Talking With Buddha

 

A heart warming journey among Tibetan Buddhist monasteries to seek guidance from some of the great Lamas of Buddhism, including His Holiness the 17th Karmapa. All this and more against a backdrop of Himalaya mountains and the rythmic beat of morning prayers and chanting monks. The photography is breath-taking, the colors so vivid they leap off the screen. This documentary will enlighten you about a religion that is often seen as mysterious and almost always misunderstood – Buddhism.

If you have ever questioned how to improve your mental condition and achieve a lasting happiness then this documentary could hold the answer. After all, Tibetan Buddhism we are told in the movie, is an inner science for the mind and is used to turn your negative mind into a positive one. This and many more words of wisdom come from some of Tibet’s great Lamas and offer clear explanations of Buddhist philosophy. Without religious undertones, Talking With Buddha offers a refreshingly direct and simple insight into living a Dharma life and understanding Tibetan Buddhism. For most lay persons, Tibetan Buddhism is a mysterious faith, only coming to prominence with the Tibet-Chinese conflict. Yet it offers us a doorway to happiness and peace through which everyone regardless of race or color can enter. This documentary will offer you the rare opportunity of sharing in the daily life of a Tibetan Buddhist monk and the hardships and long hours of prayer and study of Samsara that will lead them to a greater reward and enlightenment. 

 It is not all sweetness and honey however as tensions soar high when Tibetan monks hold demonstrations to cancel the New Year holidays in protest at recent Chinese attrocities in Tibet. For Tibetans in exile in India, the days are spent maintaining the Buddhist culture while praying for the family they left behind in Tibet. One of the most recent and well known refugees His Holiness the 17th Gyalwang Karmapa offers us guidance on keeping a family together and on his close relationship with His Holiness 14th Dalai Lama. The most remarkable interviews are with Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo, a leading Buddhist nun who was herself the subject of the award winning book, “A cave in the snow.” Her insight into the ‘quick-fix’ society we live in, will hit you like a baseball bat. Filmed on location in some of the largest Tibetan monasteries, you will witness close up, some very intense and stirring prayers and Buddhist chants that serve as an emotional soundtrack. The backdrop are the Himalaya mountains and the photography, filmed in HD, is stunning.

Featured speakers include: His Holiness the 17th Gyalwang Karmapa, Geshe Lobsang Tseten, Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo, Lama Lodu Rimpoche and Gelek Rimpoche.

Review by the Video Librarian Magazine, July 2010.

Talking may be part of the title of this documentary, but filmmaker Jon Braeley makes his greatest impressions via stunning color and sound. Designed to offer viewers a glimpse of Tibetan Buddhism as practiced in India, the film adopts a leisurely pace, with imagery including prayer flags segueing into a shot of masses of Buddhist monks, along with scenes of Himalayan glaciers, and a sequence in which a red-robed woman carrying a pink lotus slowly makes her way through a Buddhist temple, prostrating herself repeatedly while others go about their business. Observations on Buddhist practice from the Dalai Lama, the 17th Gyalwang Karmapa,

and Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo (a nun who spent 12 years in a Himalayan cave, where she slept upright in a box), among others are interspersed with extended scenes of life in several monasteries (where, for example, we see young mendicants with shaven heads bobbing and chanting). Viewers will also see crowds of worshippers men and women praying together or sitting in silence, as well as footage of ceremonies marked by the sounds of exotic percussion and wind instruments (making raucous, joyous noise) and sights of swirling colorful garments, gilded woodwork, jaunty banners, and regal headdresses. A wonderful feast for the senses, DVD extras include a talk on Dealing with Anger by Gelek Rimpoche. Highly recommended.  From the Video Librarian, July 2010.
 

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