Elodie Emery and Wandrille Lanos

On September 13, Arte, a European public service TV network, released a documentary called Bouddhisme, La Loi du Silence (or Buddhism: The Unspeakable Truth), made by filmmakers Elodie Emery and Wandrille Lanos. The film is currently available to watch in France until December 11, 2022, and the Tricycle editorial staff recently watched the film together. La Loi du Silence spotlights patterns of abuse by Tibetan Buddhist teachers around the world, as well as the insufficient condemnation of such abuse by leaders like the Dalai Lama. In the process, the film raises many questions: How do teachers and communities distort Buddhist teachings in harmful ways? Who is responsible for teacher-student abuse or systemic abuse within a community? How has the Dalai Lama’s dual role as a political and spiritual leader compromised his ability to call out abuse and his effectiveness in stopping it? Why were Westerners drawn to Buddhism in the first place, and what led some to leave their children under the care of leaders like Robert Spatz, who is a central figure in the documentary? How can senior teachers and members of Buddhist communities expose, speak out against, and work to prevent this kind of abuse from occurring in the future? Although the documentary may introduce “unspeakable truths” to new audiences who were not previously familiar with the assault and manipulation that has occurred within some Buddhist groups, ultimately the film leaves many questions unanswered. 

—Alison Spiegel

The post What We’re Watching appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

Early on in Everything Everywhere All at Once, the new feature film from the filmmaking duo collectively known as Daniels, a Chinese-American woman named Evelyn (Michelle Yeoh) sits at a cubicle across from a stickler IRS agent named Deirdre (Jamie Lee Curtis). Deirdre tells Evelyn, who is visibly distracted, “I cannot imagine a conversation more important than this one.” The conversation in question? Evelyn is being audited for incorrectly filing her taxes. 

However, there’s a clear disconnect between the two women. Evelyn can’t fully understand all of Deirdre’s English, and Deirdre struggles to make sense of the disorganized receipts and records from the laundromat that Evelyn runs with her husband Waymond (Ke Huy Quan). But while Deirdre lectures Evelyn about the importance of the current moment, Evelyn experiences a life-altering realization—that her universe is but one in a multiverse where endless Evelyns walk endless paths with endless potential. 

What follows from there is meticulous, curated chaos from Daniels, full of stuffed animal hoodies, a fanny pack fight scene, hot dog fingers, and a suspiciously shaped award statue. Without a minute to spare, the reluctant hero Evelyn is propelled forward on a quest to unlock her verse-jumping powers, defeat an evil villain, and restore balance to the multiverse. But as the film progresses, it becomes evident that Evelyn’s problems run much deeper than misfiling her taxes or being hunted by an all-powerful being. Everything Everywhere All At Once is not a movie about how to save the world—it’s about understanding how to be a part of it. Amidst the mayhem, the film stays grounded in its core message about the importance of human connection and cultivating compassion for all beings throughout our confusing, impermanent lives. Evelyn doesn’t arrive at these truths immediately—it takes a few action-packed trips across the multiverse first—but as she learns to cherish even the most mundane moments of time with her family, so does the audience.   

Daniels’s approach to the film is pure maximalism, and one of the highlights of their everything-is-more style is the sense that this movie is a celebration of filmmaking itself. There’s a love for film laced throughout; there’s a Ratatouille (2007) joke that evolves into its own subplot about the fate of an animatronic raccoon and his chef friend. There’s also a particularly gorgeous homage to In the Mood for Love (2000), a romantic drama by Hong Kong director Wong Kar-wai, that sees Evelyn in a universe where she became a famous martial arts movie star and Waymond became a successful businessman. 

However, in this life, the two never married as Evelyn chose to follow her disapproving father’s advice and leave Waymond. Despite their respective financial success, Waymond laments that in another life, he’d have liked to “do laundry and taxes” with her. Everything Everywhere All at Once is both ludicrous and moving in a way that only Daniels can accomplish, and it manages to give the audience a sense of hope by impressing the idea that it’s never too late to change. Instead of dwelling on what could have been, the film encourages audiences to cherish what they do have and work to create the life and relationships they want.

Evelyn fights her way across the multiverse, but it’s only through genuine connection and understanding that any conflict is truly resolved.

