Sit With Me Amongst White Clouds is Ted Burger's first film. "Originally I wanted to write a book about the monks of the Zhongnan Mountains, but I realized I wasn't a very good writer. Then I started doing translation gigs on movie sets, and that put the idea in my head." Burger bought a DV camera and taught himself how to use it. He spent months watching movies on mute to study the shots. "I didn't want to watch any documentaries, though," Burger says. "Although this is a documentary, I didn't want to use any conventions of documentary film. I was going for a more filmic quality." After a month wandering the mountains, Burger ended up with over 50 hours of footage and interviews with 20 monks. "I was a bit overwhelmed, but when I started editing, I had a chance to really listen to what the monks were saying. I had to let go of a lot of my original intentions and allow the words of the monks shape the film."
Burger, who first read about Shaanxi's hermit monks while he was studying in India, spent nearly four months as a virtual hermit himself when editing the film in a windowless office in a Qingdao high-rise. "I read about the Shaanxi monks in a book called The Road to Heaven by Bill Porter," says Burger. "It made me realize that there was a completely different way to live – different way to deal with the suffering in life." So inspired was Burger that when he arrived in China in 1999, he made inquiries with every monk he saw on the streets of Beijing and Harbin about the Zhongnan Mountains described in the book. Burger finally found a lead from a monk who had been ordained in those very mountains, and he set off to Shaanxi where he met Master Guan Kuan. Burger has since made a pilgrimage every several months to study with Guan, who is interviewed in the film.
Master Guan, like many of the monks in the film, has endured the societal shifts of the past 50 years. Once a farmer, Guan was prevented from being ordained during the 'cultural revolution.' Another monk in the film recovered and restored several Buddhist statues buried during the same time period. Perhaps it's these very shifts that compelled these monks to retreat to the mountains. "They go to the mountains because it's quiet there. They can meditate, read, focus on finding the roots of fear, desire, habits and obstructions," Burger explains. "What it gets down to is that if your heart is calm, if your ego is not present with your every thought, you see the world as it is – changing. If your mind is stuffed full of a lot of fears and desires and habits and such, you might not like what you see. Then you suffer. If you let it go, act with it... then there is nothing to be upset about ... Don't take it so damned personal. Then, it all flows around you, through you. That is real joy. That is freedom."
Burger will be showing his film around town this month (dates and venues TBA). He also hopes to show his film at universities and small film festivals when he returns to the US. Burger's reverence and admiration for the subjects in his film is evident in the labour and money he has put into this project. But what is also evident when he speaks is his compassion. "These people live an extreme lifestyle, and they're really misunderstood," he says. "I wanted to show that their experiences and their goals are transferable to anyone's lifestyle. It's really about the way you look at the world."
(thatsmagazines.com November 28, 2003)
