Filmed with distinctive entry over 5 years, The Breaking Wave: The Buddhists of Beara is a function documentary that tells the exceptional story of a half-blind Englishman’s quest to construct a non secular haven on the cliffs of West Cork that might turn into the world-renowned Dzogchen Beara.
Forward of its Irish TV premiere on RTÉ One on Thursday, July tenth, director Maurice O’Brien talks concerning the inspiration behind the movie.
In November 2018, fully burned out from ending an extended work challenge, I travelled to one of many remotest corners of Eire to participate in a week-long silent meditation retreat at Dzogchen Beara, on the far finish of the Beara peninsula. I had by no means carried out something prefer it earlier than and had no actual thought what to anticipate.
The very first thing that blew me away was the unbelievable fantastic thing about the panorama and the infinite horizon the place the ocean met the sky, a meditation in itself.
Watch the trailer for Chasing The Mild
I used to be additionally struck by the sheer number of the opposite folks on the retreat – a few of whom had travelled from the US and the UK to attend. We have been all searching for some form of escape, striving to search out some trace of peace from the noise inside, and perhaps even be taught to be kinder to each ourselves and the folks round us.
And although I had travelled right here to flee from work, I quickly realised that I merely needed to make a movie about this place.
I used to be much more taken with the story of the person who based the centre – Peter Cornish, who had travelled to Eire within the Seventies to comply with his dream to create a non secular refuge for folks of all religions and none. Peter was now apparently residing as a hermit and, following the dying of his beloved spouse Harriet, not often got here out in public.
Convincing Peter to inform his full story on digital camera for the primary time was an enormous step. For each myself and the movie’s extraordinary producer Clare Stronge, gaining Peter’s belief and attending to know him for the sensible, humorous and sort man that he was, grew to become the most important privilege of constructing the movie.
One other key factor of the story was that the neighborhood on the Centre have been within the early levels of constructing an genuine Tibetan Buddhist temple proper on the sting of the cliff, the primary of its type in Eire.
The very first thing that blew me away was the unbelievable fantastic thing about the panorama and the infinite horizon the place the ocean met the sky, a meditation in itself.
However the side of the movie that proved tougher even than the Covid-induced manufacturing delays was how we’d cowl the downfall of the centre’s non secular director, and the surprised neighborhood’s continued makes an attempt to get well from the fallout.
In 1994 Peter had signed Dzogchen Beara and his lands over to a charitable belief and appointed the famend Buddhist instructor Sogyal Rinpoche – writer of the bestselling Tibetan Ebook of Dwelling and Dying – because the centre’s non secular director. Due to his guide, Sogyal Rinpoche’s superstar had grown till he grew to become the very best identified Buddhist within the West after the Dalai Lama, and his organisation Rigpa opened dozens of centres world wide.
However in 2017 Sogyal’s worldwide empire had come crashing down when a gaggle of his interior college students revealed him to be a serial abuser of susceptible girls. It’s been described as the most important disaster to hit Tibetan Buddhism because it got here to the West.
For the nonetheless devoted neighborhood in Dzogchen Beara, West Cork, it was an existential disaster and an enormously painful chapter of their story.
We now have tried to inform a nuanced story which doesn’t shrink back from the darkish facet of this and which explores the complexity that arises when non secular devotion meets the fact of the human situation.
Six years after we started, the movie had its world premiere at an emotional and bought out screening at Cork Movie Pageant final November, the place it performed in competitors for Greatest New Irish Function.
In the end I really feel it’s a story of hope – as a result of in a contemporary world filled with distractions and noise, Peter’s quest to ascertain “a spot to flee from the insanity of the world” nonetheless supplies solace to tons of of individuals every year.
The Breaking Wave: The Buddhists of Beara, RTÉ One, Thursday, July tenth – catch up afterwards by way of RTÉ Participant.
