Great Journeys in Little Spaces: Buddhist Matters in Khyentse Norbu’s Travellers and Magicians

by Georgios T.HALKIAS

Georgios T. HALKIAS is assistant professor and undergraduate programme coordinator at the Centre of Buddhist Studies at the University of Hong Kong. He earned his DPhil in Oriental Studies at the University of Oxford and has held several research posts at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, Warburg Institute, School of Advanced Study, University of London, and at Ruhr-Universität Bochum. He has published extensively on Indo-Tibetan Pure Land Buddhism and other topics. He is the author of Luminous Bliss: A Religious History of Pure Land Literature in Tibet. With an Annotated Translation and Critical Analysis of the Orgyen-ling Golden Short Sukhāvatīvyūha-sūtra (2013), and co-editorin-chief of the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Buddhism. Email: halkias@hku.hk

International Journal of Buddhist Thought & Culture Vol. 28. No.2 (December 2018): 205–223. Ⓒ 2018 Academy of Buddhist Studies, Dongguk University, Korea https://doi.org/10.16893/IJBTC.2018.12.28.2.205 The day of submission: 2018.8.27 Completion of review: 2018.11.20 Final decision for acceptance: 2018.12.17 206 International Journal of Buddhist Thought & Culture 28(2) · 2018

Abstract

Travellers and Magicians (2003) is a road movie incorporating elements of neorealism. It was directed by Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse Norbu (1961-present) and filmed in its entirety in Bhutan and with an all-Bhutanese cast that, soon after its release, attracted world-wide attention. In its visually unassuming style, the film succeeds in tracing the delusional trajectories of human desire from a Buddhist perspective. The intimate space created by the film’s focus on a few characters, its slow narrative pace, minimalistic dialogue, and arresting yet unembellished mise-en-scène, succeeds in luring viewers into a comfortable dream-like space that incites contemplative reflection on Buddhist elements in the storyline and the ethical dangers that lie in pursuit of dreamlands. In this study, I will selectively investigate aspects that contribute to a nuanced reading of the road movie Travellers and Magicians, both as a “Buddhist film” and as a reflective experience in Buddhist practice. The present contribution will link some of the visual imagery and narrative tropes with themes and interpretations drawn from Tibetan history and culture, Buddhist doctrines, film studies, and Western literature.

Key words: Dzongsar Khyentse, Road Movie, Vajrayāna Buddhism, Bhutan

And He Forgot All about America Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse Norbu (1961-present), a prominent representative of Tibetan Buddhism and acclaimed film maker, delighted his audience in 2003 with the release of his second film Travellers and Magicians. In the official language of Bhutan and his native tongue Dzongkha (rdzong kha) the title of the film reads, “once (upon a time) hallucinating on a sip of wine” (chang hub thengs gcig gi ’khrul snang). Both the English and Bhutanese titles1 highlight distinctive elements in the parallel lives of two Bhutanese men, Dondup and Tashi, who are dissatisfied with their lives and in delusional pursuit of ephemeral desires. The English title Travellers and Magicians highlights the figurative themes of movement, transience,

and illusion, while the title in Dzongkha offers a fitting parallelism between a mind distorted by the influence of intoxicants and one that is bewildered by self-centred reveries. The film’s main storyline follows Dondup, a Bhutanese civil servant impersonated by Tshewang Dondup (Tshe dbang don grub). He is stationed in a small village waiting anxiously to receive an invitation letter from his friend in America. His pronounced agitation as he watches a local archery contest soon turns into excitement with the arrival of the post with a letter. Soon after, he rushes to meet his supervisor to request a week off from work under the pretext that he wants to attend a major religious festival, the Tsetsu (tshe bcu), dedicated to the famous tantric yogi Padmasambhava.2 His boss delays granting him leave and Dondup ends up missing the biweekly bus to Thimphu, Bhutan’s capital city. The tension generated by Dondup’s impatience to reach Thimphu and his uneventful waiting by a deserted road side to hitch a ride is intensified with the arrival of an old farmer carrying a

basket of apples. Annoyed by his arrival, the smoking Dondup turns up the volume of the rock music playing on his portable player and arrogantly turns his back on the old man. In order to improve his chances for a ride he moves up the road soon to be joined by a Buddhist monk played by Sonam Kunga (Bsod nams kun dga’). The monk wishes to strike a conversation, “There is no point staring at the empty road. You know, Buddha said hope causes pain.” Dondup exasperated by his patronizing comments returns the favour with some snide remarks. The monk realizes that he wants to be left alone and takes leave to

