A Himalayan Love Monk's Tale: A Thousand Cravings, or Just One?

Departure and return: in the movie *Samsara*, the protagonist Das experiences two departures. He first leaves the monastery, where he had trained for twenty years beginning at age five, and steps into the secular world. His second departure is from the secular world, heading back to the monastery. Having gone through something like a rebirth through nirvana, this Das is no longer who he once was. Together, these two departures form a complete metaphor for the cycle of life. The past, when looked back on, feels like a dream.

In the film’s closing moments, Das slips out of his room at dawn, leaving behind the wife and children he loves. Before him appears the illusion of Pema. His body twisted on the ground, he is consumed by agonizing pain, tears running down his face. It struck me then that what he had held onto so fiercely was breaking apart and dissolving, as he made a difficult parting from his past—much like the long, torturous struggle a chrysalis undergoes to become a butterfly.

An agonizing death must inevitably precede any rebirth. To undergo such a transformation, one must first traverse pain. Thus, a person lives twice: a first life of ignorance, and a second life of awakening—as if reborn in a new body—after enduring the world's hardships, breaking old beliefs, and completing an inner renewal. From then on, one's view of the world and of oneself will forever differ from the past.

Both Prince Siddhartha and Das in the film walked away from their respective circumstances—Siddhartha from the delusions of wealth and comfort, and Das from a life of tedious, unvarying ascetic routine—driven by a common doubt about their existing way of life. "Samsara" reimagines Siddhartha's departure within a contemporary setting. The film's nested narrative structure heightens the dreamlike nature of its imagery while also suggesting a gentle interconnection between past and present existences.

Instead of coming to terms with the contradictions and imperfections of a life they were meant to embrace, they courageously stepped beyond their comfort zones to refute all they had once possessed and become accustomed to. Sentient or Non-sentient The immediate trigger for Das's departure was his sudden, intense recognition of youthful desire stirring within himself. In this regard, the film *Samsara* may derive its avant-garde uniqueness from directly facing the hidden inner world of a monk.

The private lives of monks remain hidden from view, as the films about monastic life available today largely depict their disciplined, austere daily practices while consistently ignoring the details of their humanity outside those roles and symbolic identities. For those in the secular world, understanding this other dimension—like the far side of the moon—is out of reach. All we can do is turn to speculation and imagination to sate our curiosity, and it is precisely this imaginative space that *Samsara* steps in to occupy.

Even in practice, monks cannot, as natural human beings, simply disregard their emotions—and Das is no exception. Physical urges keep arising, making it impossible for him to look away, while his own clarity forbids self-deception. Like gathering storm clouds, growing desires slowly cloud his mind. From that moment, desire becomes an ever more powerful enemy, one Das must battle day and night. Yet no harsh judgment is needed. How can anyone find a way to serve both the Buddha and the beloved?

Socrates famously declared, "The unexamined life is not worth living." When Das attempted to break away from the disciplined, ascetic regimen whose strict rules had suppressed his humanity for more than twenty years, he perceived the fragility of that state. Rather, he would not ignore his true senses or choose a calm that was only outwardly serene but actually deceptive. For Das, at that moment, such a life was simply unconvincing. Even the Sixth Dalai Lama, Tsangyang Gyatso, was once deeply entangled by love.

Their status as practitioners did not shield them from emotion, as every display of feeling around him seemed utterly authentic. He had seen his master's quiet frustration grow over recurring dreams, and he had witnessed a child sobbing without comfort after being left at the monastery by his father, unable to endure the loss of his family. Because he had never fully embraced or let go of his own passions, he could not feign an easy indifference when it came to holding them back.

For Das, who had never sailed through the seas of love and illusion, the teachings instilled in him from childhood now came under threat, and the world of Truman stood on the brink of collapse. Unlike plants or trees, people cannot be devoid of feeling—it is not that emotion is absent, but rather that, having committed to the path of practice in this life, one must follow its precepts and rightly hold emotions in check.

The Japanese author Jun'ichirō Tanizaki once related a passage titled "Impure Contemplation" in one of his novels. To restrain his intense desire for the opposite sex, a man visits a moonlit cemetery to inspect decaying corpses. Once life is gone, any form, no matter how beautiful and charming, falls prey to nature and decomposes into an unrecognizable state.

In the film, the silent elder monk attempts to rouse Das as he teeters on the edge of desire, employing an approach similar to that practice. This method, known as "Impure Contemplation," is a key technique in Buddhist cultivation, seeking to fully "extinguish attachment to the physical form." At its core lies the recognition that the very things people crave and hold tightly are merely this unbearable truth, which they dare not face head-on.

As the elder monk takes erotic pictures from a box and shows them to Das, Das—by flickering candlelight—turns the pages and is horrified to find that the beautiful figures in the paintings suddenly change into skeletons. What is illusion, and what is reality? Although the intense clinging to beauty that seems real feels genuine, people inevitably grow old and die, making beauty nothing more than a transient illusion.

To Das, who had not yet seen through the deceptions of love, the world of desire appeared as a radiant rainbow hovering above him and a cool oasis gleaming before a thirsty traveler crossing the desert. Those trapped in ignorance suffer immense torment, tortured by their attachments as they desperately hold onto the illusion that things are permanent. This suffering stems from the fact that, when the dimensions of time and space are infinitely expanded, a hundred years of existence pass in the mere blink of an eye, and beauty in that same instant reduces to withered bones.

Because he had never witnessed or tested it directly, there was no chance for him to realize that everything he was attached to was only a short-lived effect of causes and conditions—an effect lacking any true solidity, perpetually shifting and altering. Each authentic throb of desire simply made the phantoms in front of him glow with richer colors. A thousand yearnings. The most touching part of the movie is the scene where Das comes across Pema.

