INTERVIEW: James Zito
James Zito is the producer/director of the extraordinary documentary Compassion and Wisdom: A Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life. An independent film and videomaker based outside of Boulder, CO, James is devoted to “exploring Buddhist issues on film and in the electronic media.” He has contributed to the development of Buddhism in America by his involvement with various archive, documentary, and preservation projects.
In a recent post, I dubbed Compassion and Wisdom the best movie I have yet seen about Buddhism. A completely unique, feature-length film project that includes insights on the bodhisattva archetype from such eminent Buddhist teachers and scholars 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, it succeeds brilliantly at conveying something of the Dharma on film. The late, great Chappell aptly said of it:
- 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. A masterpiece!
After getting a lot of inquiries about the film from readers, I connected with James via email. He kindly agreed to answer some questions via email about the film, his work and ideas, and his upcoming projects.
DANNY FISHER: You made Compassion and Wisdom over a period of three years. What can you tell us about the making of the film? Walk us through the history of its production, from when you first had the idea to when the DVDs were printed. What was the process like? Was this largely a solo effort?
JAMES ZITO: First of all, I want to thank you for your positive comments on my film about the bodhisattva–I very much appreciate your interest in the film and, obviously, given the line of work, you have chosen its themes must dovetail closely with your own interests. I want to give a little bit of background about myself and my own interests that will help to clarify why I made that film. Back when I was in college at UC-Santa Cruz I was a pretty undisciplined guy with no clear focus on where I was headed, unlike a lot of students today. My interest was in philosophy and I took a lot of courses in that area studying Eastern philosophies like the Upanishads and some Buddhism. I drifted from philosophy to neurobiology and evolutionary biology. I was absolutely fascinated by so many of the scientific things that I was learning and I committed to major in psychobiology, which is basically the study of the evolution of the brain and the nervous system and the how the behaviors of the individual organism have been shaped by that evolutionary process. Basically, you can see how evolutionary theory provides a kind of decoder key for figuring out why organisms–including human beings–do what they do. At around the same time I was taking some classes on video production and how to make short documentary pieces. Something just came together in my mind: I realized that I wasn’t going to be able to make it as some kind of disciplined scientist creating experiments and so forth, but I could perhaps use what I had learned in video production to shine a light on scientific issues that had been largely unexplored in the media. So after I graduated I applied to San Francisco State’s Broadcasting/Television Production program which is one of the best around and I got in.
Back at Santa Cruz one of the short documentaries that I had done was a piece on a Burmese Buddhist monastery up in the Santa Cruz Mountains. I had enjoyed making that and I was also getting more and more interested in Tibetan Buddhism–reading a lot and finally starting to meet some teachers. In 1989, the Dalai Lama gave a big initiation and teaching in San Jose and I went for that. The Dalai Lama would teach during the day and other masters that had come in his entourage would clarify what he had said in the evenings. One of the teachers there really influenced me and I just became obsessed with Buddhism. Back at S.F. State I changed my direction to try and create Buddhist media since there was certainly a serious dearth of programming in that area–at least then. I designed my master’s thesis as a documentary production and the theme of the film was exploring environmental issues from the standpoint of various spiritual traditions such as Buddhism, Taoism, Native American spirituality, Catholicism and so on and also from the point of view of the so called “Deep Ecology” movement. That’s where I cut my teeth on interviewing people like authors and lamas, and developed my skill set.
After I graduated from State, I moved up to a Tibetan Buddhist center to stay with the teacher that I was studying with for a few years. Chagdud Rinpoche [was at the time visiting Tibet for the first time since 1959 to see] his ancestral monasteries and many of the people that he had left behind. Some of his students had videotaped parts of the trip in a kind of home video sort of way and they wanted me to sort out their footage. I worked on editing that with another guy, and coming up with a narration to go over the pictures. So that came out through their publishing department. It was called Return to Tibet or something like that. All this time I was studying and practicing Tibetan Buddhism pretty intensively, people knew that I knew video production, so I would be often asked to document the teachings of various lamas. So I did quite a bit of that. My involvement with Dharma just continued to deepen. Then in 1995, I met my wife, Dawa Lhamo, who turned out to be Chagdud Rinpoche’s daughter, and we got together.