join the apple seller. Later when night falls Dondup, prompted by fear and hunger, decides to share 208 International Journal of Buddhist Thought & Culture 28(2) · 2018 in their company and in their measly provisions for a meal. That evening, when asked by the monk where he is going, Dondup responds, “I am going very, very far away to the land of my dreams.” “To a dreamland?” the monk inquires. And advises, “You should be careful with dreamlands because when you wake up, it may not be very pleasant.” Travellers and Magicians made its debut as a Buddhist road movie. It features elements from Third World neorealist cinema, such

as absence of an ornamental mise-en-scène in favour of Bhutan’s rural setting with preference to natural light, and a free-moving documentary style of cinematography (Konick 2010). By employing nonprofessional actors who portray characters similar to themselves in everyday settings and with the same names, Khyentse Norbu blurs the line between film and reality. It suggests that we may all be engrossed in our own private movies, simultaneously directors, actors and audience in our storylines. Incorporating neorealist elements that seamlessly blend into each other in a road setting, the film’s narrative structure maybe discussed in relation to three major themes: (a) the “Buddhist-philosophical” challenging our perception of the boundaries

between reality, dreaming, and fiction; (b) the “moral-didactic” elucidating on the dangers of our mental fabrications and attachment to desires gone unchecked; and (c) the “social-commentary” critiquing simultaneously the superficiality of modernity and the stifling repetition of traditional Bhutanese values. As we will see, at the conclusion of the film these three readings converge in a cathartic moment experienced by Dondup the protagonist who comes to selfreflect on the imaginative allure of America and gain a renewed appreciation of his own culture. For the first time in the movie he is able to laugh

at himself as he consciously sees through his self-absorbed behaviour and the constructed nature of his desire. Says the monk, “A long time ago, in a very beautiful village there lived a man. Although he was a government officer, he wanted to go to America to pick apples. But on his way, he met this beautiful....” Dondup laughs and responds, “And he forgot all about America.” A Story Waiting to Pierce You Amid male cries of excitement and the sound of the howling wind, Travellers and Magicians opens with a scene of an older man squinting to discern

something in the distance. Soon after, and before the opening credits, appears a bowman shooting an arrow directly at the camera and by extension towards the gazing audience. The bowman is none other than the director Khyentse Norbu, and the arrow serves as a metaphor for his message that pierces through the viewer’s illusions and targets at the heart of the cinematic story. Archery is the national sport of Bhutan with a long history of practice in Himalayan, Tibetan, and Central Asian cultures. However, arrows are by no means restricted to sports entertainment and warfare. In Mongolian, Tibetan, and Siberian shamanism, the arrow is used for clearing the path of the shaman and pointing the way.3 For example, Tönpa Shenrab, the founder of the tradition of the

School of Bön is said to have made one trip to Tibet during his lifetime. He shot an arrow to make a path through the mountains known as the “pathway of the arrow of light” (Tib. ’od zer mda’ lam) (Dakpa 2005, 9). The famous parable of the poisoned arrow (MN63) in Early Buddhism has the monk Māluṅkyaputta troubled by the Buddha’s silence on a set of fourteen questions. The Buddha admonishes him, “if a man was wounded by a poisoned arrow, he would not say that he wouldn’t want the shaft removed before he knew the identity of the shooter, the type of bow used, and so forth. Instead he would opt to remove it first.” The symbolism of the arrow features also in a number of Vajrayāna Buddhist rituals such as, the divination arrow (Tib. mda’ mo), the arrow for accomplishing long-life (Tib. tshe sgrub mda’ dar), and the auspicious silk arrow (Tib. g.yang sgrub mda’ dar), among others. In the Indian legend of the

mahāsiddha Saraha, whose name means ‘he who shot the arrow,’ we read how meeting a woman one day changed the entire course of his life. She was making a shaft when he asked her, “Are you making an arrow?” To which the master-arrow smith replied, “Son of noble family, the realizations of all Buddhas are understood through skilful methods and indications, not through words and writing” (Khenchen Thrangu Rinpoche 2006, 12). Apparently, she was not an ordinary person but a ḍākinī, an enlightened woman who eventually taught him through the metaphor of the arrow the highest Buddhist insights on non-duality that lead one to awakening by piercing into the heart of dualistic thinking (Schaeffer 2005, 21). We may read the opening image of the shooting arrow as a double metaphor. It is both a symbol of a penetrative awareness that strikes at its target—the delusions of the protagonist and by extension the viewer—and it is the poisoned arrow of dualistic thinking that needs to be removed before

