The Dharma of Star Wars by Matthew Bortolin

Author:Matthew Bortolin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wisdom Publications

VII

NIRVANA AND THE WAY OF THE FORCE

“The Force is…an energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us and penetrates us. It binds the galaxy together.”

—OBI-WAN KENOBI IN A NEW HOPE

Yoda shows us that letting go doesn’t need to be a dramatic, painful, or emotional experience. Letting go of concepts doesn’t need to be life and death, even when they’re about life and death. Yoda has seen entire star systems plummet from peace into chaos. He has witnessed the Sith ascend to galaxy-wide domination and the Jedi crumble into ruin. He knows he has reached the end of his life and that his mortal enemies would mock his final words. Yet he is not attached to a vision of the way things should be. He does not despair his lost Republic, his dead Jedi, or his own failures. He knows twilight is upon him and night will soon fall. Yoda is able to let go because he sees through concepts of life and death. He sees the truth of “the way of things.” Seeing and abiding in that truth is the ultimate state of freedom—nirvana.

Luke Skywalker, when he faced Darth Vader in Cloud City while still a novice Jedi who had not yet understood “the way of things,” handles things much less gracefully.

“Obi-Wan never told you what happened to your father,” Darth Vader intones as Luke scrabbles away from the dark lord.

“He told me enough! He told me you killed him.” Luke reaches the end of the Cloud City gantry. There’s no escape from what’s to come.

“No,” Vader says. “I am your father.”

“No. No. That’s not true! That’s impossible!”

“Search your feelings. You know it to be true.”

Luke’s reaction is a thunderclap of despair. “No! No!”

Luke’s denial of the truth of his parentage was a moment of despair. Everything he believed in, the foundation of his faith and moral code, his very identity—they were all shattered by Vader’s calculated revelation. Luke responded poorly to despair—he fled from it. Leaping from the gantry, he sought escape in oblivion. For Luke, Vader’s words had rendered his existence, even his value for the universe, utterly meaningless. And Luke couldn’t bear it.

When we cling to our concepts about life as if they are reality, our world takes a fifty-story swan dive the moment those beliefs are stripped away. Luckily Cloud City still had weather vanes. The one that Luke tumbled upon saved him from death and gave the kid a second chance to gaze deeper into his despair and see nothingness was just another concept that diverted him from the truth.

To be clear, Luke’s concepts weren’t the trigger for his despair. Neither was the stripping away of them. It was his attachment to concepts, perceptions, and beliefs that caused him to fall to pieces when the truth behind his assumptions was revealed. Buddhist teachers since the Grand Jedi Master himself—the Buddha—have been urging people to let go of their attachments and get to the bottom of reality. When you reach the bottom you aren’t left with nothing—you’re left with the truth.

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