Guru: Bhagwan, His Secretary & His Bodyguard (2010)

The rise of the so called "sex-guru" Bhagwan and his model commune in Poona and Oregon in the 1970s and 1980s told by his former close disciples, his personal secretary and bodyguard.

"The Life of Milarepa"

MILAREPA Part 1 - "How I met Marpa" - Orgyen Tobgyal Rinpoche Homage from Oseling on Vimeo.

Jetsun Milarepa (Tibetan: རྗེ་བཙུན་མི་ལ་རས་པ, Wylie: rje btsun mi la ras pa, 1028/40–1111/23) was a Tibetan enlightened Yogi, who was famously known as a murderer when he was a young man, before turning to Buddhism and becoming a highly accomplished Buddhist disciple. He is generally considered one of Tibet's most famous yogis and spiritual poets, whose teachings are known among several schools of Tibetan Buddhism. He was a student of Marpa Lotsawa, and a major figure in the history of the Kagyu school of Tibetan Buddhism. He is also famous for the feat of climbing Mount Kailash.

Tantra: Indian Rites of Ecstasy (1969)

This early western film documentary (filmed 1967-68) features Hindu Tantric rituals and visualisation as images and sounds from Northern India and Nepal.
Tantra (Sanskrit: तन्त्र) literally means "loom, warp, weave".
The connotation of the word tantra to mean an esoteric practice or religious ritualism is a colonial era European invention. The term is based on the metaphor of weaving, states Ron Barrett, where the Sanskrit root tan means the warping of threads on a loom. It implies "interweaving of traditions and teachings as threads" into a text, technique or practice. The aim is to experience immediate revelatory or conscious shifts in awareness through disciplinary practice; both physical and mental.
The word appears in the hymns of the Rigveda such as in 10.71, with the meaning of "warp (weaving)". It is found in many other Vedic era texts, such as in section 10.7.42 of the Atharvaveda and many Brahmanas. In these and post-Vedic texts, the contextual meaning of Tantra is that which is "principal or essential part, main point, model, framework, feature”. In the Smritis and epics of Hinduism (and Jainism), the term means "doctrine, rule, theory, method, technique or chapter" and the word appears both as a separate word and as a common suffix, such as atma-tantra meaning "doctrine or theory of Atman (soul, self)".
The term “Tantra” after about 500 BCE, in Buddhism, Hinduism and Jainism is a bibliographic category, just like the word Sutra (which means "sewing together", mirroring the metaphor of "weaving together" implied by Tantra). The same Buddhist texts are sometimes referred to as tantra or sutra; for example, Vairocabhisambodhi-tantra is also referred to as Vairocabhisambodhi-sutra. The various contextual meaning of the word Tantra varies with the Indian text.
Directed by Nik Douglas, Produced by Mick Jagger and Robert Fraser. Limited initial release in 1969 on college cinemas and galleries in the USA and England. Re-released in 1994 as a VHS cassette. 

The Buddhist Science of the Mind

"Our understanding (of the meaning of Being) is an understanding that we share understanding between us and, at the same time, because we share understanding between us: between us all, simultaneously — all the dead and the living, and all beings." JEAN-LUC NANCY, BEING SINGULAR PLURAL (2000) p99

The film is unusual in that it is not a ethnological report by an outsider as is usually the case, but the story of one man’s entry into religious experience.

The film was made as part of his seven part series The Light at the Edge of the World, which was about remote communities around the world.

The film is shot mainly in Nepal, and follows Davis’ journey to Thubten Choling to meet Trulshik Rinpoche, who was one of the main teachers of the Dalai Lama.

He also meets up with Matthieu Ricard, who comes apparently to help with the translations, and ends up as one of Davis’ best guides to the tradition.