Little Buddha (1993)

Chris Isaak: Dean Conrad

Photos 

Quotes 

• Dean Conrad : Hey, where's our reincarnation? Where's Lama Dorje?

  Lisa Conrad : Reading his book. Wow. Like the Three Kings from the east, huh?

  Dean Conrad : Hmm. Yeah. Amazing. Well, at least they didn't try to tell us that Jesse was the result of an immaculate conception.

  Lisa Conrad : [chuckling]  I don't know, I like the idea: reincarnation. I wouldn't mind coming back, visiting the places I like again and the people I love.

  Dean Conrad : Suppose you come back as an ant.

  Lisa Conrad : So, what's wrong with an ant? Lots of group activity and picnics and things.

  Dean Conrad : You can get squished.

  Lisa Conrad : People get squished too.

• Lama Norbu : I was just telling Jesse the story of Siddhartha.

  Dean Conrad : That's a beautiful story. A beautiful... myth.

  Lama Norbu : It is one way of telling the truth, and children seem to love it.

  Dean Conrad : Lama Norbu, I have great respect for your culture and your... religion. And I know about the invasion of Tibet, and the tragedies that happened. But I don't believe in reincarnation, and neither does my wife.

  Lama Norbu : [laughing softly]  Why should you?

  Lama Norbu : [Goes over and pours some tea into a porcelain cup]  In Tibet, we think of the mind and the body as the contents and the container.

  Lama Norbu : [Breaks the cup against the edge of the table; all the tea spills out]  Now, the cup is no longer a cup, but what is the tea?

  Dean Conrad : Still tea.

  Lama Norbu : Exactly! In the cup, on the table, or on the floor, it moves from one container to another, but it's still tea. Like the mind after death: it moves from one body to another, but it is still mind!

• Champa : [as they observe Lama Norbu, who is old and ailing, in a state of deep meditation]  Someone like Lama Norbu can remain like this for ten days. Or even more. He can sit like a mountain, serene and unmovable. And he can meditate deep and vast as ocean. And then smoothly, while doing meditation, he can enter into the state of death, with his own will.

  Dean Conrad : He's dying.

  Champa : We are all of us dying every minute. Death is a big part of life. Every breath that we breathe, we die.

  Dean Conrad : What about his passion for life? What about the people he's leaving behind?

  Champa : He will come back.

  Dean Conrad : I don't know if I believe it, but I'd like to.