Rev. Danny Fisher

This clip was just posted at the Nobelprize.org YouTube Channel:

I’ve got some news on Myanmar for you from a couple of sources.

First, from Precious Metal, comes news that the junta has detained more than twenty activists demonstrating in Sittwe against their proposed constitution.

The arrests came ahead of the country’s May 10 referendum on a new constitution that critics say was drafted to perpetuate military rule.

The [National League for Democracy] has urged voters to reject the charter because it was drafted without any input from the junta’s critics and the country’s pro-democracy movement.

The protesters were wearing T-shirts printed with the word “No,” during a 5-day festival to celebrate Burma’s traditional New Year’s holiday.

Sittwe, the capital of Rakhine state in western Burma is known for its strong anti-military sentiment. It was the city where Buddhist monks first joined anti-junta rallies that swelled into nationwide protests last September.

Myanmar has had no constitution since 1988, when the junta took control of the country. Their proposed constitution would do the following:

1. Forbid anyone who enjoys the rights and privileges of a foreign citizen from holding public office. (Because her late husband was British, this would make it impossible for Nobel Peace laureate and democratically-elected prime minister Aung San Suu Kyi to hold office.)
2. Allot twenty-five percent of the seats in both houses of Parliament to the military.
3. It is further stipulated that no amendments could be made to the constitution without a consensus of more than 75% of the members of Parliament. (Meaning that, in the words of the Associated Press, changes would be “unlikely unless supported by military representatives.”)

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Second, my buddy Erick, our in-house anthropologist, points us to two good pieces at the Irawaddy. There’s this profile of Ashin Pyinnya Jota, two-time political prisoner and deputy abbott of Yangoon’s Maggin Monastery. (I blogged about Maggin Monastery’s AIDS work in this post from last December.) And there’s this one about the surveillance of monks in Pakokku.

Almost three years ago, my good pal “Analogcabin Jones” wrote at his blog The Spoonbender about his five favorite movies. I had only seen one of them at the time, and knowing my friend to be (as he will tell you) a man of vast intelligence and refined taste, I promptly added the other four to my “must-see” list. I only recently finished watching all of them, and have been exchanging emails about the films and the list with Mr. Jones. The greatest discovery for me was certainly Ross McElwee’s Sherman’s March, which has joined my own very short list of favorites. It’s a total original, and wholly extraordinary.

I had thought about doing my own list of movie favorites here, but I already sort of did that in this post. So I decided instead to offer a more focused and apropos alternative: a little something I’m calling Danny Fisher Presents My Top Five Movies About Buddhism, Tax Day 2008 Edition.

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5. Wheel of Time (2003), dir. Werner Herzog

This is probably a good one to lead off the list with: I found it through a friend of both Mr. Jones and myself. Part of a triumvirate of documentaries made between 2003 and 2005 by virtuoso filmmaker Werner Herzog, Wheel of Time isn’t the unqualified masterpiece that 2005′s Grizzly Man is, but it’s still pretty terrific. The film documents the Kalachakra Initiation that began in 2002 at Bodh Gaya, India, and concluded the following year at Graz, Austria. Herzog is primarily interested in the Tibetan Buddhist mandala, but Wheel of Time also offers some indelible images of pilgrimage, folk religion, and contemplative practice. The film’s most enduring moments have to do with individual practitioners, including Herzog himself, whose gentle chantings of “om mani padme hum” are heard off-screen as he films part of the ceremonies in Graz. (You won’t soon forget the monk who prostrates himself from Mt. Kailash to Bodh Gaya, leaving a permanent scar on his forehead as well as a truly remarkable look of serenity.) Among its other virtues, Wheel of Time also features Herzog one-on-one with His Holiness the Dalai Lama. As the short clip below shows, their encounters see-saw delightfully between the light-hearted and the serious-minded.

4. Doing Time, Doing Vipassana (1997), dir. Eilona Ariel and Ayelet Menahemi

I did a couple of blogs recently (this one and this one) about the new film The Dhamma Brothers, which documents a ten-day meditation retreat undertaken by thirty-six prisoners at a maximum security prison in Alabama. Though I haven’t seen that film yet, I imagine it has some resonance with Doing Time, Doing Vipassana. Directors Eilona Ariel and Ayelet Menahemi spent two weeks inside India’s Tihar Central Prison in New Delhi and Baroda Jail in Gujarat state filming meditation retreats for prisoners and prison staff. The result is this tight, effective, and often quite moving 50-minute film. From the opening moments (which show a prisoner sobbing into the arms of a guard) to the energetic and enthusiastic observations of Delhi’s former Inspector General of Prisons Kiran Bedi, Doing Time, Doing Vipassana is full of amazing moments. If there’s a better film about meditation and its positive effects, I haven’t seen it yet. You can order a copy of the film at Pariyatti.

