First Hit: Wonderful film showing how people can learn to let go of their expectations so that growth and progress can unfold – a renaissance if you will.
This documentary is about a group of 40 individuals living in the United States who put together a group called Synthesis whose goal was to take these innovative and visionary thinkers from different disciplines and work with the Dalai Lama to create world transformation.
The instigators of Synthesis scheduled a 5 day session with H.H. Dalai Lama in Dharamsala as a way to include him and a way to jump start the ideas they expected to come up with. This was an extremely high expectation.
The group also felt as if the Dalai Lama would provide the kind of catalyst and global view and attention needed to make the proposed changes come to fruition. As the group began to open discussions on the first day, the impact of their journey to Dharamsala India and their egos got in the way. Arguments started immediately amongst individuals and between groups.
An example of this dissention was when the witnesses, who were invited to watch the event, wanted to join in the discussion and were told that wasn’t their role and that their opinion didn’t matter. Each day the Dalai Lama would come in and talk about what people really want and what allows others to experience happiness.
With a subtle and a gentle guiding hand the Dalai Lama began creating the kind of space allowing each person to grow individually. There was one grand proposal laid before the Dalai Lama which was to create a boycott of Chinese goods until there was freedom for Tibetans.
And although the Dalai Lama said he might consider it, he also made it clear that anything that harmed others, even the Chinese, was not in the spirit of his movement. In the end, the real renaissance was that each individual learned more about who they were, how their egos got in the way, and how they might make changes in their own world and their disciplines in accordance to the spirit of synthesis.
The narration by Harrison Ford must have been very well executed because it never interfered with the dialogue of the group and felt integrated with the film. Although the participants complained about the arduous task of getting Dharamsala, I found this to be an interesting aspect because it show them riding in a First Class (Indian) train cars and a very nice bus. In India no one, except the top 2% of the Indian population, could have traveled that well.
Overall: For anyone who is interested in seeing how powerful it is to lose an ego and gain the strength through transformation, this film is a fine example.