Zen

At the start of the thirteenth century in Japan, a young monk finds no satisfaction in any of the teachings he has learned and travels to China to look for an answer. There he encounters Zen thought, and on returning home he founds the Japanese Zen school. The path he teaches is simple and difficult: sitting. Through the long sitting practice called zazen a person can reach the awakening within themselves, needing neither books nor intermediaries. Banmei Takahashi's film tells Dogen's life in a period broken apart by wars and epidemics, showing what it meant to build a quiet teaching in a country where nobody knew where to ask for help. The film does not try to explain Zen; it shows the practice: the posture, the breath, the repetition. Its rhythm is deliberately slow. Kantaro Nakamura plays a Dogen entirely without display.