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There is a thought-provoking film in terms of Buddhist philosophy. It is called "In Time" and it reminds one of both "Matrix" and "1984" (see film reviews below). Some film critics complained that the story line was not very well developed and the movie not so well made, but if one approaches it from a Buddhist perspective, many things which are unsaid in the film can be read between the lines and make good sense -- whether the film makers intended it or not.
It is only necessary to replace one central word -- "time" -- with another word that is widely used in Buddhism, namely "merit" (puñña).
In the early teachings of the Buddha, he emphasises the quality of our intention (cetana) which leads us to think, speak or act in skilful (kusala) or unskilful (akusala) ways. By training our mind we can cultivate wholesome intentions in meditation up to the stage where we stop identifying with the entire kammic process and develop dispassion towards it. The liberated person (arahant) thus goes beyond merit and demerit and reaches the goal of Nibbana, which is like a flame going out when no more fuel is added to it.
In the later Buddhist teachings which have developed a few centuries after his passing away, the emphasis has shifted from the present-moment intention to a more elaborate theory of accumulating "good kamma" which will guarantee happiness and prosperity in the future, as well as final liberation with many desirable side-effects. The Buddha's own Awakening in this lifetime was explained as the result of accumulating incredible amounts of spiritual qualities (parami) over countless lifetimes in the past. Similar models of personal development, according to a particular strong wish made at the beginning of the long process, have been ascribed to other arahants as well. (See Jataka and Apadana stories in the Tipitaka.)
In the Theravada commentaries and other texts that were added even later on, the idea of "transferring merit" to others has appeared and has played a big role in the popular Buddhist customs ever since. "Merit" came to be regarded as a kind of commodity that can be gained and magnified and shared according to one's resources: those who were born in fortunate circumstances or privileged families (itself the result of past merit) can engage in merit-making activities such as the construction of stupas and temples, which require the use of private funds and family wealth. These days it is common to judge the amount of merit purely by external factors, such as the amount of money spent on making offerings to the Sangha. Merit-making has become ritualized to a large extent, and also the transferring of merit follows a certain established ritual pattern in order to be effective. In this way Buddhism has returned to the old ways of Brahmanism which has spread from India to other SE Asian countries and influenced their cultures significantly.
In the movie, human society is divided into time-zones for those with little merit, medium merit, or big merit. To cross from one zone into another is possible, but one has to show that one has enough "time" to spend there. Typically, however, people stay in the time-zone to which they belong (due to their past merit). The ordinary working class are living in a ghetto which is not safe and where violence occurs: such is the fate of the less fortunate ones who can barely manage to survive from their low wages, and if they spend more "time" on food and living costs than they can afford, they will simply "time out" (i.e. their merit is exhausted, Thai: หมดบุญ) and die. So they try to borrow "time" from others or get a free transfer of merit from someone (which is similar to performing religious ceremonies), but everyone is in the same boat and spare "time" is hard to find. There are, however, institutions called Time Lenders who will give you "time" that you later have to pay back with interest. These are the real merit capitalists, and they live in another time-zone which is like a heavenly realm with refined sensual pleasures to be enjoyed. They have thousands and millions of years on their hands, and there is even a casino in which "time" can be gambled on. The inhabitants of this time-zone can be seen as the gods or divine rulers (the Pali word deva can apply to both) who can live practically forever as long as they keep re-generating their merit. For this purpose, they maintain a hierarchical social system in which those with little merit have to depend on them and cannot achieve any social mobility upwards (i.e. one can only pray to God and wait for his grace). The billionaire Time Lender can be seen as Maha Brahma, the divine being who has literally become "drunk with merit" (Thai: เมาบุญ) and mistakenly believes that he is immortal and can create the world according to his wishes. The struggle of the heroes against the anonymous system is like the rebellious attempt to break free of the kammic patterns which keep samsara rolling on and on, dividing beings into various classes (kammam satte vibhajati). The final scene in which they enter a huge white building is similar to the theme of Kafka's "The Castle": they have finally identified the seat of the Lord of the Castle from which all the sinister operations are controlled. Are they going to realize Awakening and remove the veil of ignorance (avijja) forever?
