To David Grubin ’65, creating a documentary is a process that carries him, as a filmmaker, from a state of radical ignorance to a state of profound appreciation for the subject of the film. In his latest film, The Buddha, which originally aired on PBS late last year, Grubin examines past and present implications of the story of the life of Siddhartha Guatama, the spiritual teacher who is credited with the founding of Buddhism. On Jan. 31, Grubin presented clips from The Buddha and spoke to a packed house in the Kirner-Johnson Red Pit as part a series of spirituality-themed events during Hamilton’s Spirituality 101 Week.
Siddhartha Guatama, the man who came to be known as the Buddha, lived and taught in India about 2,500 years ago. The first investigations into the details of his life—where and when he was born, where he traveled and taught, and where and when he died—took place in the 19th century. Unfortunately for researchers, the history of Buddhism was an exclusively oral tradition for hundreds of years, so no details about the Buddha’s life were written down until nearly 500 years after his death, a length of time sufficient to render any amount of absolute certainty unattainable.
The muddled history was not, as Grubin explained, a roadblock in the production of the film. Instead, it was freeing in that it allowed the film to focus mainly on the interpretations of the Buddha’s story. Buddhism is a religion that teaches that desire is at the root of human suffering. What most fascinates Grubin is the diverse range of interpretations that exist today of the Buddha’s teachings. In The Buddha, Grubin tried to expose as many different interpretations as he could by interviewing with modern-day Buddhists from every lifestyle. The film features interviews from an astrophysicist, a psychologist, poets Jane Hirschfield and W.S. Merwin, and His Holiness the Dalai Lama.
Grubin believes, without a doubt, that the story of the Buddha is a story that has the potency to keep on delivering 2,500 years after it took root. While he was not a Buddhist before he began work on the film and is not a Buddhist today, Grubin thinks that there is wisdom in the Buddha’s story that can be universally applied and incorporated into various lifestyles, irrespective of institutional religious affiliations. Matt Russell ’11, an active member of the Meditation Club who was instrumental in bringing Grubin to campus, expressed his satisfaction with the presentation. Russell said, “David Grubin delivered clear insight into the story of the Buddha as a powerful tool that can help us awaken to the present moment.”
Spirituality 101 Week continues on Tuesday with a lecture by Arabic calligrapher Haji Noor Deen at 4 p.m. in the Events Barn and an “Introduction to Zen Sitting Meditation” by Sherry Chayat, abbot of the Syracuse Zen Center, at 7:30 p.m. in the Chapel loft.
