What is enlightenment? What does it mean, and how can you find it? In the movie The Little Buddha by Bernardo Bertolucci, it explains the relation between people, cultures and the ways that enlightenment effects everyone. "...If the string is too tight it will break. If it's too loose it won't play," this quote is from the movie and inspired my essay as well as many others. In this movie it is a very important quote, it changed Siddhartha's life plan completely, and it was something the monks talked a lot about. Balance is a very important thing in this movie and life its self. The question is through life's journey is, is it possible to live a balanced enlightened life?
This movie is full of questions and answers, but the younger generations in this movie are very unbalanced and frazzled about life. An example is Siddhartha's triumph over his father's wishes to stay within the castles' walls and not experience life.
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Siddhartha Gautama meditating.
Statue representing Siddhartha Gautama.When Siddhartha realizes there is more out there, he becomes very stressed only because he is an older teenagers and has never heard of death, poverty, or even old age. When he realizes it, he becomes upset with his father for not showing him the real world, and hiding it all from him. Siddhartha is someone that is not enlightened. Obviously, he had no idea there is an this outside world. Dean Conrad is very stressed out in the beginning of this movie, because of a hard day of work and comes home and has a drink. This is another sign of a way to avoid reality and not have the enlightenment that one achieves through the experiencing life and through the samsara cycles of life. The last example of this stressful, unenlightened lifestyle is comparing...