Many of the world’s philosophies discourage materialism, and yet become bound up in it themselves, this too has happened with the philosophy of The Buddha.

In theatre, as in other forms of creative endeavour, we the audience are requested to leave our disbeliefs at the doorway, in a willful suspension of disbelief, only in that way can we belief in Star Trek’s 5 year mission, or that Wolverine has adamantium knives issuing from his fingers, or indeed that the life of The Buddha can be a musical.

See this musical as just that – a musical, lavish, adventurous, colourful, or not, but little to do with the Buddhist philosophy, it is a fabrication, a creative endeavour meant to entertain not to preach the anti materialism of The Buddha.

We have enough censorship, do we need to add more, I wonder.

It’s nice to see how a subject as serious and ascetic as Buddhism is given this light-hearted once over. I haven’t seen the musical but it seems like the producers and directors don’t really push the musical far enough.

It looks garishly kitschy! As an educational staging, I guess it fulfils its purpose but you know, when you wanna talk about buddhism, it could be a lot more interesting if the religion’s discourse on form/non-form and self/non-self could be explored a little more and how these ideas inform theatrical staging and narrative rather than just training a didactic angle on Buddha’s life story.

Are they the same team that produced last year’s horribly chauvinistic Jewel of Tibet? Princess Wen Cheng civilised the barbaric Tibetans indeed!

Buddha himself preached the middle way – distance from self-deprivation as well as self-indulgence. As a Buddhist, I totally disagree that Buddhism makes an ‘inappropriate’ theme for a musical.

Furthermore, Buddhism is about freedom and self-enlightenment, not redemption. One could argue that the more ’seriously’ one takes Buddhism, the less Buddhist that is!

‘If you meet the Buddha, kill him’ – old Zen saying.

I wonder if this can do justice to Buddha?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cB7cxCc9wE

Pretty intense explaination of Buddhist Hell

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSi41Sgx-R8&feature=related

It’s so damn medieval. Can’t believe so much of Asia is into this.

When it comes to religion, I think Islam’s iconoclasm was the smartest way to avoid such ‘contradictions’ from occuring but the downside is that you can get a fatwa on your head just for drawing cartoons of the prophet…