Gavesako Bhikkhu
In Time - film reviews
And so it was with interest that I found myself watching a presentation for Niccol's new film In Time at Comic-Con in San Diego at the weekend. The movie, which stars Justin Timberlake and Amanda Seyfried, is set in a world in which time has replaced money as accepted currency, and in which everybody stops ageing at 25. The cast is impeccable, with Mad Men's Vincent Kartheiser and Cillian Murphy also on board in villainous roles.
How do the "timedollars" work? Well, everybody has a kind of electronic digital countdown on their arms, a slightly silly film-making conceit, but an effective method of reminding the cinemagoer just how much time they have left on the planet. Once the clock runs out, their bodies self-destruct, but they can buy, earn or beg extra time units to – in theory – live forever should they be "rich" enough. Nobody ever grows physically older than 25, so it's possible to have lived for more than a century without picking up so much as a wrinkle. A cup of coffee might set you back a few days, and the price goes up in more expensive areas. A poor person spending time in a rich district might therefore run out of time in a matter of hours unless he or she was prepared to live pretty frugally.
The "sizzle reel" from Comic-Con has been posted online, and we've reproduced it above for your viewing pleasure. The only thing that slightly bothers me is that Niccol seems to have gone for a pretty generic fugitive-on-the-run aesthetic, with lots of gun fights and other stereotypical action beats to offset the clever stuff. The film feels more commercial than his previous sci-fi efforts, though it's more than possible the reel has over-emphasised the crash-bang-wallop angle.
"We talked about the idea that we're all searching for the fountain of youth so to speak," said Timberlake at Comic-Con. "What would happen if we, through science, could actually achieve looking young and living forever? What Andrew so brilliantly created with that was the juxtaposition of obviously the risk of overpopulation. For lack of a better term, the establishment dehumanising us by regulating our lives and making time the currency."
What I like about the movie is that it examines a number of current societal trends and imagines what might happen if they developed to their logical conclusion, just as great science fiction should. Already in 2011, time is more important than money to many people, while overpopulation is an issue to the extent that countries such as China have been restricting growth artificially for decades. It's probably only a matter of time before scientists work out how to halt the ageing process – how will we work out what to do with all those people if nobody ever dies? In Time offers an intriguing suggestion.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/filmblog/2011/jul/29/in-time-andrew-niccol
In a non-descript future, the ageing gene has been switched off: the body's age is capped at 25 years, and then it's up to the individual to earn more time to live. Therefore, the rich live for centuries, while the poor live literally day to day. Time has become currency: a coffee might cost you five minutes, a car a few months. People work eight hours to earn a few days, if they're lucky. Time literally ismoney.
Will Salas (Justin Timberlake) is one of those poor people. Salas slaves away at a factory, putting together the stamp-like contraptions that add or subtract time from the ticking LED clocks that glow green in everyone's wrists. He lives with his mother, Rachael (Olivia Wilde), who is also a slave to the wage.
In the ghetto, having a few weeks on the clock is considered living large. Consequently, its residents find themselves lending each other chunks of time just to get by. An adorable local urchin bails Will up with a bell-like "You got a minute?" and he, being a generous sort, replies "Take five" in approximately the eleventy millionth line of time-centric dialogue.
Will's best friend Borel (Johnny Galecki) drinks to allay the pain of their hardscrabble existence, and it's at a local dive bar that Salas meets Henry Hamilton (Matt Bomer), a rich man who's burning through a century like there's no tomorrow.
When a bunch of Minutemen, led by Fortis (Alex Pettyfer), try to fight Hamilton for his time, Will leaps into action and hides him away in the industrial district. It turns out Hamilton has already been alive for nearly a century, and despite Will's protestations, transfers his time to Will while he sleeps (writing "DON'T WASTE MY TIME" on the window before disappearing).
Next thing you know Will is wanted for Hamilton's "murder", and Timekeeper Raymond Leon (Cillian Murphy) is on the case. Will crosses the time-zones until he reaches New Greenwitch, where the rich hang out - if he stays in the ghetto, the Minutemen will probably do him in.
