Filed under: Biography, Buddha, Buddhism, Buddhist Studies, Film, Film review, India, Indian History, Monks, Opinion, Religion, Spirituality, Tibet, Tibetan Buddhism, awakening, dharma, enlightenment, history, meditation, monasticism, movies, peace, philosophy, review, television
The verdict: ** (out of ******)
This film is about a group of Tibetan Buddhist monks, living in exile, searching for the reincarnation of their teacher, Lama THUNDERBOLT (or just Dorje). Lama Norbu, the head of The Fellowship of the Reincarnation follows a set of clues, that involves a dream of a particular Seattle location, to a boy named Jesse, who happens to live in Seattle. Jesse’s parents, played by the timeless Bridget Fonda and the phenomenal CHRIS ISAAK (has he been in any movie since?), do not enjoy the monks presence at first, but eventually give in to the charm of Lama Norbu, who espouses great advice like “[meditating] is being totally quiet and relaxed, separating yourself from everything around you, setting your mind free like a bird, and you can then see your thoughts as if they were passing clouds.” Sooner rather than later, little Jesse begins to believe. After a series of awkward baby-sitting sessions by the monks, Jesse continuously talks about how he believes he is LAMA THUNDERBOLT. LAMA THUNDERBOLT is a name he uses frequently. Way. Too. Frequently.
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Filed under: Biography, Buddha, Buddhism, Buddhist Studies, India, Indian History, Religion, awakening, dharma, enlightenment, history, lecture, meditation, peace, philosophy, podcast, webcast
I recently posted a link to an excellent webcast/podcast by Professor Richard Salomon from the University of Washington regarding searching for the Buddha-vacana (words of the Buddha). The hour-long webcast contains valuable information about ancient Buddhism and for those of you who cannot watch, or have the patience to watch, the webcast, I have summarized it for you here.
The title of the talk is “In Search of the Words of the Buddha” and can be located in its digital form at the following link: http://depts.washington.edu/uwch/katz/20052006/richard_salomon.html.
I have done my best to write-up a quick summary of the talk by Salomon. In the summary, I attempted to avoid academic jargon and the summary is, by no means, an academic piece of work or a reflection of my scholarly aptitude. It is simply a 30 minute write-up for blog publication. Please forgive my grammatical shortcomings.
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A young nobleman named Siddartha Gautama lived in Northeastern India around the fifth century B.C.E. (Before Common Era). He obtained enlightenment, earned the title Buddha, and his followers orally transmitted his teachings and words (Buddha-vacana) in the first few centuries of the new religion’s existence. During the first century B.C.E., it is hypothesized that the Buddha-vacana first began to be written down. However, the earliest manuscripts available to researchers date to the extremely late centuries C.E. (5th-10th). With the production of a written Buddha-vacana came canonization. A single Buddha-vacana canon, however, is extraordinarily voluminous and with such a large collection comes a fundamental problem: nobody can master all of it. (more…)
Filed under: Biography, Buddha, Buddhism, Buddhist Studies, India, Religion, Spirituality, awakening, dharma, enlightenment, history, lecture, meditation, peace, philosophy, podcast, webcast
This is a webcast by Richard Salomon, Professor of Asian Languages & Literature at the University of Washington. In this webcast he documents and discusses some of (or perhaps all of) the oldest Buddhist manuscripts that currently exist. The fragments in particular that he deals with are the famous Gandhari manuscripts, written on birch-bark scrolls over 2,000 years ago in what is now northern Pakistan and eastern Afghanistan. The comparison to the Dead Sea Scrolls has often been made, however, in my opinion, this is not a valid comparison because despite these being the oldest surviving manuscripts, they are still, according to tradition dating of Gautama Buddha, nearly 500 years post-mahaparinirvana. As Salomon discusses, the Buddha-vacana (word of the Buddha) was canonized and written down, finally, after several centuries of oral transmission, in the 1st Century B.C.E. at the earliest. Each of the canons currently available to us are extraordinarily voluminous, each number between 50-100 tomes, which is, to say the least, considerably larger than any religious corpus known in Western traditions. Even then, of the Pali, Tibetan, and Gandhari “canons” (if we may even dare to call them such) are only marginally similar in their content.
Salomon’s knowledge of the ancient Gandhari scrolls is immense, as he is the leading scholar on the “Early Buddhist Manuscripts Project” and has guided many now-respected scholars through the Ph.D dissertations on the subject. Interestingly enough, to study the Gandhari manuscripts knowledge of Buddhist literature is just as important as knowledge of ancient Buddhist epigraphy, archaeology, and paleaography. To me, this implies that to “get at” the earliest forms of Buddhism we can, we must not wholly rely on any single one source of material but rather consider a wide range of source materials in order to “reconstruct” to the best of our ability. Not doing this, I believe, is a major pitfall that many previous as well as contemporary Buddhologists fall into unsuspectingly. Gregory Schopen, a friend and colleague of Salomon, has demonstrated time and again that the study of Buddhist epigraphy combined with Buddhist literature can give us, as researchers and students, new insights in topics that were previously considered “conquered” or “well flushed out.” Anyone know of a Schopen webcast/podcast/mp3?
Link: http://depts.washington.edu/uwch/katz/20052006/richard_salomon.html
Warning: You must have Real Player installed in order to view the webcast. However, I suggest installing Real Alternative so you do not get the corporate bugs and annoyances of the real Real Player.
