"Killing Buddha" - the movie (video)

Ashley Wells, Dhr. Seven, CC Liu, Wisdom Quarterly

(CFL) Betsy Chasse, co-writer/producer of "What the Bleep Do We Know?!," on her latest independent film, "Killing Buddha."

There is a horrific Mahayana Buddhist expression that -- going against the very heart of Theravada Buddhist sentiment -- runs: “If you see the Buddha on the road, [blank] him.”
     
There are, after all, only five heinous deeds with fixed karmic results: (1) intentionally harming a buddha, (2) matricide, (3) patricide, (4) killing an arhat, (5) or causing a schism in the Sangha.
  
The consequence is rebirth in the most dismal subhuman plane of existence (avici) in the very next rebirth. Cultivating the intention to perform one of these unimaginable acts is mental karma that goes on to become a verbal act of encouraging others. What does it mean?

It is meant to be facetious, ironic, and shocking: “Do not follow teachers; do not set up others on a pedestal; depend on yourself; be a light/island (dipa) unto yourself, taking no teacher other than the Dharma itself as an idol or savior.”
   
An American famous for creating “What the Bleep Do We Know?” is setting her sights on Buddhism. Betsy Chasse was perplexed by the message “You are the one you've been waiting for.” But it came to her through what has become a Mahayana commandment of sorts:
  

Linji the shocking iconoclast

“Embrace Nothing. If you meet the Buddha, k*ll the Buddha… only live your life as it is, not bound to anything.” This saying is attributed to iconoclastic Linji, the 9th century founder of the Linji School of Chán (Chinese jhana) Buddhism.
   

Linji's famous sayings

“Followers of the Way [of Chán], if you want to get the kind of understanding that accords with the Dharma, never be misled by others. Whether you're facing inward or facing outward, whatever you meet up with, just kill it! If you meet a [fully awakened] buddha, kill the buddha. If you meet a patriarch, kill the patriarch. If you meet an arhat, kill the arhat. If you meet your parents, kill your parents. If you meet your kinfolk, kill your kinfolk. Then for the first time you will gain emancipation, will not be entangled with things, will pass freely anywhere you wish to go” (Burston Watson, 1999, The Zen Teachings of Master Lin-Chi: A Translation of the Lin-chi lu, p. 52).

  

“Those who have fulfilled the 10 stages of bodhisattva-practice are no better than hired field hands; those who have attained the enlightenment of the 51st and 52nd stages are prisoners shackled and bound; arhats and non-teaching buddhas are so much filth in the latrine; bodhi and nirvana are hitching posts for donkeys” (Ibid., p. 26). 

    
The Next "What the Bleep?!"  
Chasse wants help. She is asking the public (through crowdfundinglive.com) to participate in this project at any level. Watch videos from the set, look at behind the scenes footage, chat online with the cast and the film makers, and more. She is exchanging these enticements for funding.
   

While distributing What The Bleep Do We Know?! Chasse was honored to travel the world talking about the film. The most common question people asked was, “How did a broke, out of work, spiritually unconscious, material Valley Girl who was into sex, tequila, and expensive shoes end up being a writer, director and producer of What the Bleep Do We Know!?”
   
Sometimes it takes the most unlikely of people in the most unusual of circumstances to create something that touches the world like “Bleep” did. The story Chasse told was so funny and resonated with so many people that she decided to write a film about it, a comedy called “Killing Buddha.” 
  

About-Team-Financial-Media-Updates-Funders-Comments

  

Synopsis

When life is chaotic we are forced to change. This is a lesson successful film producer Sara Wells reluctantly learns when her seemingly perfect life comes crashing down. Desperate for work, she takes on a documentary project about spirituality and the new thought movement. Will “Killing Buddha” mark her triumphant return to the riches she thinks her life once contained?
  
Or will she and her mismatched crew of seekers, believers, and cynics find that ultimately it’s not what you have and what you believe in, but who you become that counts? Think “Bridget Jones gets hired to shoot a documentary about finding the meaning of life.”
   
Funny and lighthearted, “Killing Buddha” is a mainstream comedy that is set to include interviews with some of today's greatest pop spiritual teachers -- Deepak Chopra, Barbara Marx Hubbard, Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev, and others interacting with the actors as they shoot this “film within the film.”
   

