"Pig at the Crossing"
A recommendation...
I don’t usually do film recommendations here at Story Club but I recently saw one that really moved me and has stuck with me. Not to give too much away, but let me just say that it has, well, a familial relationship with Lincoln in the Bardo, concerned, as it is, with what happens next, after this life.
The film is called Pig at the Crossing, directed by Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse Rinpoche, the great, charming, and deeply insightful Tibetan/Bhutanese teacher of Buddhism and the director of five other films: The Cup (1999), Travellers and Magicians (2003), Vara: A Blessing (2013), Hema Hema: Sing Me a Song While I Wait (2017), and Looking for a Lady with Fangs and a Moustache (2019). A wonderful, frank, sometimes funny writer on Buddhist topics, Rinpoche is the author of What Makes You Not a Buddhist, Not for Happiness, Living is Dying: How to Prepare for Death, Dying, and Beyond, among other books.
The film is strange, beautiful, unsettling, and original – in its subject matter and pacing and in the way it both embraces and flouts cinematic habit.
Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche is a truly extraordinary person, and has a way of approaching Buddhist thought that is down-to-earth and genuine. He is also, of course, a wonderful artist.
Rinpoche was kind enough to record a special message for us, in which he talks a little about the background of the film.
And here is a brief, lovely teaching on the meaning of “bardo,” and another on the idea of “yangsi.”
And you can watch the trailer for the film here.
The film is being put out into the world in an unusual way - no film festivals or theater releases to date. The producers have just announced a second virtual screening which will take place on June 2, 2024.
Tickets can be purchased on the Pig at the Crossing website. There is a button to purchase prominently placed on the home page, along with details about how to access it.
I found this film inspiring in the way it uses an artistic approach to turn the viewer’s mind to some deep and possibly uncomfortable truths about the way we live here on Earth - selfishly, by habit, somewhat blindly (believing ourselves central and permanent). It also is about the fact that, well, something happens to us after we die…and we don’t know what that might be - although it might have something to do with the way that we are living, right now. (I also found it a little terrifying for those same reasons.)
To me, it’s really important, as I keep trying to grow as a writer, to keep two things in mind: 1) I want my work to take up the big questions and therefore have the potential to really matter to other people and 2) to do this, I have to keep expanding my technical pallet - trying to find new ways to get closer to the truth.
I’m always thrilled to find a work of art that seems to come out of a similar place.
One thing I love about Story Club is that, to keep it interesting (to me and hopefully to you), I have to keep expanding its concerns. I also love the idea of all of you as a highly intelligent brain-trust: a self-selected group of articulate people who have lived thrillingly diverse lives.
So, today I’d like to ask you a question that is only marginally literature-adjacent (although many of the stories we’ve talked about here or in A Swim in a Pond in the Rain were about death, and how the awareness of death might influence they way we conduct ourselves).
I wonder: are there real-life experiences any of you have had that color your view of the afterlife? Might be a brush with the supernatural at the time of a passing, or certain spiritual experiences you’ve had - anything, really. (This seems like an amazing opportunity to hear some stories and, you know, amass some data).
I read a wonderful book a few years ago by Patricia Pearson, called Opening Heaven’s Door: What the Dying Are Trying to Tell Us About Where We’re Going, in which Pearson approaches this topic with the same rigor she uses in her usual writing on scientific topics.
I guess I’m interested in knowing what your expectation is of the afterlife; why you hold this view; and how it affects your day-to-day-life which includes, of course, your writing.
I’m writing this from Sedona, a place that always makes me pause and take stock, as if these ancient rocks all around here are saying: “Time is short, pal: what’s the plan?”
Which, to me, is a perfect vacation. :)
My husband drowned in July 2022 on our family vacation, he was 57 years old, I was 56, we had been together for 36 years. Our 3 daughters and I witnessed the attempts to resuscitate him. He has visited me in dreams many times since he died, the first time was 5 days after his death. My father (who died of a a sudden heart attack in 2016) visited me after his death, and I had told my husband about the visit, that I knew I was sleeping, that I knew it was my dad, that I could get information from him (I asked him "Dad, you're dead now, what's the deal, is there heaven?" and he said "well, there is, but it's not like what you'd think", and when I asked him "what is that supposed to mean?" he said "love binds us all"), so I knew my husband knew he could reach me. He appeared in my bedroom, I did not know I was asleep, he did not have a corporeal form, but a shape of shifting light, with his face coming into and out of focus at all the ages I've known him. He shouted at me "I'M HERE!" and I said I saw him, he said "It's really me" and I told him I understood. I told me financially we would be fine, that he was sorry it was such a mess (both things I did not know that have both turned out to be true), and then as I embraced him, I felt his despair, his agony at having to leave our girls. He said, stunned "I'll never see them grow up, I'll never walk them down the aisle". I told him he could find them here, just like he had found me. He said it was hard, really hard to get there. I said "but you're doing a great job!". Then he took a cigarette off the wall (we both used to smoke in our 20's but sadly gave it up since it's so bad for you, but we always missed it) and his form sucked into a smaller and smaller mass, like a star collapsing and he was gone. He has visited me many times, and our children, and other family members and friends. He has told me things (such as things that were in his autopsy report) that I did not know but which I later found out were true. He told our daughter that dying was like being born in reverse, being born into a new reality and that you understood everything you had done, and your affect on everyone, and that he would always be with us. But we needed to do our part and believe him when he came to see us, to believe when we felt his voice. Because it was difficult to do, to show up or give signs, but that he was beside us all the time.
For awhile he was sad during these visits, then he said he was just alone. Then, about 2 months after his death he came to see me and he was young, so young, and he was only going to be with me for a short time, and we saw friends coming up the path, so I knew he had to go. I begged him not to go, but as he climbed the stairs past me, he leaned over me and turned into a light as bright as a thousand suns, and then he was gone. Since then he comes to see me and he's happy, eating a sandwich, dancing with our children, just coming off the tennis court. In the visits I have with him, I know I am asleep, I know he is there, and I can ask him things, we can spend time together. I wake weeping from these visits sometimes, because I miss him so much. It is terrible being separated.
Like when you see a whale breach, and nobody else sees it and they think "she thinks she saw a whale" but you know what you saw...I have seen. And I know when my time in this body is finished he will be waiting for me over the threshold. I ache to be with him again, and I am not afraid.
My son John. He demanded 200%love and devotion. He was mentally handicapped. Had seizures and behaviour made other parents glad he wasn’t theirs. He died suddenly when he was 11. I was gutted. My family fell apart. I struggled to survive. I would dream of John. Lots of anxiety. But then he visited me..several times over the next ten years. Yes that’s how long I grieved. He had a companion with him to tell me he was safe. The last time I saw him he talked to me with wisdom and understanding He knew I loved him. The world scared him which is why he was so misbehaved. I said “John you’re dead” the companion told me he was safe and alive. That was our final meeting. Sometimes I see him in my dreams but I know that is only my memory. I don’t tell people this because it is so precious to me I don’t want to weaken it. It was my lesson. Not anyone else’s. But you asked…