He hits the casino, where it's oddly comforting to hear that even in this dystopian future, wan muzak versions of Astrud Gilberto's So Nice still soundtrack the high rollers lounge. While ballin' outta control over the poker table, Will meets the ultra-rich businessman Philippe Weis (Vincent Kartheiser) and his over-protected daughter, Sylvia (Amanda Seyfried). Next thing you know Will and Sylvia are on the lam, but time is of the essence and they find themselves running down the clock so... oh, you get the idea.
http://www.thevine.com.au/entertainment/movie-reviews/in-time-movie-review20111027.aspx
"In Time" takes place in a future where the aging gene automatically stops at 25, so it's a world that truly does belong to the "young." It's also a world of hurt, because just how long life extends beyond that magic number depends on how much time you can beg, borrow, buy or steal.
Time is money, literally the coin of the realm. And once you hit 25, roughly that point in life when your frontal lobe matures and you totally know how to do your hair, the race begins. Life is bought one day, one hour, even one second at a time. Glow-in-the-dark numbers on your forearm (not-so-subtle echoes of German concentration camp counting) keep track of time left in a second-by-second countdown. Tick, tick, tick.
You can hand over your time with a sort of secret handshake, which is a little too easy and feels like a cheat. Nearly every twist and turn of the plot seems designed to remind of that most fundamental truth — every moment alive puts you one step closer to death. In this new age it's called "timing out," a very neat and tidy process — too neat and tidy. So the tension started by all that ticking too quickly drains away.
Scientists may have figured out how to stop aging, but avarice is still a problem, which sets in motion the action. The police police time to make sure no one is getting it illegally, with the main Timekeeper Raymond Leon (played by a steel-jawed Murphy), who we learn is really 50. Don't you wish. As is Wilde, who plays Rachel Salas, mom to Timberlake's Will. Did I mention this is science fiction?
There are moguls who are mean and have more time than God, which they bank in banks. Chief among them is a calculatingly evil Philippe Weis ("Mad Men's" Vincent Kartheiser, well-turned-out here too), with daughter Sylvia (Seyfried) the apple of Daddy's eye — although whether he loves her or time more will be tested. There are regular bad guys, time thieves called Minutemen, led by Alex Pettyfer, who seems to be getting a little too comfortable in bad-guy roles ("Beastly," "Tormented"), as Fortis. Meanwhile, inflation is rampant; the class divide is growing ever wider; the world is ripe for an action hero. Cue Timberlake.
http://articles.latimes.com/2011/oct/28/entertainment/la-et-in-time-20111028
In the film, he breaks the last known cliche that rooted for equality; that no matter how rich or poor one was, everyone was equal in one respect--we all eventually die. He asks the question, what if someday we figure out how not to die? What would humans do? Would it lead to equality, or merely replace one unequal social structure with another?
Though set in a dystopian futuristic ghetto, this is a story of our times. Time becomes a metaphor for the unequal distribution of wealth in our own present.
"For a few to be immortal, many must die", a line from the film, can be replaced with: for a few to be insanely rich, many must be made poor. When we look around, that is exactly the state of our world today that is governed by a 'Darwinian Capitalism' as Niccol points out.
There is a structure, a system that has been built that causes great inequity and misery in the world for most while a few flourish. The rich do their best to preserve this system, since they depend on it. The poor, have no option, but to occasionally rise in revolt, like the French and Russian revolutions of the past and 'Arab Spring' and 'Occupy Wall Street' movements now.
