Pedestrian Dharma: Slowness and Seeing in Tsai Ming-Liang’s Walker
Journal Title: Religions - Year 2018, Vol 9, Issue 7
Abstract
This paper studies the ways that Walker, a short film by the Malaysian-Taiwanese auteur Tsai Ming-Liang, visualizes the relationship between Buddhism and modernity. Via detailed film analysis as well as attention to sources in premodern Buddhist traditions, this paper argues that its filmic performance of Zen walking meditation serves two functions: To present slowness and simplicity as prophetic counterpoints against the dizzying excesses of the contemporary metropolis; and to offer contemplative attentiveness as a therapeutic resource for life in the modern world. By instantiating and cultivating critical shifts in viewerly perspective in the manner of Buddhist ritual practice, Walker invites us to envision how a place of frenetic distraction or pedestrian mundaneness might be transfigured into a site of beauty, wonder, and liberation.
Authors and Affiliations
Teng-Kuan Ng
Keywords
Related Articles
- EP ID EP26061
- DOI https://doi.org/10.3390/rel9070200
- Views 403
- Downloads 14
Transforming Adverse Cognition on the Path of Bhakti: Rule-Based Devotion, “My-Ness,” and the Existential Condition of Bondage
Early Gaud. ¯ıya Vais.n. ava theologians developed a unique path of Hindu devotion during the 16th century through which an aspirant cultivates a rapturous form of selfless love (prema¯) for Kr . s. n. a, who is re...
Rethinking Neo-Vedanta: Swami Vivekananda and ¯ the Selective Historiography of Advaita Vedanta
This paper problematizes the prevalent model of studying the “Neo-Vedanta” of Swami ¯ Vivekananda (1863–1902) principally in terms of an influx of Western ideas and nationalism. In particular, I demonstrate how scholar...
Prayer, Meditation, and Anxiety: Durkheim Revisited
Durkheim argued that religion’s emphasis on the supernatural combined with its unique ability to foster strong collective bonds lent it power to confer distinctive social benefits. Subsequent research has confirmed the...
Dieter Schnebel: Spiritual Music Today
This article presents an annotated English translation of the composer-theologian Dieter Schnebel’s seminal essay exploring music’s spiritual capacities. Speaking explicitly from his time and place, Schnebel considers...
Lady Saints
A meditation on the death of the author’s Sicilian grandmother that explores how a child copes with loss by transforming the grandmother’s vast collection of plastic and porcelain female saints into imaginary friends.