I knew that I wanted to make projects about Buddhism and express it through words and pictures, but a lot of Vajrayāna Buddhism is supposed to be secret and requires initiation to really discuss. So it’s not necessarily appropriate for a general type of documentary. But the foundation of the Vajrayāna is in Mahāyāna doctrines which deal with the concepts of paths and bhumis; the bodhisattva ideal; the six pāramitās; and, of course, śūnyatā (or, emptiness). I decided to do something which would go over these concepts and hopefully help people to better understand them. Most of the Buddhist video material that I had seen was just videotapes of various teachings. I wanted to use a lot of different experts and teachers and structure their interviews together to make something that would really give different voices to the topics. So after that, it was just a question of doing it. We shot in India Nepal and Japan a couple of times and that’s where we visited His Holiness the Dalai Lama at Dharamsala and Sakya Trizin at his place in Rajpur near Dehra Dun.
D.F.: I would imagine that the circumstances under which you met with the different teachers and professors in the film were varied. Is that correct? Were you able to spend more time with some of your interview subjects than with others? And do you have any stories, reflections, or observations you can share with us about the time you spent with some of them?
J.Z.: A little bit about this. I think I went to meet all the people that I interviewed–none came to visit me. I went to Hawaii to visit Robert Aitken Roshi, and that was a really interesting one. I hadn’t really seen a lot of Zen teachers and Aitken is probably the most senior of all the American Zen teachers. He initially took the interview like it was an interview with one of his Zen students. You know, when you interview someone you hope that they’re going to just come out with a beautiful stream of words that fit what you’re looking for. But his responses would be like ‘no’ or ‘not really’, ‘possibly’, or some other kind of one-word answer. So I really had to wrestle with him a little bit at first but then he must have seen what I was trying for because he got more and more into it and more eloquent as the hour progressed.
Interviewing His Holiness the Dalai Lama at his palace in Dharamsala was, of course, tremendously exciting. I did that one with my wife and one of my friends. First of all, we were supposed to have fifteen minutes with him, but when he saw what we were doing he was very pleased with it and we spent almost a full hour with him. My wife, who has so much faith in His Holiness, was completely awestruck and in tears. I was just trying to make sure that all the cameras and microphones were turned on and everything was working right. At the end, he praised me, saying that of all the interviews that he had done ours was one of the only ones that was just about Dharma and nothing else–politics or whatever. So that felt good.
Both Tai Situ Rinpoche and His Holiness Sakya Trizin Rinpoche have just tremendous power and charismatic presence, especially in a very intimate setting like that. So those were very memorable as well.
Robert Thurman is, like, one of the busiest people on the planet, so we’d get interrupted every couple of minutes. But he’s an ideal interview subject because he’s so lucid and quick.
D.F.: James, you mentioned to me in your email that you feel a strong commitment to the dissemination of Buddhist ideas through electronic media. Can you talk to us a little bit about this? Why do you think disseminating Buddhist ideas through electronic media is important?
J.Z.: I feel that for myself I have found in Buddhism an endless source of material for documentaries, educational DVDs, even possibly dramatic film projects. The topic of Buddhism is just such a vast one and there is so much to learn in any direction that you pursue. There has been an absolute explosion in the number of books being published on various Buddhist topics; however, the number of films and documentaries remains relatively small. There is certainly a growing audience for such material, and I think a desire for it, so I’m hoping to be providing programming in this area for a long time to come.
