The Last Samurai
Overview and Description
- Tom Cruise stars in the film about the repression of Samurai during the dynasty of Meiji in Japan. Cruise accepts a job training the Japanese military to fight like american soldiers would, against Katsumoto and his band of Samurai. In the battle Cruise is captured and taken to the Katsumoto village, where he is to learn the way and buddhist teachings of the Samurai. The Buddhist element of this film may be found primarily in Katsumoto's meditative practices in his villages temple, we also see buddhist elements in the Samurai training. While training we can see Cruise in this nirvana state of mind where all his personal desires go away.
- In Buddhism nirvana is a place much similar to heaven where all personal desires and suffering go away, in pop culture it used casually to just mean any place of happiness, for example someone may say that just eating a piece of pizza is like being in nirvana, this takes away from the actual value of nirvana because it may take a monk years meditating just to reach nirvana.
Comparative Analysis
- Most schools of Buddhism would describe nirvana as a state of happiness or peace, and this state may be experienced in life or it may be entered into after death. It is almost as if you're passing over into another existence. The Buddah describes nirvana as being the ultimate goal, and he reached that state during his enlightenment. Nirvana means extinguishing or unbinding, or it is freedom from whatever binds you whether it be jealousy, desire, and ignorance. Once these are let go you reach a state of bliss.
- Three similarities of the religious theme and the movie is that Cruise was told to meditate, to give up all personal desires, and he reached a nirvana state of mind where he was happy with his surroundings instead of being haunted by his war past.
- Three differences was that it is said to reach nirvana it can take years of meditating for monks, but in the movie it took Cruis only a short amount of time before he went into battle. Cruise is taught to have "no mind" when battling, because this will put him in a nirvana state, this is diffrent because he is still fighting against someone, harming someone and in buddhist beliefs it is said, if you harm one it is like harming yourself, so it doesn't lead a path to nirvana because he's not letting go of all ignorance.
Sources:
http://science.howstuffworks.com/science-vs-myth/extrasensory-perceptions/nirvana1.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Samurai
http://science.howstuffworks.com/science-vs-myth/extrasensory-perceptions/nirvana1.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Samurai