Why make the film?

“Killing Buddha” is a reminder that everything we seek can be found within ourselves. More

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Mob in Maldives destroys Buddhist history

Hawwa Lubna (Minivannews.com,  Feb. 9, 2012)

The Maldives is a formerly Buddhist nation of many islands (travel.nationalgeographic.com)

   

Several historical artifacts exhibited at the Maldives National Museum, including Buddhist statues were destroyed in a mob attack on Wednesday morning, an act of vandalism that is said to have caused “unimaginable damage” to the treasured Maldivian heritage.

  

Underwater restaurant (sweetydesign.com)

Speaking to Minivan News, a museum official said that a group of five to six men stormed into the building twice, “deliberately targeted the Buddhist relics and ruins of monasteries exhibited in the pre-Islamic collection, destroying most items “beyond repair.”

   

The official said that the details of the damage cannot be released as the police have asked the museum to withhold the information until the investigation into the attack is pending. “But I can say that attackers have done unimaginable damage,” he added.

  

Museum pieces showing pre-Islamic history

“This is not like a glass we use at home that can be replaced by buying a new one from a shop. These are originals from our ancestors’ time. These cannot be replaced ever again,” the official exclaimed.

   

According to a source, a coral stone head of [the] Buddha, an 11th century piece recovered from Thoddoo in Alifu Atoll, was smashed by the attackers, one of the most significant pieces at the museum inside Sultan’s Park.

   

The museum was built with Chinese government aid and opened on July 26, 2010.

   

Other pieces vandalized include the Bohomala sculptures, monkey statues, and a broken statue piece of the Hindu water god, Makara, while the two five faced statues discovered from [the capital island] Male’ were also damaged -- the only remaining archaeological evidence proving the existence of a Buddhist era in the Maldives.

   

...The attack on the museum coincided with the political unrest that escalated in Male’ during the late hours of Tuesday night, after a group of police and military men allegedly joined the opposition protesters, forcing Former President Mohamed Nasheed to resign the following day.

    

AFP reported Nasheed as saying that the vandals included Islamist hardliners who had attacked the museum because they believed some of the statues inside were “idolatrous.” More
   

Are we being led to hate and war?

Wisdom Quarterly (COMMENTARY)

Peace Buddha (BuddhaIsland.net)

Imagine a world that makes dictators acceptable by talking about their advances in sanitation, monetary policy, education, and the treatment of women -- only to turn around when they are no longer useful to the Powers That Be, and have them condemned in the media to foment the urge for war. It happened with Saddam Hussein (Iraq), Moammar Qaddafi (Libya), Hosni Mubarak (Egypt), Bashir al Assad (Syria), Mahmoud Ahmedinejad (Iran)... The military-industrial complex, apparently a multinational group run by various clandestine agencies in the West (primarily in the US and UK), is responsible for a great deal of psychological operations (propaganda) preceding war. We were encouraged to hate the "Taliban" as a rationale to accept the slaughter of hundreds of thousands in Afghanistan. We are still played for fools by being made afraid of another CIA-creation, "Al Qaeda." Is Syria's Assad a monster? No more so than he or any Western-installed, funded, and manipulated dictator ever was. So why is it they are suddenly vilified? Why are we encouraged to root for their assassination, deposition, and replacement (with another equally vile puppet of the Powers that Be)? Now even the minor paradise being inundated by climate chaos is dragged into our strategic global initiative to rule with full spectrum dominance. We say no. Hate only begets hate. Is does not justify war, intervention, or installing dictators anywhere on the planet. The powers will do what they do, but let us be mindful instead of playing into the trap of endless war. Why? There is no sense in saving Buddha statues if we do not save the Buddha's message of peace, clarity, and compassion.

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Sacred Chinese site plans $118 million IPO

CC Liu, Ashley Wells, Wisdom Quarterly

(Bloomberg Businessweek) The managers of Putuo Mountain, a Buddhist shrine where worshippers go to pray for healthy children, want to raise 750 million yuan ($118 million) in an initial public offering, China Daily reported today... 

  

Plans for the offering by one of China’s four main Buddhist mountains come as China’s State Administration for Religious Affairs has criticized local governments for seeking to turn a profit off religious sites. More

• Religious sites face capital temptation
• (China Daily) Plans by local authorities to list famous Buddhist mountains on the country's equity markets are triggering a backlash regarding the commercialization of holy sites.