one can clearly see beyond dichotomized descriptions of reality. The figurative interpretation of the arrow in Buddhism and shamanism anticipate both the movement of our protagonist-traveller searching to find his way through the world, and the target eventually struck by it, a profound truth to be discovered at the end of the cinematic narrative.4 Not unlike the shamans of old, Dondup will follow the arrow in an outward-cum-inward journey in search of the truth. But in order to do so he must first leave the comfort of his home behind. He must rebel against the domesticity and the trappings of a lucrative career as a civil servant and all the trimmings that come with a life of comfort and conformism personified in the character of Dondup’s boss Dasho, the village headman referred to derogatorily as the “old mosquito” that feeds on the blood-line of tradition. At the same time, Dondup’s journey presents a social critique on the changing values of traditional Bhutanese society under the universal sway of a consumer-based modernity exemplified by

the display of adultescent items in Dondup’s room: T-shirts with the logos “I Love NY” and “Hard-Rock Café,” an Uncle Sam “I want You” poster, bikini-clad girls in posters, and a Sony stereo playing rock music. Dondup’s character exemplifies the contrast between tradition and modernity. He is dressed in a gho (bgo), a Bhutanese national dress for men, wearing Nike sneakers and longish hair and chain smoking which, in a Bhutanese cultural context is a taboo that was condemned since the 17th century as something “poisonously foreign” and also “dangerously profane,” only to be banned altogether from public places and

commerce making Bhutan, at least by law, the first non-smoking nation in the world (Konik 2010, 132). The ability to speak of the profound in the guise of the ordinary and to offer contrasting perspectives beyond naïve “black and white” moral divisions, is a characteristic of Khyentse Norbu films. Not unlike the main protagonist in the Cup (1999), the novice monk Orgyen obsessed with football, or the nondescript victim-villain Tsering Dorje in Khyentse Norbu’s latest film Hema Hema: Sing me a Song While I Wait (2016), Dondup’s character is just as conflicting and ordinary, the opposite of what we commonly associate with a heroic personality. But this is precisely the point. The “real hero” from a Buddhist point of view, is not someone who has to fall dead in a war defending national myths that secure imaginary divisions between “us” and “them,” but every person who has to confront and overcome the afflicting

and delusional contents of his mind. Dondup’s reaction against the restrains of his culture is not triggered by lofty ideals like the ones pursued by Robert Conway in Lost Horizon (1937). Rather his journey is triggered by a narcissistic fantasy, a western Shangri-La in the guise of the Unites States of America. Occidentalism is played against Orientalism as two sides of the same perilous construction. Unlike Bhutan, the “West” (exemplified by America) is portrayed as a land of plenty, full of meaningless distractions and unseen opportunities for material progress and spiritual impoverishment. Within a human-alltoo-human stage and a cast of commonplace characters that populate the Bhutanese landscape (an apple seller, a drunk man, a widowed rice paper maker and his daughter), Khyentse Norbu succeeds to deliver both a pungent social critique of modernity and a subtle Buddhist message about the painful

truth of our human condition: we are fundamentally uncomfortable with the constructed ideas we have formed about ourselves and the world.5 Travellers and Magicians in Saṃsāra Against the sound of the crackling fire and a chorus of night insects, the monk begins the telling of a tale about dreamlands in the brushing of the musical dramyin. His audience at first is no other than Dondup and the toothless apple seller. The stage is not without its sense of irony. For later in the film when Dondup is asked by Sonam’s father as to what he plans to do once he reaches the USA, Dondup responds that he could do “anything,” even plucking apples. And so, the monk begins his narrative, “I will tell you a story of dreamland if you want to hear. It’s a good

