Kill Bill and Other Admonishments (Courtesy of the Wayback Machine)

Thanks to the inimitable Tom Armstrong over at Homeless Tom, I was able to take a stroll down memory lane recently and view a post from my old blog on the Wayback Machine. The post was mostly a response to a Beliefnet piece about wunderkind Quentin Tarantino’s meta-masterpiece Kill Bill: Vol. 1. At his old site Zen Unbound, Tom posted links to the Beliefnet piece and my post, as well as a personal response he received from Ganden Thurman, the executive director of Tibet House who is also brother to Kill Bill star Uma and son to Buddhist scholar/teacher Robert.

Anyway, my old post is reprinted in full below, with a few adjustments and corrections.

Kill Bill and Other Admonishments
Originally posted on Sunday, March 27, 2005
Edited and revised on Sunday, May 3, 2009

Seeing as it’s Quentin Tarantino’s birthday today, it seemed like a good time to reflect on University of Chicago doctoral candidate David L. Simmons’ recent write-up at Beliefnet about the auteur’s masterful Kill Bill saga and the profundities of Rinzai Zen philosophy. Simmons writes:

    Taken together, the Kill Bill movies demonstrate some bona-fide Zen Buddhist doctrine, and can be read as a filmic meditation on the Zen koan that provides the philosophical keynote for the plot: “If you meet the Buddha, kill him.”

Simmons adds that it might be “outrageous” to consider that Tarantino has “anything to teach us” about Buddhism and Zen. I think not, but more on that later.

However, I would quibble with Simmons on his contention that the films exemplify Lin-Chi’s (Rinzai’s) koan, “If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him.” As someone with a significant interest in the places where Buddhist studies and film studies meet, I have some problems with this thesis.

Simmons’ claims that Lin-Chi’s koan is heard at two points in Vol. 1: during Hattori Hanzo’s (Sonny Chiba’s) voice-over narration at the beginning of the film and during the ceremony at which Hanzo bestows upon the Bride (Thurman) a sword he has made for her.

A closer look at these pieces of dialogue raises some questions for me. Consider the voice-over (in the film, it is heard in Japanese and transliterated into English subtitles):

    For those regarded as warriors, when engaged in combat, the vanquishing of thine enemy can be the warrior’s only concern. Suppress all human emotion and compassion. Kill whoever stands in thy way, even if that be Lord God, or Buddha himself. This truth lies at the heart of the art of combat.

Though this sounds very familiar to Lin-Chi’s koan, it is not at all an exact quotation. Secondly, the context makes me wonder if what is being said here is at all similar to what Lin-Chi is saying.

One could certainly spend their entire meditative life trying to unravel the full meaning of this koan. In a nutshell, and borrowing the same Thich Nhat Hanh quotation that Simmons’ uses, what Lin-Chi was getting has to do with the student understanding that she has “the capacity to liberate herself from all authority and realize ultimate reality in herself.” The Rinzai Zen student seeks to realize the dying words of the Buddha:

    Be ye lamps unto yourselves, be a refuge to yourselves. Hold fast to Truth as a lamp; hold fast to the truth as a refuge. Look not for a refuge in anyone beside yourselves. And those, who shall be a lamp unto themselves, shall betake themselves to no external refuge, but holding fast to the Truth as their lamp, and holding fast to the Truth as their refuge, they shall reach the topmost height.

In Kill Bill: Vol. 1, the call to kill the Buddha in the voice-over has to do with the warrior allowing no impediments to stand in the way of the destruction of her enemy. A metaphorical read of this is possible, sure. In defense of a more literal take, though, I’m struck by the context of this “quotation” both in the entire voice-over and in the film: this statement comes just after the Bride has dispatched Vernita Green (Vivica A. Fox) in front of her small daughter Nikki (Ambrosia Kelley), offering coolly:

    It was not my intention to do this in front of you. For that I’m sorry. But you can take my word for it: your mother had it comin’. When you grow up, if you still feel raw about it, I’ll be waiting.

Even the perfect innocence of a child does not stop the Bride from the destruction of her enemy, in the same way she was exhorted not to allow God or the Buddha to stand in her way.

In the sword ceremony scene, once again I’m left with the feeling that Lin-Chi is not being quoted and that, taken in their full context, the sentiments expressed point in another direction. Presenting the Bride with her sword, the despondent Hanzo laments:

    I’m done doing what I swore an oath to God twenty-eight years ago to never do again. I’ve created ‘something that kills people.’ And in that purpose I was a success. I’ve done this because philosophically I’m sympathetic to your aim. I can tell you with no ego, this is my finest sword. If on your journey, you should encounter God, God will be cut.

Here, the Buddha is not even mentioned as someone she might encounter. (The similarities between this statement and Lin-Chi’s are dully noted, though.) And when Hanzo says that God will be cut if encountered by the Bride, it comes just after he announces that he has created what Budd (Michael Madsen) declares in Vol. 2 to be “the greatest sword ever made by a man.” Again, one could, as Simmons’ does, offer a metaphorical read of this, but, on the page (and screen), it comes off more like a powerful sentiment to describe a material object–a bit of dialogue that adds a bit more dramatic heft.

Simmons offers an interesting and thought-provoking interpretation of the Kill Bill films, but given the issues of context, I have to wonder aloud whether or not the use of Lin-Chi’s imagery (if that is in fact what it is) functions as he suggests. Due respect to QT, I suspect that, as Simmons’ suggests:

    Perhaps Tarantino’s [seeming] references to Rinzai’s school of Zen Buddhism should be understood in the same light as the fictive “Ezekiel 25:17″ speech Samuel L. Jackson’s character recites in Pulp Fiction: it’s just “something cool” he once heard in a movie.

That said, I think the film succeeds at saying a lot about karma. I don’t really see either of the Kill Bill films as being very much “about” Buddhism. And yet, regardless of his real intention, I think Tarantino ends up saying some very Buddhistic things with these movies. As scholar John Lyden has so wisely said:

    The study of film from a religious studies vantage point has produced a broad consensus. Films include religious symbolism, consciously or unconsciously, and films may project a world-view which functions much like a religion in our culture [emphasis added].

I think an excellent case could be made for the Buddhist notion of karma as a perennially popular theme in the American crime genre. Because these films generally feature characters with intentions that result in actions with negative consequences for themselves and the other characters, most of them tend to get me thinking about karma. Kill Bill: Vol. 1 is no exception. I’m not sure Tarantino knows much of anything about Buddhism or wanted to say anyting aboout it, but it unconsciously says something significant from a Dharmic point of view: Kill Bill: Vol. 1 shows us what happens when people fail to just sit with and look at their kleshas (destructive emotions), and instead act out on them. Nowhere is this clearer than in the Bride’s climactic battle with O-Ren Ishii (Lucy Liu). It’s a tragic show-down between two damaged women who really need understanding and compassion, especially from each other.

In spite of my quibbles with Simmons’ piece, I really appreciate it. It’s exciting to me that people recognize the Buddhistic qualities of both Kill Bill films. It was such a cool experience, contemplating his ideas and then offering feedback on them. I look forward to more of this kind of work in Buddhist studies and film studies.

[Photo by Miramax Films.]