Was Keanu ever the Buddha? 'Colorism'

The Hollywood sign, Los Angeles

There is a Hollywood legend that actor Keanu Reeves, that guy from The Matrix, Neo the Neophyte, starred in an earlier life in the role of the Buddha Shakyamuni. What was Hollywood thinking? Reeves can hardly speak his lines, which he must have gotten in writing and been given lots of time to memorize. Anyone who saw him in Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure will have to wonder how such a skilled thespian would be chosen for the role of a lifetime.

A search of the archives reveals a film from 1993, Little Buddha, about an American tulku (important reincarnation of a rinpoche in Tibetan Hinduism/Mahayana Buddhism). Would Tibetan Vajrayana elites really choose to be reborn in the West (perhaps an interpretation of Amitabha's "Western Paradise") among whites?

They might. There is a long and harsh history (thanks, England) of colorism in and around India (Bharat), which was violently occupied, exploited, and colonized, forced to be a part of Rome II (the United Kingdom of the British colonial power) that set up a Raj (King) System and left behind a lot of DNA.

Suck it, boy, suck my tongue good. I'm Pope.

And the current Dalai Lama (#14), who is thought to be a or the reincarnation of Kwan Yin/Kwannon, the Bodhisattva of Compassion (Avalokiteshvara), has said that next time he may choose to be reborn as a woman outside of Tibet, in which case he says he wants to be "hot," presumably so more little boys will be willing to suck his tongue in a totally consensual and not at all creepy or perverted act of child grooming. The pontiff in the Vatican probably does the same thing must be the rationalization, and everyone knows the history of the imperial Holy Roman Catholic Church with little boys and erotic priests in sheep's clothing, so there's nothing weird going on.

The History of Colorism in India

(The Emissary) Oct. 1, 2024: Explore the fascinating journey of skin color (shade-ism) perception in India from ancient times to the modern day. This video delves into the genetic migrations that shaped Proto-India's diverse skin tones, ancient Indian (Maha Bharat) scriptures, and their positive views on dark skin, depictions of dark-skinned gods and heroes in Indian mythology, the impact of Islamic imperialism on beauty standards, European (mainly but not exclusively British) colonialism and its role in shaping colorism, the modern Indian perspective on skin color, and the push for change. Let's uncover how a culture that once worshipped dark-skinned (blue black) gods came to idolize fair skin and the ongoing journey toward embracing all shades of beauty in India.

Timestamps

• 00:00 Introduction
• 02:24 Genetic migrations
• 06:16 Skin color in scriptures and ancient India
• 13:40 Islamic India's new beauty standards
• 21:02 The impact of European colonization
• 27:08 Modern India's struggle with skin color

📝 The Emissary articles referenced:

• The Bhāratāyan: How the idea of “India” came to be: theemissary.co/the-bharatayan...
• Critical Caste Theory: A Dubious Discourse: theemissary.co/critical-caste...
• The Dravidaryan Invasion Theory: https://theemissary.co/the-dravidarya...
• The Confluence of Two Seas: India and Arabia: https://theemissary.co/the-confluence...
• The India They Saw: When Socrates Met the Sindhu: https://theemissary.co/the-india-they...

🔬 Book References

• Black Avatar: amazon.com/Black-Avatar-E...
• The India They Saw Part 1: x.com/TheEmissaryCo/status/14...
• The India They Saw Part 2: x.com/TheEmissaryCo/status/14...
• The India They Saw Part 3: https://x.com/TheEmissaryCo/status/15...
• The India They Saw Part 4: https://x.com/TheEmissaryCo/status/16...
•  #ColorismInIndia #IndianHistory #BeautyStandards #CulturalEvolution ⏳
• Follow on X (Twitter) for commentary: x.com/TheEmissaryCo
• WhatsApp for updates: whatsapp.com/channel/0029VaeS..
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John Wick stars in "Little Buddha" (film)

Keanu Reeves as the Buddha in Little Buddha; Jen, Crystal Q., Wisdom Quarterly
Little Buddha is a classic of North American Buddhism, as Bhutanese lamas find a American kid who is a tulku, a reborn lama. Based on true events.

 

"John Wick" (Keanu Reeves) is a psycho killer glorified in American cinema. Poor Keanu, what a dummy, he used to make thought-provoking films (Little Buddha, The Matrix). 

John Wick is an American neo-noir action thriller film series directed by Chad Stahelski and written by Derek Kolstad. It stars Keanu Reeves and others. It is an installment in the John Wick film series.

This revenge story focuses on Wick searching for the men who broke into his home, stole his vintage car, and killed his puppy [all to co-opt audiences into rooting for killing], which serves as a memento of his recently deceased wife. It is a kill fest, an orgy of violence, which parents feed their kids with a low enough rating so they never hear or -- gawd forbid -- see sex on screen.

