Portraits of Faith: the daily life of Zen Buddhist monks and practitioners in Brazil

According to the 2010 census, Brazil had about 244,000 Buddhists, and a growing share of them do not descend from Japanese immigrants. The Buddhism episode of Retratos de Fé (Portraits of Faith), a documentary series from Brazilian public broadcaster TV Cultura, helps explain who these people are and what they are looking for, through the lens of the Zen school.

Over 26 minutes, the program moves among three voices: a newly ordained monk who shows the routine at the country's largest Japanese Zen temple, in São Paulo; a more experienced monk in Florianópolis who tells the history of the tradition; and lay practitioners who reached it by unexpected routes.

Waking from illusion

The word buddha comes from a Sanskrit root meaning to awaken, and the Florianópolis monk starts there. He sums up the path of Siddhartha Gautama, a prince of a small kingdom in what is now Nepal, who traded the palace for a spiritual search, went through teachers and fasts and found his answer only when he sat down to meditate. In the Zen reading, human beings live in a dream in which they believe themselves separate from everything, and practice means waking from it. Buddhism, the monk explains, neither affirms nor denies a creator god: it simply does not work with that idea.

Practice in daily life

Zen gives weight to seated meditation without an object and to full attention in ordinary tasks: whoever walks only walks, whoever eats only eats. The episode also shows a monk's training, as he sews his own robe and receives a special name from his teacher, within a lineage passed from teacher to disciple. Ceremonies such as weddings and funerals are presented as responses to the emotional needs of the living, which may change from culture to culture.

Who practices

The strongest testimonies come from lay people. A Catholic woman who lost her husband when he was struck by a motorcycle found, at a monastery in Ouro Preto, in Minas Gerais, a place to grieve with her daughter, without ceasing to consider herself a Christian. Another practitioner says meditation helps him stay calm where he once would have lost control.

What to keep in mind

The program is made from the practitioners' point of view and shows only Zen, one of many Buddhist schools present in Brazil. One of the monks says the teachings were written down during the Buddha's lifetime; tradition and scholars record that they were passed on from memory for centuries and committed to writing only around the first century BC.

Why watch

It is a short, calm and respectful introduction to a tradition rarely shown on Brazilian broadcast television, with ordinary people talking about loss and new beginnings.