bed time story anyway…Not so long ago, there was a…Somewhere in…a remote part of Bhutan, living in a beautiful village… there was a farmer who had two sons.” With this phrase the camera shifts into the narrative world of the brothers Tashi and Karma. Tashi played by Lakpa Dorje (Lhag pa rdo rje) is a bored man in his early 30s and like Dondup he is disenchanted with his life and dreams of meeting beautiful women in the next village. He is studying magic, a passing cultural reference perhaps to the celebrated Tibetan yogi Milarepa who also learned magic before training in Buddhism. Unlike Karma, his younger brother and the smartest of the two, Tashi could care less about schooling. One day, Karma, out of spite for having to deliver lunch to his disinterested

and ungrateful brother, prepares a potent intoxicant in the wine. Unbeknown to him he consumes the hallucinogenic concoction and muses, “I wish I could travel far away, somewhere I’ve never been before. This magic staff is incredibly boring. Anyway, it never works; it’s just superstition.” To which Karma responds, “How do you know it doesn’t work?” The sudden gathering of coloured storm clouds in fast motion betray that Tashi is soon to embark on an unusual journey. His brother warns him to be careful as he tries to ride the family donkey transformed into a beautiful white horse, but Tashi is unable to reign

in the horse that’s galloping into the heart of an impending storm. The symbolism is obvious. The untamed horse represents Tashi’s own mind out of control and his clouded sense of judgment. The claustrophobic environment of the looming tempest is a premonition of what is yet to come. According to tantra and traditional Tibetan medicine, the mind mounts a subtle wind or energy also known as lungta (Tib. rlung rta), or “windhorse.” Earlier in the film, in an internal allusion, we heard the monk warning Dondup, “smoking destroys your health and your air like a blind horse… and then slowly makes your mind like a handicapped rider.” The parallelism between intoxication and a mind distorted by desire is internally intimated by another scene in the film where Dondup with his two travelling companions share a ride on the back of a truck. When the nameless drunk asks them where they are going, the monk is quick to respond that he and the apple seller are going to Thimphu, whereas Dondup is heading to a dreamland. “A dreamland? I want to go too,” mumbles the drunkard.

The monk laughs, “Looks like you are already there.” Let’s return to our story. Tashi falls of his horse sustaining an injury in his leg and finds shelter in an isolated cottage in the forest, the home of beautiful young Deki played by Bde skyid dbyangs ’dzoms, and her aged husband Agay. Over time, Tashi grows fond of her under the vigilant and jealous eyes of Agay. Failing to find his way out of the forest and to the nearest village leaves Dondup with no other choice but to return to their home. Many days pass waiting to accompany Agay who knows the road, and Agay complains that Deki is taking longer than usual to finish weaving a kira (Bhutanese dress for women) that he wants to take for sale in the village. The reference to weaving reads as an iconic twist to Odysseus’ wife weaving a burial shroud for her father-in-law Laertes. Unlike Deki, Penelope is a symbol of connubial fidelity. In order to delay the advances of her suitors who

are vying for her husband’s empty throne, Penelope weaves during the day and unweaves at night the shroud with the promise that she will choose a suitor to wed soon after she fulfils her duty to Odysseus family. On the other hand, Deki pregnant with Tashi’s child purposefully delays the weaving in order to plot with her suitor the murder of her husband. Tashi uses his training in magic and prepares a potion to kill Agay who drinks it and finds himself in agonizing pain. Unable to bear the weight of his immoral doing, Tashi runs into the forest pursued by his guilty conscience and Deki which we hear calling him in the distance. Turning back to look for Deki, he finds her drowned in the river. In grave emotional anguish and distress, Tashi sheds tears and soon awakes from his dream only to find himself sitting next to his brother Karma. For the duration of the telling of this story, the camera switches back and

forth between Dondup’s journey to Thimphu and Tashi’s hallucination. In this mirroring sequence of a “dream within a dream,” a mise en abyme, Tashi’s narrative contains both a dream-world and a real world. Yet both of these worlds are just as fictional from Dondup’s perspective. Similarly, Dondup’s plight is but a story from our viewpoint as spectators, just as our own life is but a story from another’s perspective. The infinite nesting of worlds intimates that our perceived reality may just be another layer of trickery. Cho (2009, 173) aptly notes: Dondup as the hearer of the dream tale, is equivalent to the reader, who is encased by the film into yet another narrative frame. The film, in terms, speaks to the throngs of youth in places like