• https://www.scpr.org/programs/filmweek/2018/07/20/63380/mpaa-says-eighth-grade-is-too-much-for-eighth-grad/

How did the Buddha reach enlightenment?

Editors, Wisdom Quarterly; Keanu Reeves (excerpt from Little Buddha)

The Buddha's life is told as an allegory, the heroic journey we can all travel.

In this fantasy sequence, how Siddhartha did it is completely not mentioned -- how he utilized the meditative absorptions or jhanas to temporarily purify consciousness then practicing for insight by mindfulness of dependent origination (vipassana-paticca samuppada), which would be kind of hard to make a Hollywood movie about. Instead, Keanu Reeves does what he can to paint the wrong picture in our minds.

Born in Kapilavastu, Shakya Land (modern Kabul, Bamiyan, Mes Aynak, Afghanistan), Prince Siddhartha was destined to a luxurious life as a royal (kshatriya). He had three palaces -- one in each seasonal capital (due to the weather) -- specially built for him. The whole family, led by King Suddhodana, enjoyed the capitals.

Prince Siddhartha at age 29 left and escaped his palaces, accompanied by Channa his driver, on his grand white pony, Kanthaka, leaving behind the luxurious life of a royal to become a wandering ascetic on a quest for enlightenment (bodhi), awakening from the illusion of samsara, renouncing the lower for the superior, slavery for liberation (moksha).

Sitting under a pipal tree, now known as the Bodhi Tree ("Enlightenment Tree") in Bodh Gaya ("Enlightenment Grove" in the modern state of Bihar, India), he felt it was time to vow never to give up until he had discovered the ultimate Truth.

After 49 days of meditating, at the age of 35, he attained enlightenment (bodhi) and realized nirvana ("the end of all suffering"). Prince Siddhartha Gautama from then on came to be known as the Buddha or "Awakened One," but he had many other epithets and referred to himself as the Tathagata ("Wayfarer," lit. the "Thus Come One, Well Come One, Well Gone One").

The Buddha is also sometimes translated as "The Enlightened One." Often, he is referred to in Buddhism as Shakyamuni or "The Sage (Muni) of the Shakyas (Scythians)."

The Buddha Gautama (to distinguish him from 28 previous buddhas he mentions of the long ago past) is thought of by the Brahmins of his day and the Hindus of today as an avatar (divine incarnation) of Lord Vishnu in the Puranic texts of the Vedas.

• (But one should realize that Hindus are also taught that Lord Krishna and Jesus Christ are also avatars of Vishnu because of their peaceful teachings and sustaining ways, Vishnu being the Sustainer in the trinity conception of "GOD" in Brahmanism/Hinduism, with Brahma as the Creator and Shiva as the Destroyer).

In the Bhagavata Purana he is 24th of 25 avatars, prefiguring a forthcoming final incarnation (Maitreya). A number of Hindu traditions portray the Buddha as the most recent of ten principal avatars, known as the dasavatara ("Ten Incarnations of God"). But the Buddha clearly and repeatedly stated that he was not a God (brahma), not a god (deva), not a messenger-god (gandharva), not any of those things. When forced to say what he was then, he simply answered, "awake."

The Buddhist  Rebirth Tale Dasharatha Jataka (Jataka Atthakatha) represents Rama as a previous incarnation of the Buddha as the Bodhisattva ("Buddha-to-be") and supreme Dharma King of great wisdom. A great deal of Indian mythology attached to him although he tried to teach people to understand better than adhering to archaic myths.

Noah Levine teaches Against the (Dharma)?

Seth Auberon and Ashley Wells, Wisdom Quarterly

He's a Dharma punk and not dumb, so how does he know so little about the Buddha?

In a devastating blow to Buddhist history, author and "Against the Stream" founder Noah Levine turned the Buddha's life into an unrecognizable mishmash of revisionist thought, doubt and outlandish speculation. At one point he had Siddhartha tying stones to his privates, all the while laughing and engendering laughter from an eager American audience. The constant refrain was, "We just don't know. These things weren't written down. There was a lot of mythologizing..." Therefore we can throw anything into the story we like and it'll be just as true/doubtful as all the rest of it? Levine's heart was obviously in the right place.

(LINK) BBC documentary: "The Life of the Buddha"

   

Maybe its less Buddhism than recovery and punk

But one would have to guess -- based solely on his bumbling through the life story -- that he only recently became acquainted with Buddhism as a sacred tradition of the East. The Buddha's life, certainly much informed by mythological elements prevalent in ancient India, is retold to inspire our own path: We live luxuriously, we suffer, we assume that the only antidote to suffering is hedonism, then one day occurs to us that this has never worked. So we try something else. We go on a quest. We question convention. We go have a look for ourselves. And inasmuch as we question or reject society, we look inward for answers: What is true? What can I know to be true? How can I bring suffering to an end, not just for myself, but for all beings who suffer?

