Film on Buddhism

 Meant to be a compliment to lecture and readings

o Note: take note of positionality of the speaker
o Expert, in tradition, outside tradition, interesting individual
 Link may be on nexus
 “In order to gain everything, you must first loose everything”
o Poet
o Story is means to an end but not the end
o Everyone can find what the Buddha found
 The queen’s baby emerged from her side
o 7 days later she died
o (The buddha’s mother)
 Another poet is asked about the Buddha
 Joy everywhere but we are closed off to it
o Psychiatrist/author
 Buddha teacher to happiness
o The Dali Lama
 World’s holiest places
o Where the Buddha was born
o Nepal
o Buddhist pilgrims come from all over
 Lots of visual representations of Buddha
o Barnard College
o Was oral for centuries
 Hard to know how much is fact and how must is fairy tale, this is irrelevant though to the
overall message
 “He who sees me sees the teaching and he who sees the teaching sees me”
 Buddha a prince amongst warriors
o His father gave him three lotus ponds
 One red, one right, one blue
 He wanted him to conquer the world
  Wanted a king
 Life of pleasure
o Wealth
o Protected from harm
 At 16, he married his cousin
o In love (Buddha)
 Indulged himself for 29 years until he saw the suffering of life
o 1st of 4 (old man = change)
o 2nd sick man = everybody gets sick
 Monk
o 3rd corpse = impermanence of life
o Shocked to see this.
o Knew his fate to become old, get sick, die
o 4th meets a spiritual leader
o Neve  wanting to know the truth
 Must suffer to become Buddha
o Poet?
 Buddha resolved to leave the palace
o Named his son “Ball and chain”
o What will keep him imprisoned
 Went into his wife’s room where she was cuddling their son
o He left them
o The god of desire was waiting for him and told him he was destined to rule the
world, but the Buddha refused
o Sacrifice for knowledge
 Became homelessness
o Wounded by enjoyment of the world and went out to obtain peace
 Narrator
 Wandered to the Ganges river
o Beggar
o Slept on cold ground
 Wants to see what there is (seeker)
o No solution
o Recognises the problem
 Could not seek help from the Vedic religion
o They did not fulfil some of the individuals needs
o Rituals more important than the gods?
o Impermanence
o Individuals unsatisfied
 Buddha joined thousands of other renunciates to find something more
 Endless suffering until enlightened (Buddha)
o Death not final but leads to rebirth
 Buddha had already loved many lives as animals, other humans and gods before being
the Buddha
 Astrophysicist
o Idea to become wiser and wiser through each life
 Stubborn individuals  could take many billion lives
 Holy men emerged to teach their own spiritual disciplines
o Buddha was a student of one
 Yoga is to achieve meditation
o Person who practices yoga in this way
 Concentration on one object or sound etc.
o From author
 Buddha  super student but yoga didn’t help
o Temporary escape from reality but does not solve the problem
o No direct knowledge
 Try’s extreme deprivation
o Punishing the body to attain serenity and wisdom
o VERY EXTREME
 The body represents a fundamental problem
o Enough punishment of the body would result in freedom from the cycle of pain
with the body
 6 years of punishment to put an end to the suffering inside him
o EXTREME PUNISHMENT
o Nail bed, one grain of rice a day,
o Malnourished, skeletal, withered
o Realised from this that he could not gain what he wanted
 Monk
o Many years of this failed
 Poet
 On verge of death awakened when he remembered a day when he was young, and the
perfection of the world gave itself to him
o Planting festival
o Overwhelmed with sadness when ants killed to plant field
o Poet
o Everything connected
 Beautiful day, meditated and the natural world payed him homage
o Felt pure joy
 Can not sustain the joy he felt if he does not eat
o Generous woman gave him rice
o Grace from kindness
 Realises that extreme deprivation is not the right path
o Need to do this in order to attain enlightenment
o Only punished mind and body that almost killed him
o Had to look within and trust himself
 Fig tree is their center in the town (holiest town)
o Tree Buddha meditated under
o Became the Buddha under this tree
 When facing the god of desire, he is facing himself
 The god was concerned that Buddha would do away with desire
o Scared
o Tried to stop the Buddha from becoming the Buddha
 Meditated throughout the night
 o All his former lives came back to him
o Gained the power to see the process of birth, death, and rebirth
o Sees workings of entire universe
o As the morning star appeared his mind was at peace
o The tree rained down flowers
o Was awakened and became the Buddha (achieved nirvana)
 The universe awakened with him
o Poet
 Says that enlightenment is always with you, just have to realise it
 Doorway is your own mind and body
o Quality of this moment
o Poets
 Wants to stay under tree and not go out and teach others as he thought they might think
he was wrong
o Poet, Buddhist
o Afraid to teach
 Myth is that Brahma(?) [a god] comes to the Buddha and convinces him to go out and
teach
o Alleviate others pain
 Age 35; went out to teach others
o Not easy
 Met aesthetic who doesn’t see that the Buddha looks ordinary
o Failed to teach this person
o Anyone may be a Buddha
 Hard to explain enlightenment
 In a deer park he found his former 5 companions
o They thought he was living in luxury, so they don’t like him
o Buddha sets them straight and teaches them
 1st teaching: setting in motion the wheel of Dharma
o Not the path of aestheticism or luxury so it is the middle way (no excess of either
side)
 o String too tight breaks, too loose  music dies
 String just right  perfect balance
 4 noble truths