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The Little Buddhism Analysis

Decent Essays
The Little Buddha is an amazing, and uplifting movie, and full of positive meaning, yet it also is full of religious meaning. Aspects of life and death are shown throughout the movie, but the film mainly explains three key aspects of Buddhism. Buddhist teachings of reincarnation, impermanence, and enlightenment, are connected deeply to each other and is illustrated throughout the film. The first Buddhist teaching of reincarnation is evident from the beginning of the movie. The audience starts to see these teachings when a Buddhist teacher is making it evident to his student (Lama Norbu) that he is ready to reincarnate, after he passes away. Lama finds out that there are three potential reincarnations of his teacher’s soul. These reincarnates…show more content…
It subtly explained that death is not permanent as it is merely a temporary state of one’s soul that will cycle on. The films depiction of impermanence gives the viewers the message of change and how it is a part of life we all go through, however, death is not permanent. Nothing is forever in life, everyone goes through changes that are positive and negative just like the films element of impermanence, that provide the natural changes in the challenges of life. For instance, when one of the reincarnates child’s father’s brother dies and they experience a difficult death, which is also showing that life is not finite. Another illustration of impermanence and a lesson of reincarnation is a scene where Lama Norbu explains what it means to reincarnate and its relation to the religion. He explains that “the mind and the body is like the content and the container”. He illustrates this by smashing his cup of tea, and states, “the cup is not a cup anymore. Yet where is the tea? […]just like the mind after one dies, the tea(content) moves from one container to the next, but it is still tea”. This is an important point about how the soul travels from vessel to vessel. The vessels change but the soul remains the same, like the tea in its cup, the floor, and in a
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