• See Noah Levine continue Wednesdays live in Hollywood

Siddhartha did not set off on this quest only once; he (reappearing in various transient forms, not as the same being but not altogether another) spent many lives developing the perfections. These enabled him to become a master physician for what ails living beings, a superlative teacher able to communicate that subtle and profound discovery of what's been going wrong in our own search for a way out, a samma-sam-buddha or "right and fully awakened one." Levine is not alone in sowing doubt and, possibly inadvertently, ridiculing the "less important" Buddhist teachings, such as its venerable history and origins.
  
Former Buddhist monk and continuing British iconoclast Stephen Batchelor, author of Confessions of a Buddhist Atheist, seems to have profoundly influenced Levine's view of not only Buddhist history but its theology (yes, it has one in spite of being a non-theistic tradition) and cosmology as well. There's more than a little of fellow punk and Zen Master Brad Warner in Levine's approach as well.
   

(ABC News) Stephen Batchelor talks about his confessions with ABC

To hear Levine tell it, Buddhism doesn't know its zafu from its zabuton and is ass-backwards on everything but its core insight (vipassana) teachings. With teachers like Jack Kornfield and his own father, Buddhist author Stephen Levine, that comes as a surprise. One would imagine his time in prison gave him time to reflect, grow hungry for answers, and then satisfy that hunger through books, monastics, and comparative religion professors.

 

Is Levine opinionated? It would not seem so, for when local meditator Sherry asked him to define "atheist," he suddenly had no personal opinion and turned the question on her like a reticent therapist.

  

Wisdom Quarterly would retell the story of the Buddha's life just for Levine's benefit. But any child with a picture book and even Keanu Reeves can get the highlights right.
  

   
It is difficult to see how one can have a sense of the Buddha's teaching, the Dharma, without a basic understanding of what the historical Buddha went through to arrive at the breakthrough that gave rise to the dispensation and the mythological elements that got added.

• FULL INTERVIEW: Stephen Batchelor's Confessions of a Buddhist Atheist

Attaining Enlightenment (with Keanu)

Born in Lumbini, Nepal [disputed by Ranajit Pal], Siddhartha was destined to a luxurious life as a prince. He had three palaces specially built for him by his father. But at 29 he escaped these royal trappings on his horse Kanthaka, accompanied by his servant Channa, leaving behind his luxurious life to become a wandering mendicant in search of Truth.

• The Historical Buddha

Coming to the edge of his father's kingdom, he continued on foot alone. He went to eminent yoga masters in adjoining lands. First he studied under Alara Kalama and thereafter with Uddaka Ramaputra. With them he reached the heights of the meditations they taught (jhanas). Dissatisfied at not becoming enlightened nor released from rebirth, even though he successfully attained samadhi, he undertook the old path of severe penances and austerities.

That got him nowhere, he was later to say. Buddhism or the Middle Way thus avoids the extremes of princely sensual indulgence and ascetic self-mortification. Eventually, sitting under a banyan tree, now known as the Bodhi tree in Buddha Gaya (Bodh Gaya, Bihar, India), he vowed never to rise until he realized the Truth. He entered the jhanas, emerged, analyzed the Four Foundations of Mindfulness, reflecting on the Three Marks of Existence, and attained liberating-insight. He recalled his former lives, the working out of karma, and other supernormal things.

That night, now 35, he attained enlightenment (bodhi) and glimpsed/touched nirvana. From then on, he came to be known as the "Buddha" or the "Awakened One." Buddha is also sometimes translated as the "Enlightened One." He is referred to by many epithets, such as Shakyamuni ("Sage [muni] of the Shakya Clan"), Tathagata ("Thus Gone One"), Bhante ("Venerable Sir"), Bhagwan, and even Mahavira ("Great Hero," an epithet now exclusively applied to one of his contemporaries, Vardhamana, the founder of Jainism). His name, of course, was originally Prince Siddhartha Gautama of the Shakya Clan.

Hindus are fond of saying that he is a Hindu avatar, namely, a reincarnation of the God Vishnu (according to the Puranas). This effectively keeps Hindus from studying Buddhism since they regard it as simply a part of Hinduism. In the Bhagavata Purana, the Buddha is said to be 24th of 25 avatars, prefiguring a forthcoming final incarnation. A number of Hindu traditions portray Buddha as the most recent of ten principal avatars, known as the dasavatara ("ten incarnations of God").

One of the Buddhist morality tales -- tales and parables similar to Aesop's Fables, which are meant to be more instructional than literal -- depicts Rama as a previous incarnation of the Buddha, who was not yet the Buddha but rather the Bodhisattva, a "being intent on enlightenment." This suggests that "Rama" is the name of a celestial station or post (like Sakka, Mara, Brahma, Surya, and Chandra are), not a singular entity. (See Jataka Atthakatha 461).

• Jataka Tales