Little Buddha (1993)

Ruocheng Ying: Lama Norbu

Photos 

Quotes 

• Lama Norbu : [Narrating]  One day Siddhartha heard an old musician on a passing boat speaking to his people.

  Old Musician : If you tighten the string too much it will snap and if you leave it too slack, it won't play.

  Lama Norbu : [continues narrating]  Suddenly, Siddhartha realized that these simple words held the great truth, and that in all these years he had been following the wrong path.

• Lama Norbu : There is no empty room when the soul is full... ... you learn that in a prison cell! *laughs*

• Jesse Conrad : Were you sleeping lama?

  Lama Norbu : No, I was meditating.

  Jesse Conrad : What's meditating?

  Lama Norbu : It is being totally quiet and relaxed, separating yourself from everything around you, setting your mind free like a bird, and you can then see your thoughts as if they were passing clouds

  [looks out the window of a flying plane] 

• Lama Norbu : I was just telling Jesse the story of Siddhartha.

  Dean Conrad : That's a beautiful story. A beautiful... myth.

  Lama Norbu : It is one way of telling the truth, and children seem to love it.

  Dean Conrad : Lama Norbu, I have great respect for your culture and your... religion. And I know about the invasion of Tibet, and the tragedies that happened. But I don't believe in reincarnation, and neither does my wife.

  Lama Norbu : [laughing softly]  Why should you?

  Lama Norbu : [Goes over and pours some tea into a porcelain cup]  In Tibet, we think of the mind and the body as the contents and the container.

  Lama Norbu : [Breaks the cup against the edge of the table; all the tea spills out]  Now, the cup is no longer a cup, but what is the tea?

  Dean Conrad : Still tea.

  Lama Norbu : Exactly! In the cup, on the table, or on the floor, it moves from one container to another, but it's still tea. Like the mind after death: it moves from one body to another, but it is still mind!

• [first lines] 

  Lama Norbu : Once upon a time, in a village in ancient India, there was a little goat and a priest. The priest wanted to sacrifice the goat to the gods. He raised him arm to cut the goat's throat, when suddenly the goat began to laugh. The priest stopped, amazed, and asked the goat, "why do you laugh? Don't you know I'm about to cut your throat?" "Oh yes," said the goat. "After 499 times dying and being reborn as a goat, I will be reborn as a human being." Then the little goat began to cry. The high priest said, "why now are you crying?" And the goat replied, "for you, poor priest. Five hundred lives ago I too was a high priest, and sacrificed goats to the gods." The priest dropped to his knees, saying, "forgive me, I beg. From now on I will be the guardian and protector of every goat in the land."

  [children laughing] 

  Lama Norbu : Now, what does this ancient tale teach us?

  Children : [in unison]  That no living creature must ever be sacrificed.

  Boy : What happened to the goat?

  Lama Norbu : Ah, yes. The goat - hmm - had many many lives as a human being. Until one day he turned into someone very strange indeed. Champa, show us something of your previous life...

  Champa : B-a-a-a-a-a

  [children all laughing] 

  Champa : B-a-a-a-a-a

• Lama Norbu : You see, my teacher, Lama Dorje, who was even a teacher of the Dalai Lama, towards the end of his life he felt he was needed in the West, to teach the Dharma, the 'Path Buddha'... so, he came to America, to Seattle, where he passed away nine years ago. We have been searching his reincarnation in many places. But now we think he might have been reborn, right here, as your son.

  Lisa Conrad : [Somewhat startled]  As Jesse?

  Lama Norbu : Yes.

  Kenpo Tenzin : Lama Dorje had a great sense of humor.

  [laughs]