Edward Burger has been residing in Asia for over a dozen years, making documentary films and working with NGOs. His newest project is a an educational short film series on Buddhist life in contemporary China.
Vows is, after Alms, the second film in the Dreaming Buddhas Project series by director Edward Burger (Amongst White Clouds, A Life In Shadows). This film is currently in production, set for release shortly. He has generously offered to share some of his notes from production. Buddhist Film Foundation is the fiscal sponsor for his Dreaming Buddhas Project.
DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT
I believe we are in a new age of educational media. Today, our concerns are global, education is global and students are learning to be global citizens. Films offer a unique bridge between worlds. The Dreaming Buddhas Project is my contribution to students’ ever-growing need to connect with real people living real lives in real places. Here we find face to face moments with otherwise inaccessible individuals and communities in China’s Buddhist world. We can listen to their stories and learn something about our own. I hope that bringing these narratives into the classroom brings a depth of personal connection to students’ understanding of topics in this field of study.
ENGAGED BUDDHISM
Lately I’m doing a lot of research on socially engaged Buddhism and how it brings our practice out into the world. It’s a messy world. And there’s a lot of dust in the air. But as a young Chan monk once told me, quoting his teacher, “we can only see a beam of light by the dust that floats in it.”
I’m reading an amazingly lucid book on engaged Buddhism by Ken Jones, entitled, The New Social Face of Buddhism. It is inspiring me to think through my values as a filmmaker. In development filmmaking for example, like the films I make for NGOs here in Vietnam, I believe a film should speak to issues as universal and existing on both sides of the camera. These are not just the problems of a community somewhere far away, they are our issues as well. Because this world we live in is created by us all. Sometimes in ways so subtle we cannot see, we put into play actions that affect innumerable beings, creatures and landscapes of our world. I draw great inspiration from the writings of Joanna Macy who eloquently draws the complexities of our suffering planet, our suffering economies, our suffering societies… to the truth of “dependent co-arising.”
My films are only successful if they speak to the issue in a way that engages both the viewer and the subjects and sheds light on the universality of suffering. That’s why I say that film can be a bridge between us. That it is a platform for mutual respect and dignity.
ORDINATION
Ordination (the subject of Vows) is one of the most complicated topics in Chinese Buddhism I’ve ever grappled with in film. Vows required a lot research and interviewing. Below are some key points I’ve learned from interviews with monks, masters and research readings on the distinctive ordination traditions in Han Chinese Buddhism.
- After leaving home and entering the monastery, a layperson lives in the monastery as a Jingren or Pure Person. He is scrutinized and tested. He does all the chores no one else wants. He himself will learn whether or not he really has it in him to dedicate himself to a life of practice.
- In China, a tonsured novice monk will often have a shaved head and wear monastic robes, but be “upholding” no more than five lay precepts. They call the novices sramanera. But in actuality they are informally following the Sramanera precepts, without having actually received them via formal rituals. Some masters who take the ordination/precept tradition very seriously will transmit ten sramanera precepts to a newly tonsured novice. But apparently this is not very common now.
- An ordination is China is not a single ceremony on a single day. What they call a Triple-Platform Precept Transmission Dharma Assembly can last up to six months, though often it is condensed to thirty days. Within this thirty days, novices receive Sramanera novice precepts, bhiksu monk precepts and the bodhisattva vows of the fan wang jing—unlike the Theravada tradition where monks receive precepts in succession throughout the early years of their monastic career.
- Within the thirty-day assembly the actual transmission of precepts takes very little time. On certain individual days throughout that period, precepts are transmitted to the ordinands. In the periods between the precept transmission days, elder monks and masters teach the novitiates everything they need to know to be a proper, well-behaved monk.
- Monks come to an ordination from all over China and from every school of Buddhism. Region and school make no difference. It’s mostly about timing. When a monk is ready to take his full precepts, his master will find somewhere soon hosting the ceremony.
- I was told that the 4th Patriarch Daoxin, though he left home at twelve and attained enlightenment while a teenager, was not ordained until he was twenty-seven because he had to wait for an opening in the imperial quota. Today there is still a kind of quota/permissions system handled by the Buddhist Association.
- Monks from all schools of Buddhism in China attend the same ordinations. Only the Vinaya School (Lü-zong) has its own distinctive ordination which is based on early texts. They perform this ritual as a matter of practice. In addition to this ceremony, they too will attend a Triple-Platform Ordination to receive precepts.
- Lay people should not know or so much as hear a recitation of the Pratimoksa precepts. Though as one monk pointed out, it’s easy enough to find books or research online, a monk is prohibited from reading the text to, or discussing precepts with, a layperson. I filmed a bi-monthly recitation of the Pratimoksa once and was ushered out for the part when they recited the actual precepts. In fact laypeople were not to stand anywhere near the hall lest they should overhear.
- Many monks have suggested to me that the long ordination with so much time to learn etiquette and details of upholding precepts is especially important during a time when Buddhism is in revitalization, as it is now. In this way, monks from all over China are sure to learn everything they need to know from a single, standardized source. This encourages unity across the sangha and cuts down on the possibility of unlearned or careless altering and interpretation of the precepts.
- In my interviews and research, the most common struggle for men leaving home to join the order is the expectations of the family. Many monks say their family had great difficulty accepting their choice to not marry and raise a family and refer often to the Confucian ideals that run deep in Chinese society.
