THE BOOK
I boken finner du de tre samtalen med Upul Nishanta Gamage som är i filmen “Your Mind…” samt flera till. Språk är engelska. Sidantal 128. Förlag, Riot Books. Beställ bok och DVD här
TEXT ON THE BACK COVER:
Cecilia: Oh, I have big questions for you! Shall I take the biggest one first?
Upul: Yes, yes…
Cecilia: What is the meaning of life?
Upul: Wow…! It depends on your point of view. According to a Buddhist point of view, to understand about the meaning of life is the great meaning. Life is a great laboratory for you to do your own experiments.
Cecilia: But why do we suffer?
Upul: Because we don’t learn about it. Like if you drive a car without knowing how to drive, you are going to suffer, and the car is going to suffer, and others are going to suffer…
In 2004 Swedish film-maker Cecilia Neant Falk went to the Nilambe Buddhist Meditation Centre in Sri Lanka. During the retreat she met meditation teacher Upul Nishanta Gamage. Since then Neant Falk has returned to Nilambe every year, always bringing her camera and microphone. The continuous conversations at 4 p.m. in the afternoons between Cecilia and Upul takes us on an existential journey where a Westerner´s questions on time, memory, art, violence, parenthood, happiness, work and meaning are answered from a down-to-earth practical Buddhist perspective.
“Whether you start reading from the beginning, middle or the end, it does not really matter. Feel free to jump into our conversations wherever it suits you. This is a circular book.” – Cecilia Neant Falk
Your Mind is Bigger than all the Supermarkets in the World – Some guidance for a lost Westerner is also an experimental documentary, a meditative experience, an art project.
Läsprov från boken som pdf:
Introduction by Cecilia Neant Falk
2004 was a difficult period in my life. In short, my partner was suffering from anorexia. I had tried to help her for years; to eat, to get professional treatment, but nothing had helped. Instead I had become co-dependent and was sinking into a deep depression.
As in so many cases, her illness was a consequence of abuse at an early age. I guess experiencing the consequences of violence in this way motivated me to start working with this project. I wanted to understand the mechanisms and the patterns of violence and cruelty in the world.
In 2005 I started to do research for a film project called “the Patterns Violence”. What is violence? Why are people violent? And, why are men so much more physically violent than women are, generally?
So, where to start this research?
A few years earlier I had come across a book of interviews with His Holiness the Dalai Lama; ”The Art of Happiness”. Since then I was curious to explore the practice of Buddhist ”metta” meditation (or loving-kindness meditation) as a tool for fundamentally changing one’s own ways of reacting and dealing with negative and aggressive emotions. How to handle stress, pain, and loss, without reacting with aggression and hatred towards oneself or others?
This must be the way, I thought for actually making a real difference.
I searched the internet for meditation centres and ended up going to the Nilambe Buddhist Meditation Centre in Sri Lanka, hoping that I might find a way out of my depression, or at least get along with my research. This is where I met Upul Nishanta Gamage, main teacher at the Centre. Upul ´s intense and kind presence, our conversations and my own meditation practice, all formed a big turning point for me. I could stop hurting myself. I could forgive. And I could stop being depressed.
Since I think the absolute beginning of violence and aggression lies within us, or in the lack of love we feel for ourselves, I thought this research on the patterns of violence had to start with this experience, with my own confusion and violence.
By documenting my own quest for sanity and happiness, I was hoping to gather tools for others to handle their confusion and unhappiness.
This book consists of transcriptions of conversations I have had with Upul, recorded between 2005-2009, in Sri Lanka and in Sweden. The first part consists of three conversations, recorded three days in a row during my second visit in 2006. In part one I have also included a loving-kindness, or metta meditation guided by Upul and a conversation from my third journey to Sri Lanka in 2007.
The first conversations with Upul are therefore of a more personal and existential kind, focusing on how to find happiness and how to work with one’s own aggression – whether it is directed towards oneself or others.