All things are impermanent, and for that reason this pure, uninhibited romance, which elevates beauty to its peak, also carries danger and sorrow. Perhaps one becomes acutely aware of beauty's existence precisely because of that impermanence, which gives rise to attachment and longing. They meet in the boundless wilderness of time, neither too early nor too late; that joyful moment evokes Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden at the dawn of creation. With an aged and compassionate voice, the master harbored deep pity for his disciple.

It struck Das as a message carried over from another lifetime—one that he, now thoroughly lost in the allure of the material world, had all but left behind on a far-away shore. "I know my karma is still unfinished. I will take birth once more, and our paths will cross again. Perhaps then you will share with me which matters more: fulfilling a thousand longings or overcoming a single one..." Endless desires are the same as a thousand desires, much like two mirrors set face to face, stretching into an unbounded maze that traps a person without their awareness, wandering within a world of illusion.

Which is more important: fulfilling a thousand cravings or mastering a single one? Das seemed to begin questioning the outcome he had once so diligently chased. Conquering one desire, however, signifies the destruction of illusions—a finale that yields clarity and wakefulness. Finally seeing through the deception to obtain an enlightened state is to be reborn in nirvana. A drop of water—I recall a detail: Pema threw a branch into a flowing stream.

Pema smiled at the children and said, "All of those answers are wrong. The branch will eventually drift into the sea." Earlier, she had posed the question, "Tell me, what will happen to the branch?" One child replied, "It will be caught in a whirlpool." Another said, "It will strike a rock and shatter." A third child hesitated, then answered, "It will sink to the bottom and rot." In that instant, as though struck by lightning, I thought of the mani stone that appears at both the beginning and end of the film.

On the reverse side of the mani stone, the answer is concealed and remains unknown at the film’s outset. The stone’s front bears the question: "How can you stop a drop of water from ever drying up?" It is only after Das has endured the secular world’s hardships and is heading back that he happens to turn over the mani stone once more, instinctively, and at last uncovers the reply: "Let it flow into the sea.

The first time I came across the phrase “All rivers flow to the sea” was in the novel The Story of Migyur, written jointly by the celebrated French orientalist Alexandra David-Néel and her adopted son Yongden. It describes a moment of sudden insight, profound comprehension, or déjà vu, and the feeling it stirred in me then has never faded. In this world, an individual is like a single drop of water that makes its way through countless dangerous and winding paths before finally joining the ocean, where it finds everlasting rest.

Within the image of a drop of water merging into the ocean lies a lesson about deep healing and a return to one's true origin. Alone, that droplet is destined to vanish through evaporation, but by yielding to the vastness of the sea, it enters into something boundless and enduring, gaining eternity. This truth also speaks to the spirit: when lifted beyond itself, the most grueling path loses its weight. Above all, it is a profoundly uplifting insight, a radiant beacon that offers both faith and comfort to the heart.

I believe that, at some point in his existence, Das must have sensed faintly, owing to his inborn wisdom, that he was both a drop of water and the branch flung into the stream by Pema. Like nectar, every subtle occurrence watered the concealed seeds within Das's heart. Our lives are fleeting; everyone in this world is only a passerby. Clinging to affection and desire will not make them endure. What individuals tirelessly seek and strive to keep indefinitely is merely a fragile bubble. Das gradually wakes up.

The monastery of Das appears several times in the film, with the two most striking scenes being his departure and his return. In Hermann Hesse's novel *Siddhartha*, there is a passage I remember that reads: "I had to experience despair, I had to sink to the greatest mental depths, to thoughts of suicide, in order to experience grace, to hear Om again, to be able to sleep properly and awaken refreshed. I had to become a fool again in order to find Atman in myself. I had to sin in order to live again." Following that is the phrase 'Through Illusion, Return to Truth.

In the pale blue light of dawn, before he departs, Das looks back from a distance at the fortress-like structure set in the valley. To me, it feels like a heavily guarded prison, suffocating the vibrant energy of Das, who is still in his early twenties. Yet when Das returns after his demanding journey through the world, that same place becomes a comforting home. It waits quietly and compassionately, like a warm embrace, for the weary, heartbroken traveler. The terror and severity dissolve, giving way only to warmth and familiarity.

What constitutes a classic film comes to mind here. In the two-hour dream of light and shadow, we share with the characters joy, melancholy, pain, danger, satisfaction, and every other emotion. This is why, when following Das on his journey, the viewer undergoes a subtle but profound change in perspective, so that the same scene and setting stir completely different feelings. The place Das leaves and later returns to resembles the eternal home we will all eventually embrace.

Awakening from the dream brings understanding, leaving the heart purified, touched, or cleansed, and the mind quietly refined. True practice does not necessarily demand a life confined to a monastery, nor a lifetime spent among sacred texts. What can be released with ease is only that which one has genuinely possessed. To rise above the world, one must first immerse oneself in it fully. The hardships of ordinary life are the very ground from which precious enlightenment grows. It is by passing through suffering that one arrives at authentic inner stillness.

*Samsara* is a refined and poetic film, much like a fragile allegory. From the age of five, Das was raised in a life of strict restraint and isolation, paralleling the earlier days of Prince Siddhartha, who was also encircled by nobility, opulent garments, and sumptuous banquets. As his individual awareness gradually surfaced and began to stir, Das boldly moved beyond that guarded world, entering the mundane realm to seek clarity and understanding.

From start to finish, viewed in its entirety, each symbolic detail quietly emits boundless energy, ceaselessly renewing, elevating, and surpassing the mind of the viewer. It is like moving through successive illusions and barriers, finally reaching truth in a flash of clarity. A lone scene, taken by itself, possesses an unusual and profound beauty, much like beads threaded into a mala. Every gentle turn of those beads offers a deep and lasting insight. This piece was translated from Dalu's blog.