http://movies.ndtv.com/movie_Review.aspx?id=671
Short video previews:
http://www.youtube.com/user/InTimeMovie?feature=relchannel
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Merit (Sanskrit puṇya, Pāli puñña, Thai บุญ) is a concept in Buddhism. It is that which accumulates as a result of good deeds, acts or thoughts and that carries over to later in life or to a person's next life. Such merit contributes to a person's growth towards liberation. Merit can be gained in a number of ways.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merit_%28Buddhism%29
Pattidāna: lit. 'giving of the acquired', i.e. 'transference of merit.' Though in the older texts very seldom mentioned e.g. A VII, 50, it is, however, a widespread custom in all Buddhist countries. It is presumed that moral merit, especially that acquired through giving food, can be transferred to others, apparently for the reason that one's own good actions may become to others, especially to departed relatives and friends reborn in the ghost realm, an inducement to a happy and morally advantageous state of mind. Transference of merit is advocated though without mentioning the term patti-dāna in the Tirokudda Sutta Khp. and Petavatthu and its Com. Khp. Tr.. It is one of the ten 'bases of meritorious action' puññakiriyavatthu, called there pattānuppadāna. (Nyanatiloka.Manual of Buddhist Terms and Doctrines, Buddhist Publication Society, first edition 1952)
(๖) ปัตติทาน
คือ ทำบุญด้วยการแบ่งความดีที่ตนทำแล้วให้ผู้อื่นพลอยปลาบปลื้ม
และได้รับความดีนั้นไปด้วย เช่น การแผ่และอุทิศส่วนบุญส่วนกุศล
หรือเมื่อทำบุญหรือความดีใดๆ ก็บอกให้ผู้อื่นได้พลอยปีติยินดี
และอนุโมทนาบุญนั้นๆ ไปด้วยกัน
บุญที่แท้
http://www.khonnaruk.com/html/phra/boon/boon-1.html
Merit-making & Transference of Merit: Are we getting it right? ทำบุญ
http://www.buddhistchannel.tv/index.php?id=6,10554,0,0,1,0
Making, Using and Transferring Merit
Money, Sex, War, Karma: Notes for a Buddhist Revolution by David Loy
"Trapped in Time"
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=UT1kdj0pGZkC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA28#v=onepage&q&f=false
Revisioning Karma - about "transferring merit" (parināmana) to other beings which is a common Mahayana practice that also influenced Theravada later
Inviting others to rejoice in something meritorious that one is doing is called pattidāna. Buddhaghosa in the Khuddakapāṭha Atthakathā and Dhammapāla in the Petavatthu Atthakathā both deny that it is possible "that action done by one gives fruit for another" (na aññena kataṃ kammaṃ aññassa phaladaṃ hoti).
http://www.abhidhamma.org/forums/lofiversion/index.php?t118.html
Theravada theory of kamma according to Abhidhammattha Sangaha
iii. Fourfold Kamma (29)
§ 7.
(i) With respect to function there are four kinds of Kamma, namely,
(a) Reproductive Kamma (30),
(b) Supportive Kamma (31),
(c) Obstructive Kamma (32), and
(d) Destructive Kamma (33).
(ii) With respect to the order in which the effect of Kamma takes place, there are four kinds of Kamma, namely,
(a) Weighty Kamma (34),
(b) Proximate Kamma (35),
(c) Habitual Kamma (36), and
(d) Reserve Kamma (37).
(iii) With respect to the time of taking effect, there are four kinds of Kamma-namely,
(a) Immediately Effective Kamma (38),
(b) Subsequently Effective Kamma, (c)
Indefinitely Effective Kamma, and (d)
Defunct Kamma.
(iv) With respect to the place in which effect takes place, there are four kinds of Kamma, namely,
(a) Immoral Kamma,
(b) Moral Kamma pertaining to the Sense-sphere,
(c) Moral Kamma pertaining to the Rūpa plane, and
(d) Moral Kamma pertaining to the Arūpa plane.
31. Upatthambhaka - that which comes near the Reproductive Kamma and supports it. It is either good or bad, and it assists or maintains the action of the Reproductive Kamma in the course of one's lifetime. Immediately after the conception till the death moment, this Kamma steps forward to support the Reproductive Kamma. A moral Supportive Kamma assists in giving health, wealth, happiness, etc., to the person concerned. An immoral Supportive Kamma, on the other hand, assists in giving pain, sorrow, etc., to the person born with an immoral Reproductive Kamma as, for instance, to a beast of burden.
