And so I went to the movie with the girlfriend last night and we caught the show Eat, Pray, Love. Here’s a quick personal review of the film:
Enter this 32-year-old Elizabeth Gilbert played by Julia Roberts who was educated and had a home, a husband, and a successful career as a writer. But she gets all emotional and unsatisfied about life and threw all that away for a sabbatical year to Italy, India and Bali.
The girlfriend commented after the show that she could easily had gone for the soul-searching trip without destroying her previous life. I totally agree. It is not her circumstances that she had to change. In fact, her circumstance was GOOD by many standards. It was her perspective on life that needs to be altered. The protagonist came across as narcissistic and egocentric. Selfish in her dealings and unlikeable. But of course she made those mistakes due to ignorance about what a good life is and she redeemed herself through her philosophical musings and growth after that.
In Rome, she pondered about the impermanence of life at the tomb of Augustus Caesar. Life, in both the macro and micro sense, is always evolving and adapting. A good start. This is also the starting point of Shakyamuni when he first expounded Buddhism. The recognition of the impermanence allows us to set the priorities in our life straight. Wealth and status are useful in providing a quality standard in living, but they are not the deciding factor in our pursuit of happiness. We can pursuit them but never should they become the centre of our devotion.
In India, she finally learn to still her mind and concluded that “God exist within you as you”. Interesting take. Buddhism has often been accused as not being a religion because of Buddhists does not believe in an exterior Creator-God. In fact, we can say that Buddhism is fundamentally ascetic. Misinformed people will often think that Buddha is the Buddhists’ equivalent of God. That is incorrect. Buddha is simply a term for an enlightened human being. The key message of Buddhism is that the ability to become a Buddha exists within us. When we manifest courage, wisdom and compassion, Buddhahood is manifested as us as we are. What she did was really to redefine her previous understand of Abrahamic God as Buddha.
In Bali, she learnt to “let go” of her control and live life as it is. This, from the Buddhist perspective is progression to the concept of “Buddhahood is Daily Life” as taught by the Soka Gakkai. Buddhism is not a passive way of life mediating in some calm corner of existence. Buddhism is to take active steps to better our society based on our enhanced sensitivity to life.
Overall, her journey mildly mirrors Shakyamuni’s own from hedonism (eat), to ascetic (pray), to the Middle Way (love).
So I concluded that the philosophical musings are interesting, the plot is somewhere simplistic and lame, but the acting of Julia Roberts is excellence in portraying the mixed emotions. Richard Jenkins was outstanding and Hadi Subiyanto is adorable.
