Silence

I think perhaps the title of the film, Silence (2016) ought to have been “The last Priest” because the main character, Rodrigues, is the last remaining Roman Catholic priest in Japan. His inner struggle is the core of the narrative, and of the theological/ethical dilemma to be resolved. The movie is set in Japan in 1640-1641. A Buddhist inquisitor, Mokichi, is torturing and killing Christians, who must step on a stove carving of Jesus as proof of committing apostasy (i.e., renouncing their faith). Taking it as proof, Father Rodrigues torments over whether to apostasy in order to save the Japanese Christians whom Mokichi is having killed serially until the priest renounces his faith. I submit that the assumption of proof rests on dubious grounds, so Rodrigues is actually faced with a false dichotomy.

When Fathers Garupe and Rodrigues arrive in Japan, Mokichi is already torturing and killing priests as well as lay Christians. As a Buddhist priest, he is a hyprocrite, for Buddha’s main object was to end suffering. The Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path are geared to the cessation of suffering. To be sure, Mokichi assumes that the peaceful ends justify his hypocritical means, but the amount of the film devoted to the suffering tells the audience that Mokichi is fine with inflicting suffering on an ongoing basis. The Buddha would have hardly recognized his follower. Jesus’ line to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan!” would likely apply.

By the time Rodrigues is captured, the inquisitor has decided that his old strategy of killing priests had not worked. So the last priest in Japan is spared, though not of undergoing the agony of severe suffering. Mokichi tells Rodrigues that the suffering of the Japanese Christians will end only when the last priest puts a foot on the stone carving of Jesus. The Buddhist priest is misleading in telling the Catholic priest, “You are responsible for their suffering.”

I fault Rodrigues for uncritically believing that he is not only causing the deaths, but also would lose his faith by being disloyal to Jesus merely by stepping on a stone carving. Mokichi is responsible for the torture and deaths because he orders it. Furthermore, stepping on a stone that has a carving that looks vaguely like Jesus does not count as the renounciation of a faith, unless, perhaps, that stone is treated as an idol, which is apostacy. All of the Christians in the film erroneously treat the carved engraving as an idol because they assume that by touching it in a culturally-derogatorily way, their own faiths will somehow be lost. A person can step on a stone and still retain beliefs and values, especially if they are valued as intensely as Rodrigues does in the film.

Rodrigues places a very high value on imitating Christ, especially in regard to the Passion story in the New Testament. It is almost as if the young priest wants to die because then he would be imitating Jesus. In watching the film, I had the sense that Rodrigues is even prodding Mokichi to resort back to killing priests so the last priest would feel the satisfaction of following Christ, going even as far as assuming an identity with Jesus. While drinking at a stream, Rodrigues’s reflection, which are through the priest's point of view, goes quickly back and forth between a picture of Jesus’ face to his own. It is then that Rodrigues is captured. It is also from about that point that he looks like Jesus (i.e., long hair and a beard). 

The identity does not hold, even in how Rodrigues would want to die if murdered. Jesus chose to die to redeem humanity from its distance from the Father due to prior sins. Humanity would not be redeemed from Rodrigues voluntarily or involuntarily being a martyr. The assumed for identity would thus constitute self-idolatry.

Furthermore, Rodrigues seems to reduce following Christ to dying as he does in the New Testament. Baptizing, preaching, hearing confessions are other ways, as are valuing and practicing self-giving love (i.e., agape). This sort of love can be practiced by universal benevolence, or neighbor love, rather than only or even primarily in being willing to give up one’s life for one’s faith.

Rodrigues does not have to give up his life; the Buddhist priest tells him as much. I would add, however, that Rodrigues does not have to give up his faith by stepping on a stone. The faith is in his heart, not on his foot or in the stone. That is to say, the stone does not have to be, and should not be, treated as if it were an idol having a religious significance. Rodrigues need not go through his internal turmoil as Mokichi continues to torture and kill Christians until Rodrigues relents and steps on the stone. In fact, common sense as well as Jesus’ teaching and example in preempting the suffering of others (e.g., the prostitute) should easily occur to a priest or any disciple for that matter. Step on the stone and people won’t suffer and die—doesn’t seem like a difficult choice as long as the Christian values Jesus’ teachings and lived-out (rather than dying) example. It is not necessary that Christians suffer; it is not something that Jesus demands, for he willingly suffers to take away the taint of sin.

Therefore, in being all too willing to die for his faith, Rodrigues overstates his own value in that regard, and is too willing to end his life too early. This is a criticism that Nietzsche makes of Jesus, but in that case the question of Jesus’ young age at death is relevant in the extent to which Christ vicariously sacrifices himself on the Cross—a sufficient sacrifice being necessary to appease the Father, who is offended by sin. Nietzsche seems to deemphasize this vicarious satisfaction in favor of the good Jesus does while alive on Earth. Ironically, in putting such an emphasis in faith with identifying with Jesus in dying, Rodrigues misses the opportunity to pay more attention to what Jesus preaches and does in his ministry as a basis for faith. In other words, valuing and attempting to practice universal benevolence, including to one’s detractors and enemies, can be a solid basis—more so than a stone—of faith. Not even the last priest can save humanity from its sins by dying in imitation of Christ.     

