"Bodhisattva, Superstar" Excerpts
This week we’re excited to bring you some exclusive excerpts from the upcoming “allegorical documentary” by Michael Trigilio, “Bodhisattva, Superstar.” On Monday we’ll be releasing a podcast episode where we interview Michael about the film, exploring many of the underlying messages and meanings therein. We hope that this excerpt will provide some sense of what the film is about, since it has not yet been released to a wider audience.
excerpts from “Bodhisattva, Superstar” (2010) from starvelab on Vimeo.
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The music that comes in around 2:40 seems awfully loud and a bit too trancey also. At least when watched on my laptop.
I found it interesting and am looking forward to watching the whole documentary. I did struggle to listen to it through the music though.
There is this thought, this yearning, that if I could only live a little while after the consequences of the present moment I could get it right… If I could intercept these tangential forces before they drag me irrevocably off from the golden center "the what I mean or meant to have arise in your mind from what I said". Then you would get me, clearly & heart to heart.
Unfortunately the winds of Samsara pull the target randomly after the arrow is loosed, even if unerringly towards the bullseye. The filmmaker tries valiantly to catch and correct their arrow in its flight, or hold the target steady so their idea once launched will arrive true to its destination. Its not sad that this effort fails, its merely inevitable.
I look forward to seeing the entire effort, my thinking is that the only really excellent films about the dharma are unintentional. Many films tell the dharma like it is, because they had absolutely no intention to do so. The un-aimed arrow is let fly and the dharma ready heart awaits it, dead on-center. If you can reverse this process I would be very happy, also profoundly surprised!
Great film – however, the constant music was highly distracting, almost from the beginning.
Sangha is every being within your sphere of experience. Imagine yourself in a Heruka mandala, where even the zombies, vampires and jackals are "practitioners." We cannibal people in this rat-racing dog-eating corner of the human realm must daily come into contact with one another. No caste is special or separate – no divisions adhere. Every foible, scheme, desire, aversion, elusion… every intent is made manifest in the living of life with one another. Every mystery is revealed within the basic foundations of mindfulness.
Sangha is life in your reach. Sangha is Dharma teachers and brothers-sisters, and that is special, but Sangha is also every pulse beat of life-in-relation. Sangha is family, friends and strangers on the street. Sangha is that bitch at work: she is a dakini-dharma-messenger. Sangha is the homeless man you see everyday on the street, glorious Heruka.
Every living being is a practitioner of the path of fleeing from suffering. Every living being seeks buddhahood, freedom from suffering. It is clear every living being is part of the Sangha. No experienced bodhisattva would withhold liberating insights from a Sangha brother-sister, and neither do the participants in your Sangha of life.
See how big the mandala is?
As far as syncretism and making your own practice, I say "Good!" Bring Buddhism into your life, make it real, and make it real to your cultural reality. If it's sincere, spiritual friends will respond. At the very least, the Sangha will make itself known. Did Dogen fuck up buddha-jnana (gnosis) when he inherited a Chinese teacher's rhetoric modeled on an Indian tradition and brought it to Japan? Did his gnosis suffer under the acculturation of Japanese seekers?
That's the thing about ultimate truths – they don't change between relativistic frames (and I mean that in the physics sense).
Tashi Delek
Love, yearning, blow-hards, auto-critique – This movie shows awesome promise. And just really really nice to see a contemporary artist on Buddhist Geeks!