Murilo Jambeiro de Oliveira
Brazil, June 24, 2025.
The 1993 film “Little Buddha” by Bernardo Bertolucci brings back a whole context of memories that perhaps go back to when I saw it in the cinema in 1993. I generally think back to my baptism in the tiny Roman Catholic Apostolic Church of Christ the King, in the Jardim Aeroporto neighborhood, in São Paulo, on the same October 11 as Verdi, in my case the year of my birth, 1981, with my paternal grandparents Heráclito and Flora as godparents. There was already an atmosphere that evoked some unique difference. One of them was perhaps that that morning we moved to a more comfortable house in the same neighborhood, nearby, where after the baptism there was a lunch for the family that had come from the Paraíba Valley, which usually celebrates the National Holiday of Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception of Aparecida on October 12, here in the Paraíba Valley, where we would come and go many, many times, as my parents’ hometown. But even in the gift from my godparents, who have two interesting names like nature and atoms, an Angel sculpted by the greatest artist in Guaratinguetá, Quissak, who was my other grandmother’s art teacher, there was a credit, like the movie.
I’ve talked about this countless times here on the Blog, and nowadays I even find it boring to repeat it, and I’m horrified when one of the major internet search engines, which I no longer find trustworthy, says, based on 2 million pieces of evidence: “He’s the Pope!” It’s a way of reading things that I’ve come to dislike, especially because I don’t think the real Pope should live with any ambiguity beyond Benedict XVI’s recent relationship with Francis. And the Angel has been more explanatory than any other hypothesis since he was 3 months old. I’m still a practicing Roman Catholic and a fan. And I get the fans right sometimes. They’re strong where I live.
But why would you be making this memory? In the following sense, the film “Little Buddha” shows in the educational process of that Western boy a moment that for me is also one of enlightenment that required 20 years of retreat and dedication to the family, which “Little Buddha” explained to him as the moment when Siddhartha Gautama encountered poverty. And I will report the same fact more than 20 years ago, and the last time I was with that enlightened community leader, saying goodbye to such an experience, he insisted that I take with me just one book, “The Condition of the Working Class in England” from 1845 by Friedrich Engels. I repeat, since then there have been 20 years of reflection, and as described by the Bagavadeguitá, there is also a moment that goes back to the vision of a family in turmoil.
The fact is, like the monks who went from Nepal to Seattle to find that family, it is not common for Uriel Arcanjo to be here, as well as the founding of the University of Oxford in 1096, having until then, close to Woodstock Road, the first and most enduring internet user nickname, Woodstock, which in 1996 is 15 years old, and as I describe, July 15th has “Gregorian Equidistance” ( https://coexistencelaw.org/?p=868 ) and the 81st of the year only aggravates certain synchronicities, not to mention M.J. being an old acquaintance of the Hells Angels. As Joe Biden left the Presidency of the United States of America at that age, Lula must face reelection next year at that age, the Grand Master of Malta reaches his 81st Government without being a complete stranger to me. What I mean is, if from Oxford to Guaratinguetá, sini qua non, to think that I have spent the last 20 years thinking about my encounter with poverty, and dedicating myself to family problems. Just as I am referring to Siddhartha Gautama. Just as when I watched it, like almost everything in my life that has a deep meaning, a profound wisdom, when it is in Brazil, someone nearby can’t stand it and laughs at the suit.
It bothers me a little at this point that everything is adverse. We know about the migration policies in the world, we know about the difficulties universities have with this, but it shouldn’t sound like a criticism. That’s the point, even for Brazilians, an ancestral movement has begun in some sense of current politics, called “Love it or Leave it”. And I’m not even looking for the contesting character of such a fact, because I have no evident political alignment with this or that, although I am very sad about the fact that today the 4th Civil Court of Guaratinguetá is discussing whether I am eligible to have Brazilian citizenship like any other person born in Brazil. It is so sad that at this time, despite my countless efforts, some expressed here, I am not heard by the judiciary, there is no better diagnosis of my dyslexia or even of the long process of political persecution that I suffer, not even by my private doctor, and the often limited understanding of my father and mother, who despite a very successful past, were always, as when they chose my name, workers, as at the time the name of the Minister of Labor was Murilo. Spiritually and everything else, erudition goes far beyond some of us in relation to others, I mean me and my parents, like for example, coming across Tibetan Monks in Seattle, absolutely simple people, average people, with concerns that cannot be explained, and which make them make the worst choices for my future today. For example, when I told my father a little about our many coincidences, all he thought appropriate to do was put a sign on the back door: “Bento’s House”. And it doesn’t explain half the story, it only worsens a type of ignorance that then believes in a complete renunciation of worldly matters, an arbitrary revocation of Brazilian National Citizenship.
@CoexistenceLaw
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