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Down And Out Director Embraces 'Lotus' -- And Finds Personal Fulfillment

Arthur J Pais in New York

Making Jew in the Lotus was a spiritual therapy for its 42-year-old director Lauren Chiten who was feeling very dejected following the completion of her 1994 documentary,Twitch and Shout. Though that film would eventually win acclaim at several film festivals, back then it looked that nobody wanted it.

Chiten, who was in debt, had plans for a film series on neurological disorders, but the BBC had beat her to the pitch and turned her down when she offered to be at least its producer. She thought she will not do another film.

"I wanted some sort of spiritual solace," she said in an interview. She was not interested in going to an ashram or Zen meditation center. "Where else do you get spiritual solace in the '90s? You go to the Internet."

There, she found a Jewish-Buddhism newsgroup and learned about Roger Kamenetz's recent book,The Jew in the Lotus. She says she was hooked from its very beginning. Yet, she found it difficult to read the book because she started seeing images

"Oh my God, there's a film here," she repeatedly exclaimed as she read through the book.

She e-mailed a note to Kamenetz and got his instant approval for a film.

To develop a script, Chiten spent five weeks by herself in Dharamsala -- it was her first visit there. She remembers roaming the streets, excited and quaking at the strange sights, smells and dangers. "First thing they told me was don't look the monkeys in the eye and smile. (This is seen as aggression.) There were all these monkeys around and I was afraid to look at these monkeys."

Her big dilemma was how to tell about an event already four years old -- and discussed widely. She had access to the videos of the original meeting but she wanted to use them images. For she wanted to focus on Kamenetz's impressions -- and tell the story about his personal transformation after he returned home. He, Chiten and a film crew returned to Dharamsala for three weeks of shooting, managing to bag an audience with the Dalai Lama during which Kamenetz gave him a copy of the book.

The film is not really about Tibet, or Buddhism or Judaism, some reviewers have rightly pointed out. Why did she focus so much on Kamenetz and his friend, the Jewish Buddhist Marc Lieberman, who organized the first meeting between the Dalai Lama and high-profile Jews?.

"It's really about using grief to get to a higher place," she says, referring to how Kamenetz was trying to overcome a personal tragedy during his first trip to India.

"It happens to be about Tibetans, Jews and two men."

But isn't there something more to the film? Wasn't the exercise also an attempt to overcome her own grief? "Who do you think the film is really about?" Chiten said laughing.

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