As for leading actor Yeoh, in some ways, it feels as though her iconic, impressive career has been building towards this movie. Her performance contains multitudes—she’s funny, fierce, and badass but also allows herself to be vulnerable, pathetic, and lost. Yeoh as Evelyn—and the versions of herself across the multiverse—feels so real that she grounds the movie, making even the most absurd scenes relatable for the audience. A key scene depicts Evelyn facing off against a super-strong Deirdre from another universe, and to defeat her Evelyn must do something completely unexpected. She must tell Deirdre that she loves her—and mean it. In the moment it’s played for laughs but it ultimately takes on a different meaning as the movie progresses. In one universe—a universe where humans evolved to have hot dogs for fingers—Evelyn and Deirdre struggle to fix their fractured romantic relationship. It seems hot-dog-hands Evelyn isn’t too skilled at talking things out, much like the Evelyn from the core universe where the movie begins. 

Later in the core universe, Deirdre arrives at Evelyn’s laundromat to have her arrested for attacking Deirdre—only to call off the cops once she hears that Waymond has served Evelyn with divorce papers. In a quiet moment, Deirdre recalls when her own husband divorced her, and feels she has a better understanding of Evelyn’s situation. “Unlovable bitches like us make the world go ‘round,” Deirdre tells Evelyn. In that moment they understand each other, and they embrace. They aren’t unlovable, and they aren’t alone. 

There is so much emotion at the heart of Daniels’ film, but it’s also so much fun. Enough can’t be said about the dynamic, energetic action on display in Everything Everywhere All at Once. Yeoh is an icon of the action genre, and her physical performance proves she’s still at the top of her game. And she’s not the only one to get in on the action—there’s a standout sequence featuring a Waymond from another universe who takes out a group of security guards using only his fanny pack. It’s an excellent use of Hong Kong-style choreography but is also such a creative character moment for Waymond. He is both the oft-ignored, fanny-pack wearing husband of Evelyn and the combat-ready, verse-jumping husband of an Evelyn across the multiverse.

While the movie has kinetic, well-choreographed action scenes, the message at the heart of it is a clear one of peace and kindness—another reason the classic, poetic kung fu aesthetic fits the movie’s themes. Evelyn fights her way across the multiverse, but it’s only through genuine connection and understanding that any conflict is truly resolved. 

In a climactic scene, Evelyn must confront the all-powerful villain of the multiverse, Jobu Tupaki, who is revealed to be none other than Evelyn’s deeply misunderstood daughter, Joy (Stephanie Hsu). Joy transformed into Jobu Tupaki in another universe after Evelyn pushed her too far and her consciousness split. As a result, Jobu Tupaki gained the ability to bend reality and experience every multiverse simultaneously, being quite literally everywhere all at once. At first, she seems dead set on destroying her mother and the entire multiverse, but ultimately she is not looking to destroy. What she wants is to be understood and someone to share in her experiences with—and she wants it from her mother. Similarly, Waymond is desperate to reconnect with his wife. He resorts to serving Evelyn with divorce papers, not because he has given up, but because he wants to be taken seriously. He wants to talk to her, to truly talk to her, but can’t seem to connect with her without drastic measures. 

Everything comes to a head when Jobu Tupaki successfully opens Evelyn’s mind so that she also experiences every multiverse at once. Flicking through the multiverse uncontrollably, Evelyn momentarily succumbs to Jobu Tapaki’s nihilistic belief that life is meaningless and her actions don’t matter. It is Waymond who snaps her out of it; his pleas to stop the violence and have everyone talk to one another make Evelyn realize that it is not that nothing matters if everything is fleeting, but that everything matters. Those fleeting moments of clarity and happiness are not meaningless, but instead are the most important moments to be cherished.

With her newfound revelations, Evelyn is able to make peace with her life and herself. After traveling the multiverse through countless variations of her life, Evelyn realizes what’s most important in her own world—her family. While early on Evelyn tells her husband she’s “very busy today, no time to help you,” by the end, she realizes that sometimes, depending on who you’re with, laundry and taxes are enough.

The post Everything Everywhere All at Once and the Euphoria in Empathy appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

At the impressionable age of twelve, my older sister and her high school friends brought me to see The Matrix. I hadn’t heard of Plato’s cave or Descartes’s demon or the Heart Sutra’s declaration that there is, in emptiness, “no eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, mind / No color, sound, smell, taste, touch, thing / No realm of sight, no realm of consciousness”—or the countless other contemplations throughout history on the limitations of human perception and consciousness that make it impossible for us to stand outside ourselves and verify that the world exists independently of us and more or less aligns with how we experience it. I didn’t even know what the premise of The Matrix was. All I knew entering the theater was that the trailer looked cool. I left with my mind blown.

