Samsara…
The eternal cycle of birth, suffering, death, and rebirth.
Current Listening: Maniwall by Cyril Morin
I recently watched this movie for my Buddhism class. It was a visually stunning film, but one that 
ultimately left me more annoyed than anything else. The film centers around the story of a young monk. In short he decides to leave his monastery, after succumbing to physical temptations, and make his way out into the world. He marries, starts a family, works the farm, has an affair, and ultimately decides to return to his monastery. Abandoning his wife and child in the process.
To be honest, most of the film I really could have done without. Women are constantly objectified and shown to be objects of temptation and mantraps for wayward monks. The only redeeming role they seem to have apart from temptresses is the role of the mother, which is given secondary attention, if that. Our monk is constantly succumbing to his desires and passions and seems to be able to exercise zero self control in his own existence.
I found a riduculous review/synopsis listed on IMDB that described it as: A spiritual love-story set in the majestic landscape of Ladakh, Himalayas. Samsara is a quest; one man’s struggle to find spiritual Enlightenment by renouncing the world. And one woman’s struggle to keep her enlightened love and life in the world. But their destiny turns, twists and comes to a surprise ending…
The idea of our wayward monk as enlightened or that the woman exists within the film to try and keep him chained to this world is simply absurd. At all turns the monk is powerless to resist his passions for multiple women. He constantly questions his beliefs. And his wife continues to love and support him through everything. The role of women within Buddhist films seems to take on a rather common theme, and one that is only reinforced within this film, sadly. The review i read here goes on to say that Tashi goes on to his much deserved enlightenment. I have to disagree with this. Tashi has done nothing to deserve enlightenment and has failed to learn anything through his journey. While I agree that Tashi probably perishes at the end of the film, enlightenment is not his reward.
The end of the movie however continues to resonate with me. At the begining of the film we see a bird circling in the sky. It drops a rock from above, instantly killing a goat below. Shortly after our monk is returning to the monastery from his time fasting in a cave. He sees a stone along the path to the monastery with the words
How will you stop a drop of water from ever drying up?
And as he runs from his wife and returns to the monastery she confronts him saying simply ‘Yashodara’. Yashodara was the Buddha’s wife whom he left when he decided to seek enlightenment. His wife invokes her name as she says that she could not have left their child as Siddhartha did. That Yashodara’s story is never told, what of her enlightenment? Is it possible to attain enlightenment without a life of restrictions and abandoning everything you have. I have written on Zen Buddhism in the past, and this is one of the reasons I find myself connecting with it much more so than with other Buddhist traditions. Women are so marginalized within these traditions that no one every really stops to think of what kind of Karma is Siddhartha incurring by abandoning his wife and child? His decision, and our monks within the movie, is a completely selfish one. Choosing to leave all of your responsibilities and obligations in order to seek your own goal. In this case enlightenment has become your desire, at the cost of the people in your life. Can you really attain enlightenment in this way?
Pema, Tashi’s wife, leaves him a wooden lunchbox for his journey and disappears like a vision. Tashi again sees the stone he read at the beginning of the movie.
How will you stop a drop of water from ever drying up?
He turns it over to read
By throwing it into the ocean
If we accept that we all exist within this cycle and will return to it again in the cycle of death and rebirth, is it then important to abandon these things to seek enlightenment within this lifetime at the expense of the people around us? If we all return to the source as a drop of water returns to the ocean, does enlightenment then truly become so important? I would contend that Enlightenment cannot be attained if it comes at the expense of another person. If we have to abandon our responsibilities we cannot find nirvana. I refuse to accept that enlightenment is predicated on abandoning the world around us. Our monk is not a hero who achieves enlightenment, he is selfish, and he is a coward.
Zen contends that enlightenment can occur in our everyday experiences and existences. That we can find enlightenment within, where it has always resided. If we are a hermit living on a mountain or a housewife tending to her children.
That being said. I do love the end of the movie. I love it when Pema confronts her husband and discusses the Buddha’s forgotten wife. The image of Tashi again finding the rock with the inscription. He reads it, and turns it over to find his answer, as high above a bird circles again. I believe Tashi perishes at the end in the same manner the goat was killed at the beginning. as the goat is killed he is reborn in the cave, and he perishes much like the goat on his way to the monastery. He returns to the beginning, to begin the cycle anew.
How will you stop a drop of water from ever drying up?
By throwing it into the ocean…
It’s interesting to me to see the role of women in Buddhism hasn’t changed much even in the present era. I’ve done a lot of reading on medieval Japanese Buddhism in the last year and a half, and the theme of women as stumbling block is ever-present. Most recently, I’ve been looking at Buddhist painted scrolls of the nine stages of death/putrefication. They’re always women. Someone recently told me that studies of decomposing women were often thought a good tool with which to separate a monk from his desire for woman’s flesh. The more things change…
I believe: Look at our world – sex sells … no question bout that, and men are heavy partisipants. Tashi represents men and his wife represnts the teachings of Zen. By judging him we get lost is ‘mind’ and the lesson gone. By returning to the monastary he will lose his stillness but by returning to his wife he returns to the ocean or to life which is symbolic of our sourse. I have found a great lesson and peace in viewing Samsara.
Teva:
For some reason this post gets a lot of attention. According to my toolbar this is the most looked at post I have. I guess a lot of people leave that movie with questions…. and papers to write for college, haha. (Just remember if you jack it from a website it’s still plagiarism and a google search by your prof will get you!)
The scrolls you were talking about. I had forgotten that I had seen examples of them before. And if i’m remembering the context it was exactly as you said. A tool to make a monk revolted at the idea of a woman’s body. I guess the notion of developing your self-restraint or overcoming your own impulses is just too much to expect on the path to enlightenment
from Tales and Parables of Sri Ramakrishna
“Once a salt doll went to measure the depth of the ocean. It wanted to tell others how deep the water was. But this it could never do, for no sooner did it get into the water than it dissolved. Now, who was there to report the ocean’s depth? What Brahman is cannot be described. In samadhi one attains the knowledge of Brahman — one realises Brahman. In that state reasoning stops altogether, and man becomes mute. He has no power to describe…”
I love this parable. Thank you for posting it!
It’s a good topic to meditate on. In my personal reading and interpretation this is one of many reasons why I find the Zen tradition and koans so useful (frustrating?) as a teaching method. Some things can’t be explained or taught. A person has to get to that point on their own. They can do it with guidance and company, but at the end of the day its transmission must come from within.