Keep the resources coming/Possible documentary angle?

Title: Analysis: North Carolina Christian group protests `new age' classes
Authors: MELISSA BLOCK
Source: All Things Considered (NPR); 10/25/2005
Accession Number: 6XN200510252009
Persistent link to this record: http://0-search.ebscohost.com.uncclc.coast.uncwil.edu:80/login.aspx?direct=true&db=nfh&AN=6XN200510252009&site=ehost-live
Database Newspaper Source

Here is a little segment from the article about Ms. Gunter, a teacher utilizing meditation techniques in her classroom. Jones is the reporter for NPR and Mr. Noble is the Chairman of Called2Action, a conservative Christian organization in Wake County, NC:

Mr. NOBLE: I think the number one thing for her was that it disturbed her children, and they were confused. And they're growing up in a Christian home, so they know, as a Christian, as a young Christian, where their source is for dealing with life and trouble. And this was all counter to that.

JONES: Christian parents, Noble says, would rather teach their children how to deal with stress by praying and reading the Bible at home. His group doesn't want public schools to promote any faith, Christian or otherwise. But while Gunter has written books about spirituality, she says she's not advocating any specific religion.

Ms. GUNTER: My whole thing is to get people to their own truth, so they can get to their own peace.

JONES: This isn't the first time parents have protested presentations like Gunter's. Two years ago a group of Christian parents in Aspen, Colorado, succeeded in eliminating all religious references from a yoga program in public schools. In the 1970s, courts in New Jersey banned transcendental meditation from classrooms. Attorney David Gibbs is representing Called2Action in this case. He has asked the Raleigh school district to come up with a policy to prevent programs like this from happening again.


I find this article interesting because I feel like sometimes the mass population (i'm very broadly generalizing here) of Christians or even just Americans find it easy to respect other beliefs and ways of life....until it becomes threatening. I would say that most Christian Americans consider Ghandi to be a amazing person whose actions greatly benefited the world; however, we don't even begin to follow in his non-violent footsteps in our country. Most people appreciate the Dali Lama and think he too his a respectable human being inspiring positive causes and effects in the world, but he meditates. And we want to ban things such as meditating in schools? Just sitting still for a little while to clear our minds? We think our children should be protected from such activities? What are we really so afraid of? Finding some better truth?


PS....When we went to the monastery, several people, several times, told me to take from my experience whatever I wished and throw the rest away. I didn't need to believe, accept, or follow anything that anyone said and to probe and question anything that I found to be faulty or untrue. Call it reverse psychology, but this is how I personally live my life. I question everything I find to be worth questioning, everything I think is too easy or too blindly accepted. In this sense, Buddhism is unlike Christianity and most other religions. It is a working religion, not a following religion. There is no take it or leave it attitude. I have read many books on Buddhism and yes I am personally interested in it as a religion to a certain extent, but what appeals to me the most is its philosophy of pushing me to personally search through my thoughts, emotions, and actions. This in order to discover and minimize the negative affects I have on myself and others.

This response has led me to a possible structure for our documentary. I think that it's pretty obvious that we are targeting Americans with our documentary, and Americans are predominately Christian. I know that I personally, before I knew anything about Buddhism, just categorized it into another one of those far away ancient cultures with a bunch of gods and weird rituals to follow that has little to nothing to do with me. So I think it would be interesting to set up the documentary with this sort of attitude because when it comes down to it, Buddhism does have the ability to come off as some far away religion with astounding history that is not our history. I knew a pretty good amount about Buddhism before we went to the monastery, and I was still intimidated by it. But then we took off our shoes, walked through this tiny little kitchen and into this small living room type of space in an old beat-up house to find just a man who we call a monk sitting on the floor next to a telephone, talking to several Americans about the most casual things: where we were from, how he remembered talking to Christy on the phone, how the reporter used to come take pictures of them, etc. He laughed a lot and smiled constantly. It just becomes obvious that the gigantic brick wall that we create around a religion like this is just that, what WE have created. Yes, that monk, Tan Ajahn (I'm not sure how to pronounce it but it is a name just like all of ours), does a lot of things that I don't understand, but I understand how he laughs and smiles and thinks and talks to people, etc because I do the same things. I think that demonstrating this in a documentary would be a step in finding common ground. We as human beings physically walk on common ground (the earth). Why can't we mentally do the same?

peace, genevieve