Some of these conversations are also the soundtrack of the experimental documentary film ”Your Mind is Bigger than all the Supermarkets in the World” which is another result of this research project on violence. So this is Part One.
During these last years of research I have learned a lot about violence. Still I can´t say I understand it. I have myself been very close to be violated and raped by strangers. Not once, but several times in different countries. In fact, the most recent experience of this happened during my last meditation retreat at Nilambe, in 2009…
The more I read and experience, it is almost more difficult to understand why there are such cruel crimes as sexual abuse, rape or murder.
Since men commit most violent crimes in our society, and all over the world, I specifically wanted to investigate on the patterns of men ´s violence, and, by consequence, on the reasons for women´ s “non-violence”. How do women deal with their aggression? Becoming depressed? Cutting or starving themselves? What are the differences and what are the similarities between men and women? In Part Two you will therefore find my questions to Upul more direct, focusing on these issues from a societal perspective. What are the roots of violence? How can we prevent aggression and violence in our society? Why are men as a group much more physically aggressive than women? How do we nourish a gentle and sane society?
Of course there are no answers to these very complex questions, but I do hope that you will find Upul´s reflections and our conversation about violence both inspiring and provoking. Hopefully you will formulate your own opinions on the matter!
Whether you start reading from the beginning, middle or the end, it doesn´t really matter. Feel free to jump into our conversations wherever it suits you. This is a circular book.
Above all I hope that Upul Nishanta Gamage´s practical and still profound way of presenting Buddhism may shed some light in whatever darkness you may experience, now or in the future.
Please find joy – within yourself and in your world.
Cecilia
Cecilia: Oh, I have big questions for you! Shall I take the biggest one first?
Upul: Yes, yes…
Cecilia: What is the meaning of life?
Upul: Wow…! It depends on your point of view. According to a Buddhist point of view, to understand about the meaning of life is the great meaning. Life is a great laboratory for you to do your own experiments.
Cecilia: But why do we suffer?
Upul: Because we don’t learn about it. Like if you drive a car without knowing how to drive, you are going to suffer, and the car is going to suffer, and others are going to suffer…
In 2004 Swedish film-maker Cecilia Neant Falk went to the Nilambe Buddhist Meditation Centre in Sri Lanka. During the retreat she met meditation teacher Upul Nishanta Gamage. Since then Neant Falk has returned to Nilambe every year, always bringing her camera and microphone. The continuous conversations at 4 p.m. in the afternoons between Cecilia and Upul takes us on an existential journey where a Westerner´s questions on time, memory, art, violence, parenthood, happiness, work and meaning are answered from a down-to-earth practical Buddhist perspective.
“Whether you start reading from the beginning, middle or the end, it does not really matter. Feel free to jump into our conversations wherever it suits you. This is a circular book.” – Cecilia Neant Falk
Your Mind is Bigger than all the Supermarkets in the World – Some guidance for a lost Westerner is also an experimental documentary, a meditative experience, an art project.
/ from the book “Your Mind is Bigger than all the Supermarkets in the World – Some guidance for a lost Westerner”
Bokrelease “Your Mind…” 25 mars kl 20.00
på Drom Tönpa Center, Erstagatan 28, Stockholm (kod 3447)
OBS byte av lokal och tid! (Hållplats Erstagatan 2:ans buss. Gå in på gården, en trappa ned till vänster.)
Samtal med regissören/författaren Cecilia Neant Falk och Sumana Ratnayaka, från Sri Lanka som kom till Sverige för första gången som ung munk på 1970-talet och var med om att starta ett theravada-buddhistiskt tempel i Stockholm. För ca 10 år sedan lämnade Sumana munklivet och har sedan gift sig, studerat i Oxford och undervisat i Thailand, Singapore, Taiwan och Sri Lanka. Idag doktorerar han i buddhism, i Lund.
BOOK RELEASE IN MARCH 2010
AVAILABLE NOW ON WWW.BOKUS.COM
