"FEARLESS MOUNTAIN"– THE MOVIE—PART 1 of 2

Why on earth would anyone want to take time off (six months) from blogging? As bloggers know, blogging, like journal writing, is such a wonderful form of expression.

My answer would is, "to make a movie."

More than a year ago, I wrote an article for the Ukiah Daily Journal about a Buddhist monastery in Redwood Valley, about twenty miles north of here. A real estate agent was showing me a remote piece of land and on the way we passed a small bronze sign that read Abhayagiri Buddhist Monastery on a wall beside a road leading up to a forested mountain. The agent, Cindy Lindgren, took a moment off from her mission to sell land to inform me, "That’s where the monks live—the ones you see walking through town with begging bowls." That was my first introduction to the place, but all it took to pique my interest.

Although the land was beautiful I didn’t buy it. In order to reach it you had to cross a river which necessitated building a bridge before even before building a house.

But, in the big scheme of things, it seems the purpose of the trip to see the land was really to lead me to write a story for the newspaper, which in turn instigated the idea of making a movie.

After writing the article and getting to know the Abbot and some of the monks, the thought—a most innocent and simple one —popped into my head one day, "I should make a movie about the monastery." Because the thought was "my" thought and had sprung into "my" mind I assumed, of course that I was the one who was supposed to make the movie! As my friend Mike is fond of saying, "when a horse shows up on my property, I put a saddle on it and take it for a ride."

Sometime later (the process of making this movie has altered my concept of time—slowed it down—"extended it" might be the best way to put it) I received a call from my brother-in-law George. "How would you like to go into the movie making business?" he asked. He had owned a television studio in the Bay Area and had a building full of equipment—editing, sound, lights, etc. His thought was—and it seemed to be a good one—that he would handle the technical side of things and I would do the creative. He thought since I wrote features for the newspaper and was constantly meeting interesting people and going to interesting places, I could provide the subject matter. I thought, "of course, I could," and immediately suggested the idea of making a documentary about the Buddhist Monks at the Abhayagiri Monastery. After all, they were wonderful people, doing something a bit out of the ordinary. It might be an interesting subject for movie-goers.

George liked the idea and we were in business. Well, not really in business because we both wanted a kind of informal relationship in case things didn’t work out. So after saying yes to the relationship, I committed to purchasing the camera and Steadicam and some accessories—all the things necessary for the creative end. George invested in a state of the art editing system and software so we were suddenly in possession of everything we needed to make a movie using digital video, the accepted format for documentaries.

I approached Ajahn Pasanno, the co-Abbot of Abhayagiri. (Ajahn Amaro, the other co-Abbot was on a year-long sabbatical to India.) The other monks liked the idea and so…there we were, we had permission.

I wrote a script based on what I’d learned from writing my article which became the basis for the film. This was in January. As time would have it—"Buddhist time"—the monks were just starting their winter "Rains Retreat" which meant they would be in silence and not be available for interviews. But still, we would be free to film monks walking through the forest, get shots of their huts and whatever nature shots we needed—so although our time frame had been extended by three months, we were off and shooting.

To be continued…