Published by Justin Lewis-Anthony on 15 Mar 2008 at 04:54 pm
3MT : The Dark Side and Righteous Anger
The world of Star Wars was profoundly influenced by Buddhism, and in no greater way than its treatment of anger. For Christians, as we begin the commemoration of Holy Week, this version of anger is far removed from what we see in the biblical witness and in the last week of Jesus’s life.
This week I introduced my younger daughters to the wonders of Star Wars: the original trilogy, not the revisionism of the “prequels”. They have thrilled to the battle scenes, cooed over the Ewoks and R2D2, hissed at Darth Vader and the Emperor and cheered on the heroes. But as we watched the final film, The Return of the Jedi, I found myself puzzling about the choices, or rather the lack of choices, George Lucas allowed his hero, Luke Skywalker. Throughout the film Luke is warned against succumbing to the “dark side” of the Force, a warning made all the more stark when he learns this was his father’s fate. You will be corrupted by the dark side if you allow yourself to be subject to:
Anger, fear, aggression. The dark side are they. Once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny.
The advice given by Yoda, the master of the good side, is reinforced by the Master of the Dark Side, the Emperor:
Good. I can feel your anger. I am defenceless. Take your weapon! Strike me down with all your hatred, and your journey towards the dark side will be complete.
This is what I mean by the lack of choices Lucas gives his creation: to act in any way in this situation proves that Luke is motivated by anger, and anger is both the expression of and the gateway to the dark side. Only by remaining passive can Luke save himself (at the cost of the death of his friends and the defeat of the rebel alliance).
Here Lucas shows the influence of Buddhism upon his philosophy and system of thought (if that is not too grand a term for the Star Wars universe). For Buddhism, allowing yourself to become involved in anger, feelings or actions, ties you into the dukkha, the impermanence, unsatisfactoriness, and suffering of the cosmos, an involvement that will hold you back from the goal of Enlightenment. As Vishvapani put it on Thought for the Day this week:
Buddhist teachers say that if someone feels anger towards you that will hurt them; if you feel anger in response that hurts you. So you should stick to your values whatever happens. It’s good advice. It’s something to hold to when you feel under attack.1
And yet for Christians, tomorrow is Palm Sunday, and with it we begin the commemoration of Jesus’s last week in Jerusalem. His first action of the week was to enter the Temple and clear the courtyard of the money changers: an act of righteous anger which cemented the implacable opposition between the Jesus movement and the Temple authorities. Should Jesus’s disciples have taken him to one side and warned him that such anger would send him down the road to the dark side, to allow expression of his anger would complete his surrender, that feeling anger would do nothing but hurt him? No, of course not, because (curiously enough to say), Jesus’s disciples were neither Buddhists nor Jedis. They were Jews, who were brought up with the idea of righteous anger, the anger of God, his implacable and inevitable reaction to human sinfulness (Romans 1:18
).
Of course, there is righteous anger, and unrighteous anger. The one is the reaction of God’s mercy to injustice; the other is an expression of human sinfulness. It requires a degree of spiritual and moral maturity to make the distinction between the two, and to practice that distinction. It is easier in many ways, simply to forbid the expression and existence of anger: but it wouldn’t be true to the nature of God and it wouldn’t be true to the scriptural witness. Anger according to this biblical understanding, is the beginning of justice: it is the first step, not on the road to the dark side, but on the road to the recreation, the healing, of the cosmos.
- Vishvapani, Thought for the Day, 14 March 2008 [↩]
yoda on 19 Jun 2008 at 3:45 am #
There is another option in buddhism and that is the Bodhisatta or Bodhisatva Way, in that way Luke can kill the emperor, save his friends and stop an evil system with the complete knowledge that he is going to reap that evil eventually (harming the sentient being the emperor is) knowing that eventually he is going to suffer but he is not afraid of that suffering since he has taken the Bodhisatta Vow and knows that he is “protected” by the Dhamma, the Buddha teaches that a persons that takes that Holly Vow of the Bodhisattas is going to be protected by the dhamma, even if the reaping of that negative actions happens in another life. For me Jesus was a great Bodhisatta, he was dying, he has been tortured in his body but his mind kept pristine. That is how the Dhamma protects, the Dhamma (if you are a Buddhist) is not the religion of Gautama the Shakya is a universal set of conduct internal and external that Gautama discovered and works even if you don’t know about Gautama the wise of the Shakyas.