To the Land of Bliss

In 1998, anthropologist/filmmaker Wen-jie Qin returned to her childhood home in southwest China's Sichuan Province to study that region's post-Mao Buddhist revival. As it so happened, her fieldwork at the sacred mountain Emei (a community of Chinese Pure Land Buddhists) coincided with the death of one of the community's beloved monks, Jue Chang. In To the Land of Bliss, Qin--together with the monks and nuns--witnesses the performance of various rituals and ceremonies as students prepare their beloved teacher for a rite of fire that will allow his consciousness to rise to a paradise known as “the Land of Bliss of Amita Buddha.” Combining voiceover narration and talks with the monks and nuns among the monasteries on the forested mountain, the film reveals Qin's own spiritual yearnings within this emotional and spiritually charged environment as she listens attentively to Cheng's disciples discussing Buddhist teachings on spiritual preparedness. An engaging and occasionally luminous personal journey that also documents the beautiful and exotic world on Emei (the ever-present chanting of monks, the hypnotic buzz of insects, the wind in the trees), this is a thought-provoking look at the mystical intersection of death and religion. Recommended. Aud: H, C, P. (A. Cantú)