Bhutan who disparage their own culture and yearn for the imagined pleasures of the West. The dream tale is fundamentally didactic in unmasking the objects of human longing—they are illusory—but it is also aesthetic in encouraging appreciation of what is already in front of us. Since the times of Plato’s Republic (VII, 514a-517a), our perception of reality has been compared to an illusory spectacle of alternating light and shadow experienced by people chained to the wall in a cave, and more recently to a movie by Khyentse Norbu.6 Travellers and Magicians incites us to reflect on our mind’s projections being like the conjuring display of a magician who deceives us in its semblance of the real. The Seventh Dalai Lama (1708–1757) describes the situation in verse:

An image reflected in a mirror; a rainbow in the sky and a painting on a canvas Make their impression upon the mind, But, in true nature [these] are other than what they seem, Look deeply at this world, and see An illusion, a magician’s creation. (Mullin 2007, 15) The recognition of saṃsāra as a form of deception, like a magician’s creation, and nirvāṇa as the exhaustion of delusion is a common subject in Buddhist writings. The simile of reality as a dream has a long history in Buddhism. A common quote comes from the end of the Diamond Sūtra (Vajracchedikā Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra) in which the Buddha speaking to Subhūti explains that one should meditate on all conditioned experiences as if they are “like dreams, illusions, bubbles, shadows, like dew drops and lightning flash.” The dreamlike contents of experience do not soften the punitive message in Tashi’s story whose edifying moral is very much in line with

the Buddha’s observations on taṇhā, or “thirst, desire, craving,” the cause of our experiencing dukkha (discontent, discomfort, suffering, or dissatisfaction). These observations are laid out in Śākyamuni’s teachings on the Four Noble Truths that describe the empirical universality of dukkha based on our grasping after the conditioned and transitory nature of phenomena (First Noble Truth). The fact that dukkha is neither destined nor divinely ordained, but caused or conditioned (Second Noble Truth), leads us to the Third Noble Truth, the possibility for the cessation of dukkha that comes about with the right understanding and retroflection. By following the Eightfold Path7 one arrives at the liberation from suffering and discontent, the Fourth Noble Truth.

What We Hoped for Yesterday, We Dread Today The time-bound outward journey on the road is inseparable from a timeless inward journey. As in Homer’s Odyssey, the classical precursor of western travel narratives, Dondup’s physical journey across Bhutan and Tashi’s imaginary travels to the dreamland of his sexual desire, are two mirroring cinematic events oscillating between motion and stillness, temporality and timelessness. Dondup’s inward path towards self-discovery is triggered by his encounter with a Buddhist monk and a young Bhutanese girl by the name Sonam played by

Sonam Lamo (Bsod nams lha mo). His sudden change of attitude after meeting young Sonam on the road validates the monk’s insights on the Buddhist doctrine of anicca, or impermanence—“The minds of human beings are so convoluted. What we hoped for yesterday, we dread today.” The stark contrast between Dondup who could care less, abandoning his aged parents, and Sonam who sacrificed her University education to take care of her aging father serve as a trigger to halt the forward motion of Dondup’s narcissistic journey and ignite an inner recognition of his unreflective reaction against traditional values and his embrace of the utopia of the “American dream.” Dondup gets a renewed appreciation of his own culture that he so eagerly wants to throw away like the dry yak cheese offered to him by the woman in the village. His change of mind is both welcomed and expected, since according to Buddhism desires, thoughts, and

feelings are fleeting states of mind that arise in dependence on certain causes and conditions subject to arising and decline. Similar to ideas explored in other road movies, the monk serves as Dondup’s road “buddy” and an “inner voice of introspection.” It is perhaps no accident that the monk, a central character in the film, remains nameless. He functions as a sui generis bard, a universal storyteller. And from another perspective his is a surrogate figure for the Vajrayāna “guru” or “lama” who skilfully guides the main protagonist Dondup to awaken to the constructed nature of his desires through the telling of a daunting parable of sexual lust, deception, and murder. Corrigan (1991, 146) argued that not unlike the experience of watching a movie, “time on the road becomes figurative space.” The buddy system, “which informs most road movies,” functions as “a reflection of the voyeuristic mechanisms of a

historically patriarchal medium through which all the world might be seen as ‘male’ while being founded on heterosexual desire.” It is perhaps no coincidence that Dondup, before leaving his village, encounters a ceremonial tug contest between men and women as to who will succeed to pull a wooden phallus towards them. Eventually the men on the rooftop of the house succeed to pull it with strings to their side symbolizing the regain of their sexual prowess at the imminent seduction of women.8 In Travellers and Magicians, heterosexual desire serves as the impulse that propels our male protagonists towards peril or redemption. Old Agay’s compulsive desire to possess youthful Deki leads him to an agonizing death. Deki’s desire for Tashi to an untimely and meaningless death. Tashi’s lust after Deki turns him into a murderer. On the other side of desire, Dondup’s romantic encounter with

