Samsara

I have read all the comments on this film here and I was surprised one more time to see how differently people react to one and the same film. What struck me also was that some of the viewers clearly mistake Tibet for India, because apparently they don't know that there are Buddhists in India as well.

Buddhism has its origins in Hinduism itself as it is believed that Buddha is a reincarnation of lord Vishnu The Preserver, one of the three main Hindu gods. But through the centuries Buddhism slowly developed as an independent religion. The film was shot in Ladakh which is in the Indian Himalayas, not in Tibet and two of the characters go to the town of Leh which is the capital of Ladakh and hence it is also in India. I thought that it is important to clarify these details as I don't think that one should mistake Tibet for India. India is not just Bollywood and as a country living under the phrase "unity in diversity" it surely has lots of different religious communities and lots of different cultures.

As for the film itself - I loved it, not only because it has been so beautifully shot (by the Bulgarian D.P. Rali Ralchev) and not only because it meets us with a part of the world we barely know, but mostly because I could identify with the characters and their desires, anguish, pain, joy, dreams. "Samsara" (the Hindu concept of reincarnation) asks some philosophic questions in a very earthly manner, I think. The ideas of Buddhism, the detachment from earthly life in order to reach enlightenment, the conquering of ourselves, our ego, our earthly desires (to love, to have family, to enjoy the simple but earthly life of a farmer, to possess objects and to command love from the others) are ideas or rather dilemmas that many of us face from time to time. Buddha has said that the middle way is the right way to follow, but how can this way be found? Is it through experiencing the earthly life, then renouncing it and then devoting oneself to the life a monk, choosing the spiritual life in search of the almighty truth and the great soul? This was the way Buddha has chosen - being a prince himself, having a family, and then renouncing it and devoting himself to the life of a recluse, but of a recluse who has reached the enlightenment and a recluse willing to share the truth with the others.

Everyone chooses one's own way. Tashi is a person who asks himself questions and he's a person who searches for his own right path. To say that he is only an egoist who leaves his wife when he gets fed up the life of a family man and a farmer is quite simplistic, I think. I believe he has been very honest from the beginning to the end and that is why he left the monastery at first and came back to it in the end. The important idea that I have discovered was that no matter what kind of path one will choose there will always be an anguish along the way. Maybe it is because of the eternal question unanswered - what to choose - to satisfy all desires or to conquer the one and only? No matter what we choose we will always doubt from time to time that maybe we should have chosen the opposite.

What I really liked about this film also is the fact that it presented us with the female point of view in the final monologue of Tashi's wife Pema. She was given no choice from him when he decided to go back to the monastery. She had to stay behind and take care of their son. She was shown to us as the keeper of the traditions (not allowing her son to play with the modern toy his father bought him from Leh) but at the same time she had that free spirit to make love to the unknown Lama and afterward to even marry him. I liked the sensitivity of the writer / director who cared not only to show us the pain of Pema when realizing she's losing his husband, but also to make her an intelligent woman who thinks and who turns out be as wise and devoted as her Lama husband.

I found this movie, a very interesting and meaningful. There were not more than 100 words went on in this movie but the picture itself, gave the viewer many things to think about. What Tashi really did was reversing the Buddha path. Buddha was the one normal human being before he realize the need to discover what life is all about, what he discovered was suffering in living one life. He tried to find the ways to settle with all the suffering, not by avoiding but realize that there are suffering and and he faced it in the noble way.

Tashi, however, live his life in the monastery, believe in something he was told to believe not something that he discovered himself. Every human has the feeling of sexual awakening at one point of time, what Tashi did was that he quit the monk-hood, partly because the guiltiness of having such feeling but at the same time desire to discovered the reality for himself. HE entered into the life and began to discover with all the truth in the world, full with desire, anger, jealously, deception etc. but at the same time he discover love, caring, warmth, and happiness. The decision he chose, for me, he was running away from suffering by going back to peace and serenity of being monastery. What he did was not totally right or totally wrong but it does suggesting something. HE is avoiding all the desire that always backfire him throughout the movie. Pema came to him and enlighten him with her thought. Enlightenment does not mean that you have to quit all the normal life and being alone in the temple to cut all the desires. Maybe what make you enlightened is the fact that you stay in life and faced the suffering in the acceptable noble ways. Maybe it is satisfy most of the need but at the same time conquer your own self.

