Buddhist films and discussion for the Tricycle community
Imagine devoting eight hours every day, 365 days a year, to silent contemplation in every task you do. One Mind offers a window onto life at one of China’s most austere and revered Chan monasteries, Zhenru Chan Monastery, whose cloistered monks continue to uphold a strict code established over 1,200 years ago by the founding patriarchs of Chan.
When modernization swept through the Himalayan region of Ladakh, India, in the 1960s, its traditions began to suffocate: its art, language, and ceremonies, even the ways that people related to each other. But one citizen, Morup Namgyal, refused to let Ladakh’s rich cultural heritage disappear entirely. He soon began a project to preserve one slice of the region’s identity: its folk music.
Set against Nepal’s 10-year civil war, Kalo Pothi (The Black Hen) tells the tale of the unlikely bond between Prakash and Kiran, boys from different castes who set out on a quixotic adventure. During a temporary cease-fire they start raising a hen, hoping to make money selling eggs. But when the hen goes missing, their search for her forces the boys to confront firsthand the country’s violence and their own grief, anger, and fear.
What are the costs of economic progress? Behemoth travels through Inner Mongolia to show the answer in unflinching detail: hillsides blasted for mining; the blistered hands and diseased lungs of the miners forced to do this work to survive. Following the trajectory of Dante’s Divine Comedy, the film reveals the stunning, and ruinous, effects of unbridled greed on a nation’s land and people.
When Nob, an aging Thai villager, loses his job, his son, and his wife in quick succession, he turns to drink to soothe his pain. As he wanders drunkenly through Thailand’s dense jungles without hope or purpose, an encounter with a solitary forest monk sparks a desire in him to rectify his failures and commit to the monastic life. This award-winning drama is a story not of redemption but of renunciation, and it offers a rare look into a Thai forest monk’s ascetic practice.
Where does creativity come from? The documentary Moving from Emptiness explores this question by profiling the life and work of influential Zen calligraphic painter and art teacher Alok Hsu Kwang-han. Armed with rice paper, ink, a brush, and a collection of Zen teachings, Alok helps his students access their own creativity.
The Legacy of Menla tells the tale of three Indian women diagnosed with cancer who, flouting the wishes of their friends, families, and doctors, eschew Western medical advice to instead follow an ancient form of treatment: traditional Tibetan medicine.
Tharlo is a Tibetan shepherd who lives a secluded life in the mountains. But after spending a night at a karaoke bar in town with a young hairdresser named Yangsto, his simple existence is turned upside down. Directed by renowned filmmaker Pema Tseden, Tharlo depicts the struggle of a man—one with little experience with the vices of smoking, drinking, and casual sex—in love with someone very different from himself.
Pad Yatra: A Green Odyssey documents the journey of 700 eco-pilgrims who undertake an arduous 450-mile trek across the Himalayas in the name of environmental preservation. Despite subzero temperatures and dangerous conditions, the hikers, led by H.H. the Gyalwang Drukpa, collect half a ton of plastic litter, plant over 50,000 trees, and educate local villagers.
In Kyauk Myaung, a Burmese village on the banks of the Irrawaddy River, humble street vendor Soe Ko wishes to marry Saing Ko, a quiet mason from a nearby town—but same-sex love is still forbidden by law. Irrawady Mon Amour tells the story of a young gay couple who, with the aid of LGBT activists, Buddhist monks, and village housewives, fight for their right to love and marry in a country struggling to redefine itself in the wake of a brutal totalitarian regime.
For centuries, the inhabitants of Namdok, a village nestled in the Upper Mustang region of Nepal, have lived without electricity, relying on sparse candlelight through cold and windy nights. Despite limited resources, local activist Tashi Bista is determined to bring light to the remote village by installing a makeshift wind turbine.
January is for film-lovers. This month at Tricycle, we’ll be showing five short films from around the Buddhist world. With selections from China, Tibet, Bhutan, and Indonesia, you won’t want to miss a single one.
In The Hunter and the Skeleton, an animated rendition of a classic Tibetan folktale, a Tibetan hunter has to outwit a fearsome demon while out on an excursion in the mountains.
Bhante Dhammariya, young monk living at a monastery far from the urban sprawl of Indonesian city life, finds a cell phone that was accidentally left behind by a practitioner. The incident, seemingly innocuous, leads him to long for his family and question his own monastic vows.
The traditional three-year retreat, known as lo sum choe sum by the Bhutanese, is an intensive meditation practice undertaken by Buddhist monks, nuns, and other devout practitioners. Can Lhamo, a young, wounded girl from Bhutan, face the harsh gaze of the world and find her own form of retreat and redemption?
Alms is a cinematic tour through a remote, 1,200-year-old Chan monastery in the mountains of southern China, where a group of cloistered monks devote themselves to meditation practice. Narrated by the monastery’s head chef, the documentary follows the monks’ daily lives as they gather local fuel and harvest vegetables from the temple grounds.
A selection from Peabody Award-winning documentarian Bari Pearlman’s Nangchen Shorts series, Ritual Objects film brings life and action to little- and well-known Tibetan Buddhist sacraments.
When we stop resisting sadness—trying to sweeten it with phone calls, distractions, or pleasures—and just let ourselves feel it in all its heaviness, darkness, and pain, it disappears by itself, and even transforms into delight.
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