Sonam leads him to progress from selfishness to empathy, and from rejection to acceptance. Cohan and Hark (1997, 8) note that for practical reasons of story-telling in Hollywood films and in road movies in particular, the “couple is a dominant configuration.” Although Khyentse Norbu utilises several themes common to male road movies, his work does not seem to be a typical movie of the genre, or at least it doesn’t fulfil all the criteria postulated by Corrigan (1991, 145).9 It is tempting to relate, metaphorically speaking, Dondup’s “one-way ticket to nowhere” with the 1969 original poster for Easy Rider that read, “A man went looking for America and couldn’t find it anywhere.” Cohan and Hark aptly remarked that “this much-remembered sentiment” of the 1969 ad campaign, “condensed what is typically taken for granted as the ideological project of a road movie, regardless of what travel narrative it specifically

recounts” (1997, 1). Metaphors of motion are not restricted to road movies but also abound in Buddhism. Awakening is generally described as a gnostic journey from ignorance (Skt. avidyā) to wisdom (Skt. prajñā), a passage to nirvāṇa, the other shore. The Buddhist practitioner ought to follow a “spiritual path” (Skt. marga) and rely on a certain “vehicle or yāna” (i.e., Mahāyāna, Vajrayāna). She ought to train in the “six perfections” (Skt. pāramitās), virtues which have “gone beyond,” that is to say “are perfected.” To these common metaphors of motion10 we should add the notion of transmigrating from one

life to the next. A drowa (’gro ba) is the Tibetan word for someone who wanders aimlessly in saṃsāra life after life, and translates into English as “traveller,” “goer,” or “transmigrator.” Saṃsāra, a cyclic repetition of the process of becoming, is portrayed as a “wheel of life” (Skt. bhavacakra) that keeps turning because of our afflictions or kleśas, namely “ignorance,” “craving,” and “anger.” For Buddhism, these afflictions generate the dynamic potency of volition, or karma, that propels us through innumerable lives, deaths, rebirths, and re-deaths. For Khyentse Norbu (2016, 180), unless we “understand the truth, we are constantly deceived by believing that everything illusory is objectively real. This belief is what we call delusion. Having delusion creates emotion, and emotion breeds endless karma and its consequences. The cycle is what we call samsara.” Until the end of saṃsāra there is no end to the path, for as long as we are not liberated from grasping after our self-serving desires, we will continue meandering, like Dondup, in the interminable pathways of unfulfilled desire.

The Journey is the Goal In his dual role as a filmmaker and adept of esoteric Buddhism, Khyentse Norbu succeeded to bring to screen a road movie rich in Buddhist allusions and with stylistic elements selectively drawn from different genres. Through his employment of parallel plots, contrasting characters, and the road as a setting, an important component of neorealism for what Konik (2010, 133) called “any-space whatsoever,” he conveyed a pragmatic portrayal of desire while delving into the magical contents of human experience. In tantric fashion, we may discern three stories in our film (outer, inner, and secret) that serve as three metaphors for a journey triggered by desire and leading towards a greater understanding of ourselves and the world. The outer story is framed by Dondup’s desire for a “better place” and the challenges of a transition from a culturally Tibetan-Himalayan society to a consumption-

driven modernity. The inner story centred on Tashi, Deki and Agay, explored the abysmal depths of sexual desire, carnal passion, and obsession over possessing others. Outer and inner stories seamlessly blended in a didactic narrative conveying important Buddhist lessons such as the empirical veracity and soteriological necessity of dukkha and the possibility of liberation from the fetters of delusion. The recognition of impermanence may be the cause of discontent triggered by resistance to change, but as shown in the film it also presents a vital opportunity for the realization of a meaningful human existence. It is the very thing that facilitates our liberation from the fetters of the past and our wishful projections of the future, for if delusion was permanent there would be no escape from it and no chance of liberation. Impermanence, this universal flux of all things becoming, leads to a deeper appreciation of the preciousness of beauty in every passing moment. “You know…” says the storyteller monk to Dondup at the end of the film, “a peach blossom is beautiful. But you see, a blossom is only beautiful because it is temporary.” Arguably, there is also a secret story in Travellers and

