DARK IN THE WHITE LIGHT (Sulanga Gini Aran සුළඟ ගිනි අරන් ): Film by Vimukthi Jayasundara

In the backdrop of a picturesque hill country landscape a young man is being prepared to be ordained as a novice monk. His voice is heard in the back ground divulging reasons for his decision to become a monk....“From my young days I had questions about death, …..I decided to become a doctor as I thought doctors have a solution to overcome death. In the final year of my medical studies I knew that they did not have answers either”. 

The camera moves to what looks like a shop top office in a busy street corner where a man delivers a marketing speech to few ‘prospective donors’ of body organs or in this instance few grief stricken individuals eager to make some money by ‘donating’ a kidney.

The frames switch between the two scenarios, the novice monk meditating in the cave, taking advice from his ailing teacher and the organ transplanting racket taking place in the busy city centre which involves a network of a dealer, suppliers and a surgeon.

As a young prince, Siddhartha had questions about sickness, decay and death when he saw an old man, sick man and a dead body for the first time in his life. This experience lead to his renouncement and to train under several spiritual teachers at the time before attaining Buddhahood. He realised that no one can escape from the reality of getting sick ,becoming old or from death which he described as 'suffering' in the worldly existence.Having comprehended what pain or suffering is, as it is, the Buddha recognised the cause or the reason to it and its ending as well as path leading to its ending which he proclaimed as the Four Noble Truths.

The problem seems to be in the way many of us, like the novice monk, struggle to deal with suffering looking at it from a point of view of a self or a person whereas the Buddha began to look from beyond ‘self' to gain the insight to suffering and liberate. He identified our existence is a process of arising and ceasing of a bundle of aggregates that project an illusory or seemingly existent self (or soul) rather than an entity or a person that exist. 

The key is to deal with our delusion in 'self-view' so that we can abandon grasping as me mine and myself. The delusion is that we are constantly interacting with the external when in fact we only live within. We do not associate external objects but only products formed when our senses, objects and consciousness come together. We meet external objects as forms which purely are conceptual and hence with no identity or self, but we see people and  things out there as projected by our mind. The path aims to discard this delusion by gaining the right view of seeing things as they really are and thereby to eliminate the wrong view.

When we realise that there is no self out there or in here we will not suffer due to death of loved ones, when they become sick or decay due to old age.

In the movie, once the head monk passes away due to sickness and the old age the novice leaves the cave suggesting that he is not satisfied with the outcome, i.e. his mentor losing the battle with death. Having just entered into monkhood he probably couldn’t reach the state where he could grasp the reality as it is with wisdom.

The surgeon, an alcoholic, disarranged and disturbed is caught up within the web of commercial survival in the City. He is struggling to come to terms with his life, identity and self. He didn’t find life in others either thus he yells ' I see all of you as dead bodies'. His attempt to escape from his misery ends in tragedy. The salvation, regardless of how badly one is engrossed in the world of misery is not by killing oneself but through killing the ‘self-view’ as Buddha has revealed!