There is one issue that comes up in the context of Buddhist media that I feel it’s important to address. People in the West–in the United States particularly–are very independent-minded. They don’t like being told what to do and are usually unwilling to surrender their freedom to a ‘teacher’ or a ‘guru’ of some type. Many are interested in Buddhism and feel like they don’t need a teacher they can just learn it all on their own by reading a few books or perhaps watching a video like mine. There are even online courses in Buddhism where you do it all on your computer. Buddhist media can and should act as a supplement to your experiences with someone who upholds a living and authentic tradition of Buddhist transmission. It cannot and should not be used as a substitute for real, face-to-face interaction with a teacher. There is a saying in Tibetan Buddhism describing the role of the teacher which says that “all the Buddhas of the three times have relied upon a teacher, without a teacher not even the name Buddha is heard”. There is a danger in watching a video or reading a book on Buddhist theory or practice and then thinking that you are actually practicing real Buddhism–you can misinterpret the ideas and mess up your spiritual development this way. It is not as if the authentic teachers somehow ‘own’ Buddhism, but they are the heirs of an almost-3,000-year-old living lineage of knowledge and practice which is tested and true. It is alive. I know from my own experience that a person can have many preconceptions about how things are, and when the teacher explains them to you…personally, it’s just like these ideas go up in a bonfire and the inner confidence that can be gotten from receiving Dharma directly from an authentic source is something truly wonderful. Buddhist media is something needed to help augment this type of experience and it can also serve as an introduction to people. [It show people] that these ideas and traditions are out there and help people to gravitate towards them and find them. Buddhism is primarily a religion and a philosophy of peace and compassion two aspects of human behavior that are really needed in today’s world so from that perspective of course any type of Buddhist media is going to be helpful. I think the more you know about these ideas the greater benefit you will receive. But as the Buddha taught don’t take this at face value–look into it for yourself and see.
D.F.: You also mentioned to me that you’re working on a new film that is a historical survey of Japanese Zen Buddhism focusing on figures such as Dōgen, Hakuin, and others. And your biography at Vajra Video’s website mentions that you’re working on a documentary examining the history of Vajrayāna Buddhism in Tibet. Please tell us about your current and future projects.
J.Z.:For the past two or three years, I have been working on a documentary surveying the history of Zen Buddhism in Japan by examining the lives of some of its most important masters. I have been fascinated by the art and aesthetics of Zen and I wanted to learn more about them. I filmed many hours of the great Zen temples of Japan, their gardens, and the artworks and scrolls contained inside them. Although the film is going to express Zen philosophy and Dharma, it is grounded in a historical survey of the details of the lives of masters like Dōgen, Musō Soseki, Daito Kokushi, Ikkyū Sōjun, Hakuin, Ryōkan, and so on. I don’t know to what extent the average American Zen practitioner is aware of the depth and breadth of this material, but I would like to provide an additional resource for them to be able to turn to [in order to] shine a light on the roots and origins of their chosen tradition. I have assembled a panel of people who represent the top Western scholars and authors in the field of Zen history, including Martin Collcutt of Princeton; Ken Kraft from Lehigh, who is also one of the pioneers in the field of engaged or green Buddhism; Stephen Addiss, the greatest authority on Zen art; John Stevens, who has written and translated many works on Zen, its art, and poetry; Taigen Dan Leighton a very well respected Dōgen translator and Zen priest; and more. I am hoping to have that finished by the end of the year.
After that I am hoping to do a show on the process of transmitting Buddhism to Tibet in the Eighth century focusing on the first few generations of Buddhism in Tibet: the founding of Samye Monastery, the great masters Padmasambhava and Vimalamitra, the process of text translation, the original great masters of Tibet… [It will basically be about] the origin of the Nyingma (or, Ancient Translation) school of Tibetan Buddhism. Hopefully we will be able to get into Tibet to film the original sites extensively.
Once again, Danny, I want to thank you for your interest, and your readers for their patience if they have read this far. Good luck to all of you.
For more about James and his films, be sure to visit his website http://www.vajravideo.com.
