Mekhong Full Moon

A rather atypical buddhist film or even a religious one where the director touches on blind faith and questions the suitability of lying in Buddhism by the very own Buddhist monk.

The story was about an annual folk event where the Naga of the Mekhong river will breath fireballs up the sky to worship the Buddha. This phenomena arouses the interest of the scientific community and scientist comes up with analysis and mainly hypothesis on the nature of fireballs. The fireballs were actually made by the local monks in hope to keep the tradition. Being haunted by his own conscious, the lead gave up the task of diving and planting the "fireball" setup on the river bed. The film also shows numerous folk belief in a very humorous way.

At the first half of the show, I confess I did question on what meanings the film wants to deliver. But something shook me when I realised that the monk despite knowing that lying was bad, he persist in keeping the culture.

Buddhism is all about attaining the wisdom to see the truth and Buddha even states that we should question any teachings even to those that were said by him. But from the show, I got another perspective of what is truth. To us Buddhist, the law of Karma is the truth. But to a Christian or any other religion, its not the truth.

I remembered on my younger days, I would just strike on followers of any religion and tries to break their faith (unintentionally of course). I came to realise that if some faith or belief that is dearest to that someone, then don't argue over it with them. We might just be breaking their source of confidence or even reason to be alive.

Decades ago, a flat world is the truth and now a spherical slightly eliptical world is the truth. The truth is nothing when it is not the truth of the perceiver. As a Buddhist, when we are asked by someone or our parents to follow some traditions, non buddhist prayers and burning of joss sticks, indeed it might carry little Buddhist ideas. But by doing what we are told, we respected our parents and establishes a hormonious family. And most importantly, we helped to settle our parents troubled mind.

Maybe towards personal cultivations, we should earnestly follows the Buddhist way. But towards interacting with others, we should always spare a thought for others and be flexible in our reaction towards the matter. Wisdom could only be shared and not through force.