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USA Today, USA
May 18, 2005
Carol Memmott
www.usatoday.com

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ReligionNewsBlog.com • Item 11230 • Posted: Saturday May 21, 2005  

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Looking to discover your inner Yoda? Or maybe suppress your inner Jar Jar?

New books that dissect and interpret the spiritual and philosophical underpinnings of the Star Wars movies are ready to help.

“George Lucas intentionally created movies that universally appeal to people in a spiritual sense,” says Matthew Bortolin, 31, a practicing Buddhist and author of The Dharma of Star Wars (Wisdom, $14.95).

“A lot of the dialogue of the Jedi, about mindfulness and letting go, is all Buddhist jargon,” he says.

In the first Star Wars trilogy, Bortolin says, the story line in which Yoda, the Jedi master, sends young Luke Skywalker into a cave to contemplate his untapped Jedi powers is also very Buddhist in nature — “the meditation and taking time to confront oneself.”

Christians have their own interpretations.

“When we first meet Luke, he’s a clueless kid,” says Dick Staub, 57, author of Christian Wisdom of the Jedi Masters (Jossey-Bass, $16.95). “He doesn’t know the Force exists, and yet it’s all around him and eventually becomes the passion and focus of his life.

“I followed it through the teachings of Jesus as a metaphor for a spiritual journey that any young person would make.”

He also points to the scene in The Empire Strikes Back in which Skywalker is trying to use the Force to lift a starfighter craft out of the swamp. The frustrated Skywalker tells Yoda that he’s trying to do it, and Yoda says: “Do or do not. There is no try.”

“It reminds me,” Staub says, “of something Jesus was talking about when he told his followers not to be just hearers of the words, but to be doers. A spiritual journey is not just a ‘try it’ kind of thing.”

Among other books that deal with the topic:

• Star Wars and Philosophy: More Powerful Than You Can Possibly Imagine, edited by Kevin Decker, Jason Eberl and William Irwin (Open Court, $17.95). Essays dissect the films’ philosophical questions.

• The Tao of Star Wars by John M. Porter (Humanics Trade, $17.95). Explains basic Tao principles and beliefs through the films’ characters, plots and symbols.

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