3. Kundun (1997), dir. Martin Scorsese

It’s funny: every now and then, I’ll be reading an article about the great American auteur Martin Scorsese and there will invariably be some disparaging comment about the director’s 1997 effort Kundun, a biopic of the His Holiness the Dalai Lama. It’s derided as “Scorsese gone soft” or “Oscar-baiting” or some such thing. Frankly, when I read a dismissal like this, I find myself wondering if the article writer has actually even seen Kundun. Sure, the film takes the director off of the mean streets and onto the roof of the world, but this is still vintage Scorsese: as visually enthralling as anything by the director, and just as insightful on issues of religion, violence, power, weakness, family, and culture. Indeed, this is singularly beautiful cinema. As Gavin Smith of Film Comment, who named the film one of the best of 1997, wrote at the time of its release:

…Kundun systematically works through a series of plays on vision–both spiritual and sensory–and viewpoint, that in some ways represent a culmination of Scorsese’s formal inquiries. If all his films are ultimately, inescapably interiorized, their momentum always spiraling relentlessly inward, Kundun is the first that exists in the mind’s eye from the beginning, that locates the art of vision in a realm where exterior landscape (Tibet, history) and interior landscape (a sand-painting mandala, an infinite capacity for compassion) unite in an epic of the psyche and the spirit.

2. Bom Yeoreum Gaeul Gyeoul Geurigo Bom (Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter…and Spring) (2003), dir. Kim Ki-Duk

Who would have expected that such an exquisite, affecting, and compassionate film about Buddhist practice would come from Korea’s Kim Ki-Duk? The director is making some of the most unsettling and terrifying thrillers in all of world cinema right now–among them, brilliantly icky creepshows like The Isle and Bad Guy. But maybe that explains it: he knows how to keep filmgoers on tenterhooks so expertly that almost anything else ought to be a cinch. He understands the audience in the same way Hitchcock did and Spielberg does. Irregardless of how it happened, we’re presented here with something we Buddhists don’t have enough of: a genuinely great film that also manages to capture something of the Dharma. While it does tip its hat to Yong-Kyun Bae’s 1989 classic Dharmaga Tongjoguro Kan Kkadalgun (or, Why Has Bodhi-Dharma Left for the East?), Bom Yeoreum Gaeul Gyeoul Geurigo Bom is very much its own film–distinguished by the director’s trademark style, sense of humor, and ability to surprise. Oh, and did I mention that it’s virtually silent? (There is only the smallest bit of dialogue.) Perhaps I’ve over-talked this one then; the trailer below allows the film to “speak” for itself.

1. Compassion and Wisdom: A Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life (2004), dir. James Zito

James Zito’s Compassion and Wisdom: A Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life is the best film I have ever seen about Buddhism because it’s this devoted student’s idea of a dream come true. Imagine a serious, relevant, feature-length documentary about the path of the bodhisattva. Now imagine that film populated with “talking heads” from the worlds of academia and practice such as His Holiness Sakya Trizin, His Eminence Tai Situ Rinpoche, Robert Aitken Roshi, John Daido Loori Roshi, Robert Thurman, Donald S. Lopez, Jr., Lewis Lancaster, B. Alan Wallace, Chökyi Nyima Rinpoche, Khenpo Palden Sherab, Tsultrim Allione, Ven. Robina Courtin, Shohaku Okamura, Taigen Daniel Leighton, Mu Soeng, David W. Chappell, Jakusho Bill Kwong Roshi, and even His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Well, if you can imagine all that, then you’ve got a pretty good idea of what Compassion and Wisdom is like. The late, great Chappell rightly dubbed the final product “a masterpiece” and succinctly articulates what is so fantastic about its design:

The careful editing weaves the themes so closely together and builds a beautiful collage of voices that reinforce and build on each other while continuously setting everything within the practical context of modern life.

There’s simply no other film like this out there–Compassion and Wisdom is truly unique and remarkable stuff. There are no clips or trailers available for the film, which is just as well: you should see the whole thing immediately if not sooner. (Copies are available to order through Vajra Video’s website as well as Snow Lion Publications.) And here’s hoping for many more films from Mr. Zito.