In Buddhism there is something called 'expedient means'. You won't speak to a fisherman about emptiness in the same way as to a mathematician, the terms and metaphors change according to circumstances. This speaks of the general practicality and suppleness within Buddhism, there is no attachment to scripture, the point is to help ourselves across using whatever is at hand.

Here we have a Buddhist parable on faith, a young man who's spent all his life in a monastery is nagged inside that he has been trying to cleanse himself before any dust had time to settle. In the opening scenes we see a procession of monks open up a cave where he has been meditating for three years, his hair and nails have grown, dust has settled on the frail, ascetic body. As they clean him up on the way to the monastery we see a young man's face. This is all counterpointed with the Buddha's lifestory, a prince who didn't set out on the journey until late in his 20s.

'Expedient means' in this case means narrative depth is sacrificed so we can get with more clarity the moment of suffering.

The consequence from a cinematic standpoint is that it's evocative enough; windswept Himalayan landscapes, textures, passage of time. But the journey is schematic, from purity in the monastery to defilement in the village, from contentment to the onset of desire. A fabled reality means that what's missing here is a fuller trajectory of a person being changed, we simply jump ahead to the crucial points of the parable.

Something else from the Buddhist point of view though.

Buddhism has developed a robust model about life and practical tools that actually work. Its mission is not really to converse with scientists about the beginning of the cosmos or become bogged down in epistemology about its findings. Its mission from the beginning has been to put an end to suffering; along the way a body of knowledge emerges because in Buddhism ending suffering is not an abstract ideal left to a god's grace, it is a daily practice of observing mind and self, all sorts of insights appear.

There's no question that the problem of conveying an insight is mirrored across Buddhism and film. You say too much and you risk obviating the matter, too little and maybe it's not enough. Here as a deep inspection and mindful exercise the film falls short, the fabled reality puts us at a distance. But the narrative moments when desire and dissatisfaction manifest should be familiar to all and carry a simple power that is the essential Buddhist matter, seeing suffering right now.

Beginner's Buddhism is some of the most powerful of all.

I was directed to this film after reading a review of "Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter and Spring Again", directed by Ki Duk Kim which is highly recommended as well.

The love scenes in Samsara are gorgeous to behold and the female love/sex interests are very seductive. Monk Tashi is very well portrayed as so human and fallible as he leaves the monastery to pursue sex or worldly life. He was raised in the monastery so as his sexuality awakened he had to find out for himself. He rationalized that even Buddha was married before he was enlightened and so Tashi felt he should be able to know this too before he devoted himself to monkhood. Little does he know what is in store for this desire he has to experience...

The tale is more of the excursion of a Monk and his experience of marriage, sex and emotions that arise than of his enlightenment. He found out what he had to know and paid the price. The film is lush with Tibetan style dress, architecture and landscapes. The love scenes are a treat for the eyes and the lead actors are very convincing yet more subtle than raw.

Check out "Kundun" and "Razor's Edge"(Bill Murray)and "Master of Zen" as well if you are interested in drama as well as spirituality.

Normally I would be with hundreds celebrating the arrival of the new year. Last night I decided to be alone with SAMSARA. When the film ended at 1h40am, I was in year 2006 -transformed. A masterpiece about choices that we all have to make sooner or later. I've spent hours surfing net on SAMSARA, reading reactions of people from Brazil to Bombay to Bucharest to Bangladesh. How wonderful so many people are united by SAMSARA. The film opens up your heart and soul. I am normally too much an intellectual when it comes to liking a film. But this one just took me like a storm -mesmerizing cinematography, soothing sound track (one of the best sound design ever!), soul-stirring landscapes and above all masterly written and directed by Pan Nalin -whoever he maybe. It is one of the most powerful first feature I have ever seen. I now eagerly await Nalin's next feature VALLEY OF FLOWERS. Meanwhile for anyone who has not yet seen this movie I say to them just go for it with open mind, leave your issues behind and just dive into SAMSARA...