According to Buddhist believes nothing is permanent on the
earth. Everything is changing slowly if not rapidly. For example, in one
second, I become a second older than I was a second ago. So obliviously our
life is also changing continuously. We are born knowing nothing about life, and
then we keep learning until we die. During this learning process, we go
thorough different psychological stages and cross many thresholds, most of
which go beyond our comfort zone. For example, in Hayao Miyazaki’s film
“Spirited Away” the protagonist, Chihiro, who seems like an orphan goes from a
normal world into a supernatural world of spirits which teaches her a lesion
about challenges and difficulties in life. Even though what happens in
supernatural world may not be real, but they definitely serve as learning tool
for many young adults because supernatural world stories are based on the real
world stories which they can relate to their life.
Chihiro, the protagonist of the movie “Spirited Away” is
forced to work hard in spirit’s world in order to survive and save her family,
which essentially is trying to show that she needs to learn how to work in real
world. She cannot depend on her families forever. She needs to change herself
from being a whiner to someone that knows a little about the realities of the
life. In the movie, there are evils and goods in Spirit’s world which is trying
to shows that the real world is also composed of good people and bad people. We
can’t expect the real world full of just good people, as an innocent would
expect. There always will be bad people, and we have to deal with it; that is a
part of life.
According to Joseph Campbell’s Monomyth, Chihiro is a hero.
She crosses into an unknown and dangerous realm where the rules and limits are
not known. But, with competence and courage, the danger fades away. She never
gives up even though each threshold leads her to a harder challenge. For
example, her little mistake could turn her parents into Pigs forever, but her
believe in herself and her determination to win indeed help her win the
challenge.
According to Gilbert Keith Chesterton, a famous English
poet, “Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons
exist, but because they tell us that dragon can be beaten.” This is the very
reason that the stories of supernatural world exists. For example, Chihiro’s
adventure into the spirit world is not trying to tell us that the spirits
exists, but a victory can be won if you work hard, be honest and be loyal. So, the
threshold between supernatural world and real world not only lead us to some interesting
stories, but also serve as tool for bringing inner change in oneself, such as
winning over one’s dark shadow like Coraline did in Neil Gaiman’s Coraline.
Bibliography
Campbell, Joseph.
The Hero with a Thousand Faces. On the web http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hero_with_a_Thousand_Faces#cite_ref-2
Gagman, Neil. Coraline.
Print
Miyazaki, Hayao. Spirited
Away. Movie.
Buddhism at a glance. BBC
http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/buddhism/ataglance/glance.shtml
