Pedestrian Dharma: Slowness and Seeing in Tsai Ming-Liang’s Walker
Religions June 26, 2018 DOI: 10.3390/rel9070200 (opens in new tab) via DOAJ
Summary
AI-generated from the abstractA short film by Tsai Ming-Liang uses Zen walking meditation to counter the excesses of modern urban life. Through detailed analysis of the film and premodern Buddhist sources, the paper argues that the film's slowness and simplicity offer a prophetic critique of the contemporary metropolis and present contemplative attentiveness as a therapeutic resource. The film cultivates shifts in viewer perspective, transforming places of distraction or mundanity into sites of beauty, wonder, and liberation.
Study at a glance
| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Keywords | Buddhism and modernity Contemplative studies Kinhin Slow cinema Transnational chinese cinema |
| Citations | 5 |
| Key finding | Argues that Walker presents slowness and simplicity as prophetic counterpoints against urban excess and offers contemplative attentiveness as a therapeutic resource for modern life. |
Abstract
This paper studies the ways that Walker, a short film by the Malaysian-Taiwanese auteur Tsai Ming-Liang, visualizes the relationship between Buddhism and modernity. Via detailed film analysis as well as attention to sources in premodern Buddhist traditions, this paper argues that its filmic performance of Zen walking meditation serves two functions: To present slowness and simplicity as prophetic counterpoints against the dizzying excesses of the contemporary metropolis; and to offer contemplative attentiveness as a therapeutic resource for life in the modern world. By instantiating and cultivating critical shifts in viewerly perspective in the manner of Buddhist ritual practice, Walker invites us to envision how a place of frenetic distraction or pedestrian mundaneness might be transfigured into a site of beauty, wonder, and liberation.