Gregory shared a link to a film by Giovanni Giommi. It began as a film on Insight Dialogue (ID) practice, as Giovanni joined a weeklong ID retreat, filming teachers, practitioners, actual ID practice, meditation practice interviews, and other things that had never been documented. Giovanni then returned with me to my home, and we spent the week talking, hiking, and eating, and my playing music, all the while filming. Giovanni was drawn to the narrative of my meeting with cancer and death, juxtaposing that with a delicate vision of the ID practice.
Certainly, it is odd that I am releasing the film just by posting it; it could seem self-obsessed. But it does not feel that way, and it does shed light on my reflections on death, the practice of living with cancer, how the Dhamma shows up in my life. A living sense of the whole life path I wrote about in my book of that title. So I’m going with it. Here’s the film:
https://vimeo.com/765375185
The password is: gg
It’s a beautiful film. Giovanni is a gifted artist and award-winning film maker. From a practical standpoint, there’s a problem. The version straddles the domain of a film that explicates the practice of Insight Dialogue, and capturing a portrait of a particular person at a particular time of life. The usefulness as an introduction to ID is limited, with much of the utterly unique footage unused, so the value to the ID community is more modest than we had hoped. And as a portrait of a person, it trusts that the viewer will be drawn in by the film’s showing us an intimate, delicate, and unusual relational meditation. Perhaps another film will draw on the footage and offer a fuller picture of Insight Dialogue and the experience of ID.
The password is: gk