When the Iron Bird Flies: Tibetan Buddhism Arrives in the West 2012
Distributed by Chariot Videos, 3051 Madeline St., Oakland, CA 94602; 510-479-3017
Produced by Victress Hitchcock and Amber Bemak,
Directed by Victress Hitchcock
DVD , color, 96 min.
Jr. High - General Adult
Religion, Buddhism, Women’s Rights
Date Entered: 07/11/2013
Reviewed by Charles J. Greenberg, Cushing/Whitney Medical Library, Yale UniversityThe film When the Iron Bird Flies: Tibetan Buddhism Arrives in the West borrows an 8th century prophesy from the Guru Padsasambhava: "When the iron bird flies and horses run on wheels, the Tibetan people will be scattered like ants across the face of the earth.” Padsasambhava transmitted Vajrayana Buddhism to areas covering present day Tibet, Bhutan, and Nepal. He later became known as Guru Rinpoche, directly inspiring noted disciples and launching over centuries an interrelated matrix of Tibetan Buddhist sects and lineage.
Tibetan cultural history is inextricably linked to the history of Buddhism in Tibet. Buddhist religion is the anchor and memory of Tibetan culture. The recorded history of Tibet was the responsibility of Buddhist monks, many of whom are permanently exiled from their homeland. Since the early 1960s, a new generation of Tibetan Buddhist teachers looked westward for the next generation of scholars and practitioners emerging in a very different and increasingly dominant material and corporate culture.
When the Iron Bird Flies portrays the Buddhist equivalent of the modern art world’s shock of the new, the necessity and urgency to change or fade into irrelevancy. This engaging visual portrait of mentors and disciples is a modern history of Tibetan Buddhism as it has taken root and emerged in India, England, Argentina, the United States, and Mexico. A generation of post-1960s spiritually-inclined western young people ended up simultaneously in places like Bodhgaya, India, and Kathmandu, Nepal, initially rebellious, skeptical, and seeking self-knowledge. Now these earnest Western seekers are the mentors to many, reflective and secure in their Tibetan Buddhist practice, creating opportunities for the next generation to discover individual and collective approaches to the relief of suffering. Many are now recognized mainstream spokespersons for how to integrate rather arduous Buddhist practices into a typical western daily life. They also acknowledge a debt of gratitude to their Tibetan spiritual teachers and provide opportunities for visits and lectures. Viewers also meet a self-selected group of current young people that continue to be drawn to Bodhgaya and Kathmandu to immerse themselves in study and monastic life.
Viewers should not expect what most other films about Tibetan Buddhism typically offer, extended opportunities to listen and see His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama. One of the apparent values in this film is a conscious attempt to feature other noted Tibetan Buddhist teachers, many of the generation that followed the 14th Dalai Lama and came of age after the 1959 Tibetan exile. Viewers see and witness the interaction of many contemporary lamas, nuns, and monks such as Tsoknyi Rinpoche, Dzigar Kongtrül Rinpoche, Jetsün Khandro Rinpoche, Anam Thubten, Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, along with a younger generation of committed Western adherents from both lay, practice, and study communities.
The film begins with a montage of opinions, short statements by Tibetan Buddhist adherents, overdubbed with a contemporary upbeat electronic soundtrack. Eager Buddhist monks are on the road, on the cell phone, and moving through airport terminals. Viewers receive a rapid potpourri of experiential statements, retreat settings, and historical images, including brief excerpts of prayer sessions and personal introspections. Wendell Garnett, an African American self-described street kid, describes how he began to question the reason for living. Later in the film, Wendell will introduce viewers to his own studies at the College for Higher Tibetan Studies in Sarah, India. Lama Tsutrim Allione, a Westerner adorned in flowing traditional dress, looks back on her own Buddhist initiation as a teen of the 1960s. Owsley Brown mundanely checks his car’s oil level while talking about the persistence of suffering, even when born into a society of privilege. A young female Western scholar, Kelsang Wangmo, relates the initial difficulty of studying Tibetan culture, as well as being the only woman in her Institute of Buddhist Dialectics initiation class. Fleet Maull, formerly incarcerated, describes his decision to start consistent Buddhist practice in prison. A Tibetan, Anam Thubten, talks about impermanence and change in the world as we watch news reports of natural disasters and stock market crashes. Reginald Ray talks about the illusion of control and how unpredictable disasters can open a spiritual gate. The actor Richard Gere suggests that at some point we have a realization that everything we have learned up to now is dissonant with something inside us.
Viewers learn more about the contemporary Buddhist movement in Dharamsala, India. Commentators such as E. Gene Smith (1936 –2010) and Gerardo Abboud from Argentina’s Dongyuling Buddhist Center talk about the positive outcomes of young people that trekked to the current sources of Buddhist learning in India and Nepal in search of authentic experience, ultimately experiencing a check on all of their preconceptions of desire.
The film provides engaging close-ups of facilities and programs in the United States, such as Boulder, Colorado’s Naropa Institute founded by Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, the Shambhala International & Prison Mindfulness Institute founded by Fleet Maull, the Mindrolling Lotus Garden in Stanley, Virginia, the Tara Mandala Retreat Center, Pagosa Springs, Colorado and the Center for Investigating Healthy Minds at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Viewers are also briefly transported to a Mind and Life Conference taking place in Dharmasala and the learning environment of Rangjung Yeshe Institute, Kathnandu, Nepal.
The film should also receive credit for embracing and not ignoring the issue of female participation in Tibetan Buddhism. Author and Buddhist teacher Rita M. Gross briefly talks on camera about her best known secular work, Buddhism after Patriarch: A Feminist History, Analysis, and Reconstruction of Buddhism (1993, State University of New York). Viewers also learn about Geshe, the highest degree in Tibetan Buddhist monastic education traditionally denied to women. Yet we witness change at the Institute for Buddhist Dialectics as Kesang Wanmo becomes the first women accorded this honor.
The last third of the film is devoted to teaching the audience about the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism in the Tibetan tradition, as well as the individual five month retreat planned by Bridget Bailey to illustrate the Second Noble Truth: The cause of suffering is our grasping and fixation. Bridget leaves a busy single lifestyle of health clubs, barhopping, and friends to take up residence in a small, isolated cabin at a Retreat Center, in order to detach from her ego. We see and hear her narration before and after the experience, reintroduced to humanity, refreshingly self-aware, heading back to what we know will be an exuberant world that will welcome her return.
The film production weaves together both archival footage and original interviews and on-location records of event preparation, interviews in formal settings, and shifting montages to convey bustling activity, teachable moments, and the stillness of quiet contemplative spaces that many lay practitioners are seeking in isolated scenic retreat locations. Careful and clean sound and video editing effectively deliver a simple intimacy that also pulses with a sense of urgency that there is a unique and urgent teachable moment of opportunity that should not be wasted.
The film closes with a series of perspectives on how to bring Buddhist compassion, interdependence, and selfless thinking and behaviors to today’s internet-savvy generation. Both lamas and lay practitioners acknowledge that accessibility to Buddhism must change with the times. Interdependent care and teaching methods must reach a Western audience with a different common cultural background. The rhythmic audio background reaches a soft crescendo with the final suggestion from Tibetan monk Anam Thubten addressing a challenge to a westernized Interdependence Project lay audience: Are you ready to sit silently? Are you ready to let go of everything?
When the Iron Bird Flies: Tibetan Buddhism Arrives in the West is highly recommended as an engaging introduction to Tibetan Buddhism as it is increasingly taught and practiced in a western society and culture.