Magicians, where secret is understood as an interpretation that is not immediately apparent to dualistic reasoning. This other way of knowing poses a challenge to the ways we relegate things to the realms of reality and illusion. Upon closer investigation, both reality and fiction are dependent arising verisimilitudes, descriptive labels without an essential existence. In an intentional cinematic

twist Khyentse Norbu smears the edges between Dondup’s so-called “reality” and Tashi’s so-called “dream-state” whereby the presumption of a consistent and orderly world is irreparably disrupted. Half way through the film we see Deki in a context where she doesn’t belong, dressed in Western attire and listening to rock music. She drives a car and ignores Dondup waving to catch a ride by the road side. Khyentse Norbu elsewhere explains, “illusion is what we see as something that is fake, something not permanent, something not solid, something that is not true. And reality is the opposite. But from the Buddhist point of view, everything is fake, everything is illusion, everything is dependent” (Green 2014, xiv). The equivocation between reality and

illusion is stretched to the exterior limits of a hidden interiority, a surreptitious truth that transcends them both. In Buddhism, conventional distinctions between “waking life and dreams” and between “reality and illusion” are questioned since from the ultimate perspective everything is an illusion, a dream-like state like cinema. The reality we know is a projection of another more complex reality that only the Enlightened can comprehend. Our own, subjective perspective is limited, only able to ‘read’ the signs at different levels: nature, parable, dream, ritual and tantric practice. Hence, the

distinction between ‘reality’ and ‘dream’ itself is illusory and artificial: together with the illusory quality of external phenomena, one must accept the wisdom of the dream. (Chaudhuri and Clayton 2013,162) Dondup’s transformation takes place on the road, a journey that takes him outside his habitual forms of narcissistic subjectivity. There is no doubt that he has some ways to go before attaining liberation from the six embodied states of mind that Buddhism labels as saṃsāra.11 However, as an aphorism attributed to the Greek philosopher Pythagoras says, “the beginning is half of everything” (ἀρχή δέ το ἥμισυ παντός). What clearly matters is that Dondup is on his way, on the path towards awakening (Tib. lam). As with the movie’s intentional lack of closure the journey remains open and full of possibilities. From the nondual view of Vajrayāna Buddhism the path is not essentially different from the goal of spiritual practice, enlightenment. Awakening is not something to be anticipated by the mind or caused by a specific regime of religious training. Hence, embarking on a path of contemplative training is only the means for facilitating recognition of what is already there. This means that as long as

one honestly reflects on the insubstantial contents of experiences, thoughts, and emotions, and goes beyond a wasteful preoccupation with the affirmation and negation of desires, one is not that far away from gaining access to a preexisting state of primordial awakening free from a causal yoke of coming and going.12 However, the maturation of such insights may be reserved for one who has reached the end of his quest and is no longer burdened by the inescapable distortions of fears and wants. This amounts to the liberating admission that the path has been all along as intangible as the destination. The Greek poet

Konstantinos Kavafis (1863–1933) brilliantly compares all life-travellers to Odysseus in search of Ithaka, and writes, “Ithaka gave you the marvellous journey. Without her you would not have set out. She has nothing left to give you now. And if you find her poor, Ithaka won’t have fooled you. Wise as you will have become, so full of experience, you will have understood by then what these Ithakas mean” (Translation by Keeley and Sherrard 1992, 29–30).

Notes 1  In the book version of Travellers and Magicians (2003, 15) we are told that there were several titles considered for the film. Most of them seem to highlight the Buddhist doctrine of impermanence (anicca): “The Bitter and the Sweet of Temporary Things,” “A Life in a Sip of Wine,” “Great Journeys in Little Spaces,” “If Hours were Minutes and Miles were Millimetres,” “Distant Voyages in Short Minutes,” “All Beauty Must Die,” “Travelling to the End of Beauty,” “Its Beautiful Because it’s Temporal,” “Farewell Beautiful Moment,” “A Gho for a Kira,” “Nodding Off to Far flung Places.” 2  The Tsetsu,

