Movies With Buddhist Messages

The main theme of the film is that reality is not what it appears to be—it is a result of our perceptions and to know the true nature of all things requires us to “wake up” and to “free our mind.” This is a beautiful parallel to the Buddha, who is referred to as “The Awakened One.” The idea that the world around us can change if we learn to conquer our mind is an essential teaching of Buddhism.

Little by little, he catches on: that the purpose of life is serving others impeccably, without savoring the fruits of his actions. Finally, by living a “perfect day of impeccable service,” he is able to break the endless cycle of reincarnation and move on.

The fundamental delusion the characters suffer from is that money and the promise of sex will make them happy.

About the life of Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, one of the most renowned Tibetan Buddhist masters of the twentieth century.

Koans are Zen stories that only make sense if you can see that life and reality are different from your opinions about them. Most of the famous ones were written in China a long time ago.

Without giving away the ending, I can write that it reminds me of the story of the young Buddhist monk who sees a wiser, older monk across a wide river. Desperately wanting to reach the wise man on the far bank, the young monk calls out, “How can I get to the other side?” The older monk responds, “You are on the other side.”

It is one of the greatest examples of compassion that I have ever seen on film, and expresses perfectly the central core of Buddhism, echoing His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s famous remark, “My religion is kindness.”

I have no reason to believe that the makers of this movie were Buddhist. But the absolute attention to presence in all its nuance—and the healing in and through suffering—seems to me a reflection of Buddhist psychology and humanity at its best.

In Nichiren Buddhism, we chant this same thing to the gohonzon, a scroll that “mirrors our life as limitless as the universe.” This mandala allows us to understand that all things are intrinsically enlightened and contain buddhahood. That all things are special, and you only need to believe to manifest buddhahood in your life.

A Zen Life is on many levels a testament to contemplative life lived with devotion as its heartbeat. In the film, Gary Snyder comments, “To be devotional is to take great faith in life as it is.” D.T. Suzuki declares, “Real freedom is to see things as they are.”