c. 1997 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) _ With the opening in theaters nationwide of”Seven Years in Tibet,”Buddhism has become big business at the box office. Millions of moviegoers have taken a break from murder, mayhem, sex and big explosions to see a moving film about one man’s redemption.

In addition to oodles of pre-release publicity,”Seven Years”has this unlikely but unbeatable story line: hunk hikes the Himalayas and finds holiness.

The hunk is Brad Pitt, who delivers an understated but powerful performance as Heinrich Harrer, a world-class Austrian mountain climber, who was also a third-rate husband, father, friend and human being _ at least until his transformation.

The Himalayas, the fabled”Roof of the World,”have long been a mountainous magnet for those seeking the ultimate climb, including Harrer, who in a letter to the son he had never seen, described the region as”a place rich with all the strange beauty of your nighttime dreams.” Those heavenly heights are also home to Lhasa, the holy city of Tibetan Buddhism. Under the thumb of the Chinese since 1950, Tibet was off-limits to film crews, who painstakingly recreated Lhasa’s exotic grandeur in the Andes of Argentina.

The redemption Harrer finds in Lhasa is a painful kind of emotional purification that springs from two sources: deep regret over a life full of selfishness and”bad deeds,”and a touching friendship with the teen-age Dalai Lama, the spiritual and political leader of Tibetan Buddhism.

This may not sound particularly”religious”in the conventional sense, but that’s not unusual. Many of America’s about 1 million Buddhists see Buddhism as a philosophy, or even a psychological approach toward life, but not a religion.

In fact, part of why Buddhism is enjoying a tremendous growth in the West is because millions of people seem to be looking for a spiritual path that’s Eastern, slightly exotic, compassionate, provocative, inclusive, ancient and hip _ in short, just about everything they believe is lacking in the more familiar faiths of their upbringing.

For the last century and a half, it’s been cultural leaders and celebrities who have promoted the message of the Buddha, Buddhism’s founder. He was born more than 2,500 years ago, found enlightenment while meditating under a bodhi tree, and taught that lasting inner peace could only be found by transcending all worldly desires and passions. Today there are around 300 million Buddhists in the world, most of them in southeast Asia.

In the 1840s, it was”transcendentalist”writers such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau who first introduced the American masses to Eastern concepts.”They were the first American literary figures to take the East seriously,”said Rick Fields, author of”How the Swans Came to the Lake,”a 400-page history of Buddhism in America.”In doing that, they kind of broke the ice.” In the 1950s, a new group of literary figures called the”beats,”which included poet Allen Ginsberg and novelist Jack Kerouac, popularized Buddhist concepts for a new, spiritually curious subculture. In the 1960s, Buddhism’s emphasis on non-violence held great appeal to a generation soured on American militarism by the Vietnam War.

During the 1990s, a variety of celebrities from the worlds of film, sports and music have exhibited various levels of dedication to assorted branches of the varied Buddhist tradition.

Actors Steven Segal and Richard Gere, Chicago Bulls coach Phil Jackson, and musicians John Cage, Tina Turner and Adam Yauch have all claimed some level of commitment to Buddhist thought.

Yauch has been among the most explicit about his beliefs. In the process, he’s helped transform his rock/rap trio The Beastie Boys _ formerly a testosterone-driven band most famous for the 1986 hit”(You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (to Party)”_ into a more spiritually mature outfit that condemns sexism and lust and promotes universal harmony and”listening to the elders.” In”Bodhisattva Vow,”a song from the group’s 1994 album,”Ill Communication,”Yauch sings these lines:”As I develop the awakening mind,I praise the Buddhas as they shine.” Yauch also organized two annual Tibetan Freedom Concerts. This past summer’s installment featured U2, along with plenty of chanting Buddhist monks, and raised both consciousness and money for the Milarepa Fund, which fights for Tibetan freedom. A CD collection of concert highlights will be released in November.

But”Seven Years”may do more to promote Buddhism to the masses than anything in recent history _ excepting the tireless work of the Dalai Lama, a human cyclone who has the spiritual allure of the late Mother Teresa and the travel schedule of Pope John Paul II.

Moreover,”Seven Years”is just the first of two films focusing on the Dalai Lama and Tibetan Buddhism being released this year. Scheduled for release this Christmas season is”Kundun,”a film by director Martin Scorsese, which will explore the Dalai Lama’s early life.

Advocates of both the Tibetan political cause and Buddhism in general have seized upon these movies as prime opportunities to take their messages to the American heartland.”Seven Years”had one scrape with scandal on its way to the screen. After filming was completed, Germany’s Stern magazine revealed that Harrer had been a member of the Nazi SS, a problem that was addressed by having Pitt add new voice-overs.

But one of the movie’s most reassuring messages is that anyone can journey toward redemption. That includes those who hob-nobbed with Nazis, as well as the rest of us, whose bad deeds are much more mundane.

IR END RABEY