literally “10th day,” is an annual religious event hosted across Bhutan, the most famous being held at Paro and Thimphu. These large social gatherings can last up to five days accompanied by cham dances, prayers, offerings, and processions conducted by monks, culminating in the unfurling of a large appliqué thangka on the last day, the thongdrel (Tib. mthong sgrol) or liberation by sight, depicting Padmasambhava flunked by his two consorts and other Buddhist deities. 3  For an intriguing and thought-provoking study of the use and symbolism of magical arrows in Greek and Central Asian shamanism, see Kingsley (2014). 4  Arrow (mda’) and symbol (brda’) are homonyms in Tibetan, both pronounced da. 5  Supernormal visions, legends, myths and dreams feature

prominently in Buddhist narrative traditions that started as an oral tradition of teachings delivered by the Buddha to his disciples. The oral traditions of avadāna and jātaka recount the previous births of the Buddha and his accomplished disciples and pedagogically function like the monk’s parable in Travellers and Magicians. They are didactic tales whose purpose is to illustrate the moral causality of volitional actions (karma) that govern cyclic existence and offering indications on how to disentangle ourselves from this predicament. 6  In a press release for his film, Khyentse Norbu (2003)

offered a contemporary reading of Plato’s Allegory of the Cave: “Just suppose that we have been born in a cinema hall. We don’t know that what is going on in front of us is just a projection. We don’t know that it is just a film, just a movie, and that the events in the movie aren’t real, that they have no true existence. Everything we see on that screen-love, hate, violence, suspense, thrillsis in fact just the effect of light projected through celluloid. But no one has ever told us this, so we just sit there watching, fixated on the film. If somebody tries to attract our attention, we say, ‘Shut up!’ Even if we have something important to do, we don’t want to do it. We are completely engrossed and blind to the fact that this projection is completely futile. Now suppose that there is someone in the seat next to us who says: ‘Look, this is just a film. It’s not real. This is not really happening. It’s really just a projection.’ There’s a chance we too might understand that what we are seeing is in fact a movie, that it is unreal and essenceless.”   7  Namely, right view, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration.

8  This scene refers to an all-day ritual consecration of a new home in Bhutan where four big wooden phalli (zur shing) are hung from the rooftop facing the four directions of the newly inaugurated home while one is placed inside the house. The description of the ritual by Noa Jones and Gopilal Acharya is worth giving in full: “The five large phalluses are tied together in a bundle and put in a bamboo basket. Carrying this, a virgin girl in traditional dress leads a troop of singers and dancers to circumambulate the house three times. The men climb to the roof while the women gather below all singing traditional phallus songs. The basket is tied to a rope and mick tug war ensues. An intermission takes place when the men pretend to lose, and the basket

is pulled down. The owner of the house serves ara and the ‘battle’ resumes. Finally, the women give up, the basket reaches the roof and the men place the phalluses on the eaves” (Jones and Khyentse Norbu, 2003, 32). 9  Corrigan’s list includes the following commonly shared items in Hollywood road narratives as they developed in the fifties: (1) A road narrative, first of all, responds to the breakdown of the family unit and so witness the resulting destabilization of male subjectivity and masculine empowerment; (2) in the road movie “events act upon the characters: the historical world is always too much of a context, and objects along the road are usually menacing and materially assertive;” (3) the road protagonist readily identifies with the means of

mechanized transportation, the automobile or motorcycle, which “becomes the only promise of self in a culture of mechanical reproduction” to the point where it even becomes “transformed into a human or spiritual reality;” (4) “as a genre traditionally focused, almost exclusively on men and the absence of women.” The road movie promotes a male escapist fantasy. 10  As argued by Lakoff and Johnson (1999, 179), “our most fundamental understanding of what events and causes are come from two fundamental metaphors, which we shall call the location of Object Event-Structure metaphors.” Thus, “states are locations,” “purposes are destinations,” and “long-term, purposeful activities are journeys.” 11  These embodied states of mind are traditionally

represented by six realms: the human realm driven by desire and passion; the animal realm conditioned by fear and ignorance; the celestial realm propelled by bliss and indifference to the suffering of others; the semidivine powered by competition and jealousy; the realm of the hungry and unsatisfied governed by greed and addiction; and the hellish realms conditioned by aggression, hatred and anger. 12  In Mahāyāna Buddhism this inherent potential for awakening present in all sentient beings is commonly referred to as ‘buddha-nature’ (Skt. tathāgatagarbha).

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