Lowest of sacred mountains (english.cri.cn)

Putuo Shan is one of the islands of the Zhoushan Archipelago, Ningbo, eastern China, which is comprised of 1,390 islands. The total area of Putuo Mountain is 12.93 square kilometers. It is one of China’s four great Buddhist Mountains. Putuo Mountain is the first group of national key places of interest, generally called [Chinese or Pureland] Buddhist Heaven on the sea and the Holy Land on the South Sea. It is a Five-A tourist destination in China. The immortal mountains [wrapped] in clouds and [surrounded by] waters offer travelers a feeling of mystery and sanctity. Putuo Mountain is a famous Kwan-Yin ceremonial center in China...

  

Monks go on 500-mile journey on their knees to Putuo

Mahayana monks making their way to Kwan Yin

A pair of Buddhist monks are to make a 500-mile journey on their knees to the religion's holiest shrines in China. Masters Zhiyuan and Hanliang will spend two months crawling to 99 temples on their way to the Putuo Mountains in eastern China until they reach a statue of Kwan Yin, the Buddhist goddess (bodhisattva) of mercy.... "They will crawl, and then every third step they will stop and bow as a sign of respect to the goddess," explained one.

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"Poson" at Los Angeles Buddhist Vihara

Lanka.com; Wisdom Quarterly; Los Angeles Buddhist Vihara

 

Poson full moon observance day is a festival celebrated on the Buddhist island of Sri Lanka.

It marks the  arrival of Buddhism in the 3rd century BCE. It is therefore of great historical and religious significance to the island's majority Sinhalese Buddhists, if less important to the nation's many Tamil Hindu, Indian and Maldivian Muslims, British and Portuguese Christians, and a tiny marginalized minority of indigenous aborigines, the Veddas.

 

The full moon day of June commemorates the arrival of an enlightened emissary from India, the arhat son of Emperor Asoka. Over 2,000 years ago Arhat Mahinda converted Sri Lanka's King Devanampiyatissa to Buddhism.

The center of celebrations is Mihintale, the ancient monastic complex where the royal missionary monk along with his enlightened sister gave a sermon to the island's ruler. Anuradhapura, the ancient capital, is also a place where large crowds of pilgrims converge. Mass religious observances and illuminated pageants are part of the celebrations.

For the island's Buddhists, this sacred day is second only to Vesak. Long lines of devotees dressed in white climb the many steps to the top of Mihintale stone outcropping -- a kind of Plymouth Rock (Mihinthalaya) -- first to the temple then to the pagodas (dagabas) adorned in the nearby hills. The top of the rock is where Arhat Mahinda delivered his initial discourses.
  

This area is called the cradle of Buddhism in Sri Lanka. With the establishment of a monastic order (Sangha) all the elements of a civilized society began to emerge: the art of writing, art, architecture, canals, reservoirs, song and dance forms, literature, all with royal patronage.

  

[Oh wait, all of these "civilizing" elements were here before. But the Sinhalese trace their dominant culture to the civilizing influence of the Dharma's appearance on the island; they even trace their genes back to northern and northwestern India so as to make them Buddhist-Buddhists and somewhat nationalist in character, which has been quite harmful to the other inhabitants of the island.]

Many religious activities are organized during Poson such as virtue (sila) campaigns, Bodhi tree rituals, dana-salas (freely donated food and refreshments), devotional songs, parades, and lanterns.

  
Many temple fill with Eight Precept devotees and pilgrims from all over the island to mark the event. The devout are clad in pure white -- just as in the Buddha's day -- with no adornments like make up on their way to temple. There they spend the next 24 hours actually practicing the Dharma in quiet contemplation or meditation.

   

Meanwhile, the rest of the village gathers on temple grounds after sunset to participate in less spiritual activities -- like reading sacred books, listening to saffron-clad monastics recite sutras (bhana), relate ancient stories from the Buddha's past lives (jatakas), or chant protections (parittas).

  

During the Poson Festival the selling of alcohol and animal flesh is usually prohibited, and slaughterhouses are closed. Emperor Asoka made such decrees in ancient India (Bharat) as well after becoming a Buddhist. More

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