I have had many eye-opening experiences, but few are as memorable as the first time I learned what it meant for my eyes to be closed. Yet the impact that The Matrix had on me (and many others, it seems) does not mean it was a profound film. If the sequels in what would become a trilogy proved anything in their attempt to further plumb the philosophical depths it was that the original wasn’t that deep to begin with: The symbolism is often heavy-handed. The understanding of the human mind was unsophisticated. The characters’ motivations and morals were black and white. Despite the disappointing and disenchanting sequels, however, I still enjoy the first movie, not as a philosophical treatise but as an innovative action film that captures fundamental questions about existence with sleek and striking imagery that is as accessible as it is unforgettable. 

The latest sequel, The Matrix Resurrections, seems to understand this. Earlier attempts tried to recapture the magic of the original (which, seeing as how it ended with the protagonist, Neo (Keanu Reeves), essentially attaining enlightenment and god-like powers, was always going to be challenging). The fourth film takes a different approach. It opens with new characters searching for Neo, who they believe is alive despite his apparent death in the third film. They find him—I’d say “spoiler alert,” but Resurrections is in the title—plugged back into the matrix where he has been living as a video game designer who’s famous for creating his own Matrix trilogy. Years later, he’s been given the unenviable task of creating a fourth game. Neo sits through endless pitch meetings as collaborators deconstruct his past successes and try to figure out why it worked and how to top it. 

An older, shaggier Reeves has gotten a lot of experience playing a man hanging on by a thread, with his characters often enduring a gauntlet of armed combatants, and it’s a delight to watch him put that world-weary expression to use, deadpanning eager colleagues arguing about whether the fans care more about its philosophy or mindless action or dystopian trans metaphors. Director Lana Wachowski’s cynical wit flows effortlessly, presumably from her own experiences with creative achievement, in a refreshing departure from the increasingly drab and joyless tone of the previous sequels. And as we learn more about Neo’s relationship with his work—explored through flashes of scenes from the first film—and his difficulty telling fact from fiction, characters start speaking to legitimate critiques of the earlier films, most notably its over-reliance on dichotomies. 

Meanwhile, we learn that while coding his game, Neo somehow codes the matrix (or part of it). This is the most successful of a few devices that allow for some suspension of disbelief that perhaps Neo actually is outside of the matrix, and that maybe the other characters have it wrong. 

Unfortunately, the possibilities that open up in the first half of the film are one-by-one closed in the second half as Resurrection rushes toward a regrettably predictable ending. While it’s still fun to see the high-speed chases and gravity-defying fight scenes, the world-building veers into introducing new sci-fi premises with no real pay off, and in the end, Neo finds himself roughly where he did at the end of the first film. Meanwhile, increasingly heavy-handed flashbacks to the original Matrix become annoying reminders that the original had a bold aesthetic that has been replaced with something that looks like most other futuristic action movies. It makes sense to update the outfits from the old skin-tight leather, but the old costumes were unique and make the new ones look uninspired. 

How exactly should it be updated? I don’t know. Much of the earlier style came about in a time when hackers were mysterious and computers were exciting. They carry different associations now. Resurrections knows it, too. The film’s villain at one point says that he’s more interested in the human mind than his predecessors were. He wants to create a matrix where humans aren’t just fooled but trapped in self-defeating psychological loops. We, too, are no longer amused by technology as a thought-experiment, one that ultimately can be conquered by human perseverance. The concept of machines controlling our lives is no longer hypothetical, and while Resurrections does not offer any mind-blowing insights about this, it had to acknowledge this shift for the franchise to have a future. 

The Matrix was never as profound as twelve-year-old me thought it was. What made it exceptional was how well it explored timeless themes using language and visuals that were timely, singular, and had never been seen before. With Resurrections, the Matrix franchise appears to have become self-aware enough to continue to evolve with the times.

The post ‘The Matrix Resurrections’ Review appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

The Lord of the Rings as a modern Buddhist myth? Not very plausible on the face of it, given that it’s derived largely from the Nordic and Germanic sagas. Moreover, the story is built on an uncompromising and quite un-Buddhist dualism between good and evil, and apparent endorsement of violence against evil. It’s clear that the only good orc is a dead orc. 