Milton's Secret

On the surface, Milton's Secret (2016) is a story about a financially-stressed family getting a visit from grandpa, who brings something unusual with him (besides his tea). Because Donald Sutherland really liked the character,  he agreed to play Grandpa Howard. Grandpa has a secret, which he shares with his grandson, Milton. It fundamentally changes not only him, but also his parents. Howard brings Zen Buddhism and alchemy to his family.  That the fictional (narrative) film explains and relates the two and renders both so transparent for the audience says something about the potential of the medium itself to handle abstractions and relate them to life.

The first hint that Grandpa Howard is a bit different comes just after he arrives and is eating out with Milton and his parents, Jane and Bill. After Howard takes out his tea packet and makes his own tea at the table in the restaurant, Milton asks how the tea tastes. “It tastes like tranquility; it tastes like calm,” Howard replies. What follows in the rest of the film is how to achieve tranquility and calm without the tea. In providing his recipe, Grandpa Howard essentially raises Milton out of his childhood. “When I was a man, I put away childish things.” It’s from Corinthians 13,” Howard says to Milton on his friend Timmy now going by Tim. The reference is to spiritual adulthood, which in any religion is distinct from what most practitioners believe and practice. The Gnostics in ancient Egypt, some of whom were Christian, emphasized esoteric knowledge (i.e., knowledge that is known, or can be known, only to a few).  The film is most significant because it makes such knowledge transparent for a mass audience rather than just a few people. Indeed, for a film to concentrate on a higher level of understanding is itself significant.

In real life, people not willing to accept or able to comprehend esoteric knowledge tend to resist it and even treat it’s holders with passive or even active aggression. In the film, Bill is the skeptic. “You have to be skeptical of your skepticism,” Howard relies to Milton on Bill’s skepticism of Howard’s lifestyle.  It is not uncommon for skeptics of knowledge they themselves do not have to go after superficial differences, out of a deeper resentment. In fact, being oriented to superficialities or trifles is itself an obstacle to giving up childish things.

Howard’s esoteric knowledge begins as Milton is suffering from being bullied at school. His parents are also focused not on their son, but on their momentary financial hardship. What Howard says to Milton applies equally to his parents.  Your thoughts on your problem: “They are houseguests and they all go eventually.” Sitting outside with Grandpa Howard, Milton asks, “Why is my cat always happy, no wonder what?” Howard replies in a way that tells us the source of his knowledge.  “I have lived with many Zen masters. Each and every one of them was a cat. Contrary to humankind, cats can let go of whatever happened yesterday and don’t worry about tomorrow and next week; they’re just here. . . . I’m not in the future now, or in the past; I’m here in the present with you.” This is essentially the Buddhist notion of mindfulness.

The Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh, who was banished from his native Vietnam for more than five decades, has been typically mentioned along with the Dalai Lama as “one of the two most influential Buddhist monks of the modern era.”[1] Hanh is particularly noted for having spread the concept of mindfulness around the world. Mindfulness is “a mental state achieved by focusing . . . awareness on the present moment.”[2] Through practice, people can “overcome their anger and negative emotions.”[3] When a person’s attention is entirely in the present, anger about the past and worrying about the future are eclipsed.

Practically speaking, being focused on the moment means less chance of getting distracted and having an accident. Interestingly, not having forgiven oneself for having hurt other people can also be a distraction that keeps one in the past rather than in the tranquility of the moment. Howard answers Milton on having had to kill people in war: “Taking a life, Milton, causing hurt to someone, steals a piece of you and then you have to try to find a way to forgive yourself for it. But you have to try because without forgiveness, the past determines who you are in the present.” It is not uncommon to find adults who grew up in abusive dysfunctional families to be caught up in the past out of resentment, which in the absence of apologies can be difficult to shed, when self-forgiveness instead may hold the key to being in the moment and finally losing the past.

In Buddhist thought, the self is not an entity. Hence a person can be thought of as whatever the person puts into himself or herself. Howard gives Milton an empty beaker as a birthday present.  At parent’s night, Milton speaks on the War Between the States.  “It’s the war we’re all in, Milton says. We argue so much, and hold grudges. “There was a civil war raging right inside of me. Then my grandfather came to visit and he told me how to end the war,” using a beaker. “Imagine that you are a beaker. Whatever you decide to put in it, that’s who you are. If you fill it with hate and fear, pour in your worries about past and future, you’re probably going to be miserable.” If you fill your beaker “with love and caring, miracles can happen. That’s the secret. We all can change. You just have to turn the empty space into gold. When you do that, the war is over. We are all alchemists.” Howard tells Milton afterward:  You had a beaker filled “with anger and fear, but then you added beauty and you added a little bit of mischief. That, my dear, Milton, is alchemy.” If the self itself is not an entity, then what we refer to as a person is whatever that person has put into “the beaker,” which in itself is empty as well as transparent. Referring back to Milton’s talk, moreover, Howard tells his young grandson that he can again let his heart make sense of what his mind couldn’t figure out. “No matter where you are, no matter who you’re with, you hold the secret.”

---

1. Richard C. Paddock, “After Half a Century, ‘An Apostle of Peace’ Goes Home to Vietnam,” The New York Times, May 17, 2019.

2. Ibid.

3. Ibid.