Article Added On: February 11, 2005 - over 6 years ago
Title: The lama behind the camera
Author: ALEXANDRA GILL
Publication Date: January 01, 2005 - over 7 years ago
Faith Groups: Buddhist
Themes: Religion and society

Abstract: Spiritual leader Khyentse Norbu, one of the most important incarnate lamas in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, talks to Alexandra Gill of the Globe and Mail about desire, art and Natural Born Killers.

Friday, February 11, 2005

VANCOUVER -- Khyentse Norbu, also known as His Eminence Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse Rinpoche, is one of the most important incarnate lamas in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. He is addressed as Rinpoche, Precious One, but his friends call him Khyentse.

At age 7, Norbu was recognized as the third incarnation of the 19th-century nonsectarian saint and scholar Khyentse Wangpo. Now 44, he spends most of his time teaching Buddhist philosophy to Westerners, having founded numerous monasteries, colleges and institutes around the world. As a part-time vocation, he also writes and directs films. He is, in fact, the world's first and only Buddhist lama to have done so.

The Cup, Norbu's first film, premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 1999 and went on to receive wide international acclaim and was distributed in 44 countries. A light-hearted look at monastic life, it told the story of a soccer-obsessed young monk, determined to rent a satellite dish and have it installed in time to watch the World Cup final.

Travellers & Magicians, his second film, is being released in Canada this week. More philosophical and sombre than The Cup, it tells the tale of Dondup, a rebellious, young government official who dreams of escaping the rural Bhutanese village where he has been recently posted. As soon as the opportunity to obtain a U.S. visa arrives, Dondup packs up his boom box and hits the road. When he misses his bus, he is forced to hitchhike with an eclectic crew of travellers that includes an old man, his beautiful daughter and a sage young monk, who entertains the group during their days-long journey with a fantastical fable about a similarly restless young man hoping to escape his mundane life.

Norbu says the lesson Dondup learns, that the grass is not always greener on the other side, is one he has struggled with personally.

"Even now, all the time," says the soft-spoken Norbu, who was in Vancouver last week to promote the film. "We human beings are never satisfied with what we have."

Norbu first fell in love with film as a young man studying comparative religion at London's School of Oriental and African Studies. In the early nineties, while teaching in London, he met producer Jeremy Thomas. Inspired by their conversations, he enrolled in a four-week course at the New York Film Academy. Thomas later introduced Norbu to Italian director Bernardo Bertolucci, who in turn hired Norbu as a consultant for his 1993 film Little Buddha.

Although his jet-setting lifestyle offers constant temptation, Norbu says he has never worried that his filmmaking would contradict or conflict with his spiritual life.

"Film is a language, a tool. It's like a typewriter. It can be used for good purposes. Buddhism truth has 5,000 years of history. It has used a lot of instruments -- paintings and things like that. Films can be the modern-day statues."

The true star of Travellers & Magicians is Bhutan, a tiny Buddhist kingdom of 700,000 people, nestled high in the Himalayas between China and India. One of the kingdom's more unique philosophies of life is embodied in a royal decree that declares Gross National Happiness more important than Gross National Product. Measuring happiness, says Norbu, is not so easy to do.

"From a philosophical point of view, it's even more difficult, because one person's happiness is someone else's pain. I think the Buddhist concept of not harming others, directly or indirectly, is happiness. And this is not only obvious in things like waging war, but even simple things like using too many plastic bags, which is severely banned in Bhutan."

Travellers & Magicians was the first film entirely shot in Bhutan. The experience was a happy one for the most part, Norbu says. But with no filmmaking infrastructure or professional actors to draw upon, he obviously faced many challenges, even though he brought in professionals from Germany, Australia, India and Canada.

The cast included the chief regulator of Bhutan's banking and financial institutions, a colonel in the King's Bodyguard, a monk trained in mathematics, schoolchildren and farmers. Many of the film's production decisions were determined by mo, an ancient method of divination performed by skilled lamas.

"I call it a time-saving device," the director explains. "For example, my camera fell in the middle of the shooting. It's not like Vancouver where you can just go downtown and see if it's still working. The nearest place to test it happened to be Australia. We're talking about three weeks back and forth. What do we do? Should we just wait for three weeks or carry on? It sounded like the camera was still working. We went ahead, and somehow it was true. It's playing with intuition."

Yes, his intuition has sometimes been wrong. "I think we were a little bit ambitious. We thought everybody would watch this type of film. It was difficult to get distributors. The Cupwas much easier. It was a novelty. It was a universal story. It had entertainment value."

Despite the risk, he hopes to make even more spiritually complex films in the future.

"I want to make a film about the life of Buddha. If I do it, I will do it properly. And properly means not Brad Pitt as the Buddha. That means financial failure guaranteed."

Although Norbu is no fan of Hollywood's golden boy, there are certain actors he would enjoy working with. "It would be interesting to work with Anthony Hopkins or Dustin Hoffman," he says, nodding. "I would be very intimidated."

Calm, cool and collected, with his clipped replies and upper-crust British accent, Norbu does not seem like someone easily intimidated. Indeed, he seems to relish the shock value of his sometimes-surprising opinions.

His favourite film, for instance, is Natural Born Killers. "A masterpiece," Norbu says. "It's very powerful, the way it was edited, the way it was shot, the way it was written. And also the content -- the absence of soberness in human life. Everyone has the potential. I could become just like him."

Surprisingly, Norbu's next film will deal with sexual repression. "I'm thinking of setting it in Alabama," he says. "I think down there people really cherish morality, don't they? Sometimes cherishing morality means something else."

Norbu gently contradicts the traditional image of a Buddhist holy man. He is not a monk in the strict sense and therefore enjoys greater liberties: He drinks occasionally, enjoys a party and has taken no vow of celibacy. Hardly the most ascetic of lifestyles. He's also quick to draw a distinction between Buddhism and Buddhists: the former is a philosophy, a comprehensive system of beliefs, he says, the latter are its humble and all-too-human adherents.

He even admits to having film groupies, but says they don't faze him.

"My film groupies are nothing. I'm more afraid of my spiritual groupies. If you enjoy the disguise and tension and authority of spiritual materialism, that could be much more dangerous because most of the time you don't know what you are doing wrong."

And the designer watch on his wrist: Is that just plain old materialism?

Norbu looks down at the bright orange-and-pink Paul Frank watch with a cartoon monkey on its face.

"This?" he jokes stone-faced. "I think this is a fake."

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