Nevertheless, The Lord of the Rings resonates with Buddhist concerns and perspectives because it is about a special kind of quest. Frodo leaves home not to slay a dragon or win a chest of jewels, but to let go of something. He renounces the Ring, not for any selfish purpose, not even to gain enlightenment, yet it nevertheless transforms him profoundly. His journey implies something important about the Buddhist path today.

An Engaged Quest

Frodo does not go on his adventures because he wants to go. He embarks on the quest because it cannot be evaded. The Ring must be destroyed and he is the best one to carry it. There is nothing he hopes to gain from the journey. By the end, he and [his fellow hobbit] Sam expect to be destroyed soon after the Ring is cast into the fire, which nearly happens. The pair’s total renunciation is a powerful metaphor. They let go of all personal ambition, although not the ambition to do what is necessary to help the world.

Frodo’s quest is not an attempt to transcend Middle-earth and attain some higher reality. He is simply responding to its needs, which, because of historical circumstances (the growing power of Sauron) have become critical—just like the needs of our beleaguered earth today. The larger world has begun to impinge on Frodo’s Shire. If he were to decline the task and hide at home, he would not escape the impending dangers. (When we consider the ecological and social crises that have begun to impinge on our own world, is our situation today any different?)

You may ask, is Frodo’s journey a spiritual quest, or a struggle to help the world? In The Lord of the Rings, they are the same thing. Frodo realizes—makes real—his own nonduality with the world by doing everything he can to help it. And by doing so, Frodo transforms himself. He becomes selfless. Frodo does not change because he destroys the Ring. He changes because of his determined efforts to destroy the Ring. His early adventures on the road to Rivendell challenge and toughen him, giving him courage to be the Ringbearer. His strength of will and heart grows from these encounters, which teach him initiative, perseverance, and eventually self-reliance. 

The Karma of the Rings

In the Tibetan mandala, known as the Wheel of Life, the six realms of samsara are depicted within a circle. At its core are a cock, a snake, and a pig, symbolizing the three poisons of greed, ill will, and delusion, which are the source of all suffering. Curling around them are two paths: on one side, the white upward path of virtue and spiritual development, on the other, the dark downward path of evil and its painful consequences. The Lord of the Rings illustrates both alternatives in the moral progress and deserved rewards of Frodo, Sam, Aragorn, and Gandalf, and in the utter failure and eventual destruction of Sauron, Gollum, Saruman, and Wormtongue.

Middle-earth is structured karmically: good intentions lead to good results, while evil intentions are self-defeating. This Buddhist-like principle of moral causation is one of the keys to the plot, recurring again and again.

It is easy enough to see how good intentions are rewarded, yet the unsuccessful consequences of bad intentions are just as important. The best example is Gollum. He does not want to help Frodo and Sam. He wants to get his hands on the Ring, and to gain the opportunity to do this, he must help them time and again. When they are lost he leads them to Mordor. When they become stuck, he shows them a mountain path. And at the end, when an exhausted Frodo is no longer able to relinquish the Ring, Gollum appears once more to bite off Frodo’s finger—and fall into the fiery pit, to be destroyed along with the Ring. 

In Middle-earth, this karmic law seems to work as inexorably as gravity, but, as we know all too well, karma does not work so neatly in our world. Evil often seems to succeed, at least in the short run; goodness has a harder time prevailing. This reminds us that karma should not be understood as some inevitable calculus of moral cause and effect because it is not primarily a teaching about how to control what the world does to us. It is about our own spiritual development: how our lives are transformed by transforming our motivations.

That was one of the Buddha’s great insights: karma is not something I have, it is what I am, and what I am changes according to what I choose to do. This is implied by the Buddhist emphasis on non-self. My sense of self is a product of habitual ways of thinking, feeling, and acting. Just as my body is composed of the food I eat, so is my character constructed by my conscious choices. People are “punished” or “rewarded” not for what they have done but for what they have become, and what we intentionally do is what makes us what we are. To become a different kind of person is to experience the world in a different way. When your mind changes, the world changes. And when you respond differently to the world, the world usually responds differently to you.

Consistent with this view of karma, the traditional “six realms” of samsara do not need to be distinct worlds or planes of existence through which we transmigrate after death, according to our karma. They can also be the different ways we experience this world as our character, and therefore our attitude toward the world, changes. 

⧫

Adapted from The Dharma of Dragons and Daemons © 2004 David R. Loy and Linda Goodhew, The Dharma of Dragons and Daemons. Reprinted by arrangement with Wisdom Publications, Inc., wisdompubs.org

The post The Dharma of the Rings appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.