Product Details

• Actors: Dzongsar Khyentse Norbu
• Directors: Lesley Ann Patten
• Producers: Lesley Ann Patten, Kent Marti
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B000C2BNRA
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #196,672 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Portrait of an ordinary guru, July 14, 2008

By 

Daiho - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Words of My Perfect Teacher (DVD)

This is a film about a Buddhist guru and his western followers, a Canadian engineer, an English fortune teller, and an American filmmaker (the same who made this movie). What you'll find at the end of nearly two hours with this group is that the guru is the most normal person among them.

This is especially remarkable for a man who in his native Bhutan is revered as a god and who, if he let it go to his head, could lord it over his western students, who being in need of someone to tell them how to manage their lives have already given over to him much of their own intellectual and emotional independence.

The guru, Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche (aka Khyentse Norbu), is in Europe and North America one of the most well-known teachers of Vajrayana Buddhism, the form of the faith practiced in the Himalayan countries of Tibet, Bhutan, Nepal, and north India. He is believed to be the reincarnation of a famous teacher and comes from a family with a long line of famous teachers. It is not his pedigree, though, that has earned him notoriety, but his films. He began his movie career working as an assistant on Bernardo Bertolucci's Little Buddha (1993), before going on to make The Cup (2000), and Travellers & Magicians (2003).

Khyentse Norbu finds himself, though, somewhat reluctantly stuck with the job of guru. "I hate my profession," he laments. "So much hypocrisy, pretense, so much cultural hang ups. I wish I'm just an ordinary person." So, ordinary is how he acts, to the great consternation of his students. He cooks his own meals, he drinks, he goes to football games, he shows up late, or not at all. As the Canadian computer engineer remarks, "If he's enlightened, why doesn't he act like an enlightened being?"

Shot in the early years of the new millennia, filmmaker Lesley Ann Patten introduces us to Khyentse Norbu while in residence in London, following him to the World Cup in Germany, the United States immediately following the attacks on the New York Twin Towers, and finally to Bhutan where we see the guru in his greatest splendor, attended by throngs of devoted worshipers. Along the way, Patten makes a detour to Los Angles to explore the guru phenomenon with two unlikely subjects, Gesar Mukpo, a recognized reincarnation and son of one of the first Tibetan gurus to teach in the west, and action-movie star Steven Segal, also a recognized reincarnation (of more dubious distinction). Mukpo would rather play basketball than guru and gives Patten a quick course in recognizing bogus claims to enlightenment. A good teacher, he says, invites challenges to his authority; it shows the student is growing. Segal notes that the thousands that have challenged him did so only because of their vapidity. (The subject of finding authentic teachers and the dangers of the guru-student relationship come up later in the DVD bonus material, a 30 minute interview with Khyentse Norbu.)

The film concludes with the guru going into a three month meditation retreat and the students returning to their homes in Europe and North America. Director Patten got enough material to complete her film, a remarkably fresh portrait of a modern Buddhist teacher, and everyone seemed to have enjoyed their time in Bhutan. None of the students, though, declare their independence or seem to have come away wiser or more capable of managing their lives.

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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars engrossing & real, October 12, 2009

By 

LW Raboys (Massachusetts) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Words of My Perfect Teacher (DVD)

Yes, as other viewers have stated, the acolytes making a film about their guru don't seem to learn a lot in the process, but this film is 5 star not because of them, but because of the guru, who sees through it all and quietly reveals himself. Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche is a delight to watch, and his words seem very authentic. There is an excellent "extra" accompanying the film - a 20 minute Q&A interview with Dzongsar Rinpoche. One of the best moments for me was when the Rinpoche was asked if he considered himself enlightened. I won't reveal what he said, but will tell you his answer profoundly affected me and has prompted me to seek out his writings, which I am finding bridge a gap for westerners who practice Buddhism.
PS... after viewing this film about 15 times over the past few weeks I must add that it is a very finely crafted film. Lesley Ann Patten, one of the acolytes, wrote and directed the film, as well as narrates it. She has a sardonic but pleasant voice, which is intriguing. Her very perplexity over all that is occurring reflects the groundless nature of Buddhist teaching and its challenges for westerners. The music on the soundtrack is perfect, as is the editing. This really is an excellent film.

13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Not really worth the price, unfortunately, October 6, 2009

By 

Chris (England) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Words of My Perfect Teacher (DVD)

Using the title of the 1st Patrul Rinpoche's important text Kunzang Lamai Sheylung as the title, this is a hagiographical documentary on the relationship between teacher and student (in this case the teacher is Dzongsar Khyentse Norbu Rinpoche). Alas, there is a lot of unintended insight into the almost pathetically endearing yet ultimately unfulfilled desire for personal wish-fulfillment on the part students in their relationship with a chosen spiritual teacher, but very little genuine perceptiveness when the teacher and his complex role is examined. Dzongsar Khyentse, it is true, does say a couple of interesting things about the phenomenon (mainly that he really dislikes it) in this documentary, but much of it -no doubt thanks to the editing- has already been said ad nauseum by others, from Trungpa Rinpoche onward. Mostly, the movie is about a group of Khyentse Rinpoche's students and their willingness to use any pretext (in this case, making a movie) to fulfill their burning need to get as continually close as possible to their guru, and their guru's constant slipping through their metaphorical fingers like mercury when squeezed too tightly since he quite obviously sees through their little game. I think the movie's main weakness lies in the inability of the students/filmmakers to observe their teacher apart from their from their projections and fantasies, even for a millisecond. SriDurga's review says it this way, "What you'll find at the end of nearly two hours with this group is that the guru is the most normal person among them." There are some nice shots of Paro Taktsang and the new construction going on there, but for the most part you could hear the same rather pedestrian thoughts being expressed by any group of Tibetan or Zen Buddhist students on the porch of any Buddhist center in America for free. The movie would have been a successful enterprise if Khyentse Norbu himself had walked around with a handheld camera and put on video the daily life of another high-level lama, like Namkhai Norbu Rinpoche in a perfectly unvarnished and intimate manner. Having your students video you and edit the result with their own narrative is not a way to get any kind of genuine result in the least.