32. Upapīdaka - Obstructive or Counteractive Kamma which, unlike the previous one, tends to weaken, interrupt and retard the fruition of the Reproductive Kamma. For instance, a person born with a good Reproductive Kamma maybe subject to various ailments, etc., thus preventing him from enjoying the blissful results of his good action. An animal, on the other hand, who is born with a bad Reproductive Kamma, may lead a comfortable life by getting good food, lodging, etc., as a result of his good Counteractive Kamma preventing the fruition of the evil Reproductive Kamma.
33. Upaghātaka - According to the Law of Kamma the potential energy of the Reproductive Kamma could be nullified by a more powerful opposing Kamma of the past, which, seeking an opportunity, may quite unexpectedly operate, just as a counteractive powerful force can obstruct the path of a flying arrow and bring it down to the ground. Such an action is called Destructive Kamma, which is more effective than the previous two in that it not only obstructs but also destroys the whole force. This Destructive Kamma also may be either good or bad.
§ 11. The advent of death (51) is fourfold, namely,
(i) through the expiration of the age-limit (52),
(ii) through the expiration of the (Reproductive) Kammic force (53)
(iii) through the (simultaneous) expiration of both (54), and
(iv) through (the intervention of a) Destructive Kamma (55).
Like decay, death too has two forms. One is the continual dissolution of matter which is invisible; the other is the visible form of death (marana), characterized by the vanishing of the life element, the heat element and consciousness.
Physical death may be due to one of the following four causes:
- Exhaustion of the reproductive karmic energy (kammakkhaya). The reproductive (janaka) kamma is responsible for the arising and continuation of the material phenomena essential to life. When the reproductive kamma is exhausted, the production of these vital phenomena ceases and death results.
- Expiration of the life span (ayukkhaya). Life in different planes of existence has its own maximum duration. When this maximum is reached, death occurs even if the reproductive karmic force is not exhausted. Any reproductive kamma left unexpended will re-materialize a new life in the same plane.
- Simultaneous exhaustion of the reproductive karmic energy and the expiration of the life span (ubhayakkhaya).
- The interference of a stronger opposing kamma (upacchedaka kamma), which obstructs the flow of the reproductive kamma, causing death before the life term expires. This cause accounts for sudden "untimely" deaths, seen especially in children.
The first three causes are responsible for "timely" deaths (kala marana), the fourth for "untimely" deaths (akala marana). The four may be illustrated by the extinguishing of an oil lamp, which may be due to any of four causes: exhaustion of the wick, exhaustion of the oil, simultaneous exhaustion of both wick and oil, or some extraneous cause like a gust of wind.
51. "Death is the temporary end of a temporary phenomenon." By death is meant the extinction of psychic life (jīvitindriya), heat (usma = tejodhātu), and consciousness (viññāna), of one individual in a particular existence. Death is not the complete annihilation of a being. Death in one place means birth in another place, just as, in conventional terms, the rising of the sun in one place means the setting of the sun in another place.
52. What are commonly understood to be natural deaths due to old age may be classed under this category. To each of the various planes of existence is naturally assigned a definite age-limit, irrespective of the potential energy of the Reproductive Kamma that has yet to run. One must, however, succumb to death when the maximum age-limit is reached. It may also be said that if the Reproductive Kamma is extremely powerful, the Karmic energy rematerializes itself on the same plane, or on some higher plane as in the case of the devas.
53. As a rule the thought, volition, or desire, which was extremely strong during lifetime becomes predominant at the moment of death, and conditions the subsequent birth. In this last thought-moment is present a special potentiality. When the potential energy of this Reproductive Kamma is exhausted, the organic activities of the material form, in which is corporealized the life-force, cease even before the approach of old age.
54. If a person is born at a time when the age-limit is 80 years, and he dies at 80 owing to the exhaustion of the potential force of his Reproductive Kamma, his death is due to the simultaneous expiration of both age and Kamma.
55. There are powerful actions which suddenly cut off the force of the Reproductive Kamma, even before the expiration of the life-term. A more powerful opposing force, for instance, can check the path of a flying arrow and bring it down to the ground. Similarly, a very powerful Kammic force of the past is capable of nullifying the potential energy of the dying reproductive (janaka)thought-moment, and thus destroy the life of a being. The death of Devadatta was due to an upacchedaka kamma which he committed during his lifetime.
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