Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Legal Commentary Blogs -> Althouse

Legal Commentary

: Althouse

"As a Buddhist, how do you reconcile your pacifism with the roles your daughter Uma has played in films like Quentin Tarantino?s bloody 'Kill Bill'?"

A question for Robert Thurman. Answer:

Quentin is kind of obsessed, he?s a wild guy. But he is very brilliant. We trust that his motive is to show people the foolishness of violence rather than to glorify it. I hope that?s true.

Think it is?

Thurman is a professor of Buddhist studies and is ordained as a Tibetan monk (though he is American). I love this answer to the question what does he think about when meditating:

Usually, some form of trying to excavate any kind of negative thing cycling in the mind and turn it toward the positive. For example, when I am annoyed with Dick Cheney, I meditate on how Dick Cheney was my mother in a previous life and nursed me at his breast.

... It?s a fantasy of releasing fear and developing affection. It?s a way of coming back to feeling grateful toward him and seeing his positive side, finding the mother in Dick Cheney....

When I want to feel compassion for an unlikable person, I imagine him as someone?s adored son. Some lamas do that. They say that that?s easier for Americans, because often Americans have personality problems with their moms.

How would you visualize a person you wanted to feel compassion for? And would you want to develop a visualization that would enable you to feel compassion for someone you hated? What public figure would you want to try to start feeling positive about?

Aside from public figures, it does seem like a good idea to find a way to feel compassion for people who one way or another have come to be what people find unlikable. It would not work for me to imagine him as someone?s adored son, because it would only lead me to believe that being adored by one's parent causes a person to become unlikable.

Obviously, I'm not a Buddhist. I'm more inclined to want to understand what has caused these traits that are perceived as unlikable and why, exactly, do we find them unlikable. I don't want to wipe away the perception of unlikability but to know more about it and to perceive it with greater clarity.

Full post as published by Althouse on June 29, 2008 (boomark / email).