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Buddhism and Star wars...? George Lucas is a Buddhist, how mant examples do you see in the movies?
light and dark side of the force..Yoda teaches luke to focus on what he is doing, the moment. e.t.c:
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Actually, I think Star Wars was primarily inspired by "Mystery School" beliefs. For example, in the Hebrew alphabet "yod" is the smallest character, in Star Wars "Yoda" is the smallest character. "Yoda" is also the name of a wise being in Freemasonry.
In Ancient Egypt there was a priest class called "Jedi" who, as part of their initiation, had to go inside a tomb for 3 days and after emerging were alleged to have gained psychic powers.
Also, rumor has it that George Lucas is a 33rd degree Freemason.
As for light side/dark side, that seems to be fairly universal in all belief systems except perhaps Nihilism. In Freemasonry this is represented by twin pillars, the checkered floor and also the sun and the moon.
Metta,
Guy
Oh sorry, wrong movie
Death is a natural part of life. Rejoice for those around you who transform into the Force. Mourn them do not. Miss them do not. Attachment leads to jealousy. The shadow of greed that is. Train yourself to let go of everything you fear to lose.
- Yoda
Very powerful quote.
I saw many buddhist concepts in "Tron: Legacy"....
The original "Star Wars" movie (1977) was George Lucas' science fiction remake of Akira Kurosawa's "The Hidden Fortress" (1958)
Kurosawa studied art and kendo and was a master storyteller of the human condition. Many of his films explored Buddhist themes with great depth and honesty.
By comparison, George does very nice special effects, invented the concept of a 13 year old queen/ambassador, and wrote the character JarJar Binks.
Enough said.
*as in, without substance, weak.
Now as for Buddhism. It's a reality that the Samurai were very much into it. The samurai weren't just a bunch of thugs without ethics. A lot of them had a code they followed that had to do with Bushido, Buddhism and just a code of honor. So you can see that there were a lot of samurai and Buddhist influences on Star Wars.
"The Dharma of Star Wars" by Matthew Bortolin for nothing(the first buddhist book I ever read, and very beginner friendly if a bit longwinded.)
...that's as far as Buddhism as you can get.
Even though the samurai were assassins for a lord or for their country, some of them did incorporate a code of ethics, like honor, Bushido and Buddhism (both are very different) into their life style. Even though Musashi killed over 60 men, he eventually stopped killing and incorporated Buddhism into his life and he was regarded as a sword saint by Japan.
Some samurai were a lot like the Jedi. Like the Jedi they're trained killers, they kill when they need to, but some of them try to maintain a code of honor while doing so. They also used meditation and awareness to sharpen their skills in battle. So really many of the samurai actually used Buddhism to *help them be more efficient killers lol. One can say Luke actually does this when he's training with Yoda. The way Yoda talks is a lot like a monk or a martial arts teacher would talk, with the force actually being Ki. Just like Kendo (the way of the sword). You aren't actually killing in Kendo, but the principles of meditation and Buddhism are not just improving your character, they're also improving your skills in battle.
So of course it's not Buddhism at its purest form, but there are traces of Buddhism in Star Wars due to the samurai influence. I would say that Star Wars is way more samurai influenced rather than Buddhist influenced.
If one wants to see Buddhist influenced samurai flicks, Rurouni Kenshin is a great one. Same with Vagabond. Those are far more Buddhist influenced than Star Wars.
Hopefully that will do better for you.
Likewise, I started reading "The Dharma of Star Wars" by Matthew Bortolin, but ended up putting it down after a few chapters. I always wanted to pick it back up, but the chronology didn't seem to match up well for me, which made it harder to read. He seemed to jump around, hitting different topics (both in Buddhism and Star Wars), along with bouncing around different episodes. It was hard for me to follow, and decided it would be better not to confuse myself.
As far as the reference about Star War's association with Freemasonry, I'm a Mason and I can say I never noticed it. I'm not an avid Mason Scholar, so much of it might have flown over my head, but many of the core ideals in Masonry don't appear to heavily in Star Wars (other than the balance between light and dark, good and evil, but it's hard to attribute that solely to Masonry). Maybe I need to read up a little bit more though.