When George Lucas was building the mythos behind the now-vast franchise of Star Wars, he wanted to explore spirituality in a new way that would appeal to young audiences of the ’70s at the time; to do so in a way that was broad enough to seem familiar throughout different spiritual beliefs, but also mysterious enough to inspire people to explore such ideas more. He wanted to create a kind of distillation of different religious beliefs. As he said in an interview with Bill Moyers, “I’ve tried to take the ideas that seem to cut across the most cultures, because I’m fascinated by that and I think that’s one of the things that I really got from Joe Campbell.” Campbell wrote about common archetypes across different mythologies and cultures, and it’s well known that Star Wars was very influenced by Campbell’s concept of the “hero’s journey.”

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And so it’s no wonder that an idea like the Force has taken off in popular culture, even becoming its own quasi-religion. When Lucas was coming up with the idea, he had long discussions about religion and philosophy with one of the producers for the first film, Gary Kurtz, who studied comparative religion in college. Lucas himself was raised Methodist, but doesn’t ascribe to any one religion in particular. “Let’s say I’m spiritual,” he told Time Magazine once, back in 1999. And so is Star Wars.

So what are some of the spiritual themes that thread throughout the movies, and how do they relate to real-life religions?

Christianity, Immaculate Conception, and Skywalker

     20th Century Fox

For anyone who was raised Catholic, it might be almost instinctive to hear the words, “May the Force be with you,” and want to reply, “And also with you.” The words are quite similar to the words from a priest to his congregation, “The Lord be with you.” And that isn’t the only similarity to Christianity.

When it was released in 1999, the movie Star Wars: The Phantom Menace established a new mythology around a very central character: that of Anakin Skywalker, who later becomes the iconic villain Darth Vader. When he is just a young boy, a slave along with his mother Shmi, he is discovered by Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn (played by Liam Neeson). Jinn asks his mother who the father is, and she replies that there was no father - she simply became pregnant somehow.

     Lucasfilm

This case of immaculate conception is very similar to the story of Jesus. His mother Mary was a virgin who became pregnant through a miracle of God, to give birth to Jesus, a savior who freed humanity from original sin. It’s unclear if Shmi Skywalker was a virgin at the time, but she did seem to become pregnant through only the power of the Force itself, and Anakin was prophesied to become “The Chosen One,” a savior destined to bring balance to the Force.

It’s less clear what balance to the Force may look like, as the Jedi were largely in control at the time and Anakin went on to become perhaps the strongest antagonist ever on the ominous Dark Side, spreading a lot of evil in the galaxy before his final redemption at the end of his life, after his last battle with his son Luke.

The concepts of the Light Side and the Dark Side are closer to a Christian good and evil as well, rather than the Taoist concepts of yin and yang. As Yoda tells Luke during his training in The Empire Strikes Back, “If you choose the quick and easy path as Vader did, you will become an agent of evil.” But the Force is not very similar to the Christian God, or any theological entity, and ultimately Star Wars resonates the most with Eastern spirituality.

Meditation in Buddhism and Star Wars

     Pixabay

Meditation is a common practice of the Jedi, the practitioners of the Light Side of the Force. It is a way for Jedi to center themselves, and get back in touch with or channel the power of the Force. Meditation is also a very core practice of Buddhism, though it is actually much older, stretching possibly as far back as 5000 BCE. But in modern times, it is most closely associated with Buddhism, and how it is represented in Star Wars aligns with that as well.

Meditation is, in many ways, a practice of mindfulness and concentration - both of which are steps along the Buddhist doctrine of the Eightfold Path. We see many characters meditate in Star Wars, from Rey and Luke Skywalker in the sequel movies, to Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon Jinn in the prequels. Meditation is often associated with sitting cross-legged in the Lotus position, but there are many ways to meditate. Qui-Gon Jinn closes his eyes and centers himself while standing in the brief respites between fighting Darth Maul in The Phantom Menace, and Luke’s training with Yoda in The Empire Strikes Back can be seen as meditative.

Meditation is also about where our attention is, and bringing ourselves back into the present moment. Qui-Gon Jinn advises Obi-Wan in The Phantom Menace to be mindful of the future, “But not at the expense of the present moment.” And Yoda says about Luke in The Empire Strikes Back, “This one a long time have I watched. All his life has he looked away…to the future, to the horizon. Never his mind on where he was. Hmm? What he was doing?” It’s this movie, too, which has the most wisdom and philosophical insight into the nature of the Force. The director of The Empire Strikes Back, Irvin Kershner, was a Buddhist himself, and wanted to communicate some of those spiritual ideas. “I want to introduce some Zen here,” he said, “because I don’t want the kids to walk away just thinking that everything is a shoot-‘em-up.” Zen is the branch of Buddhism, first developed in China, that most closely correlates with the ideas presented in Star Wars.

There is also a similarity in the common Buddhist mantra, “Om mani padme hum.” Padme Amadala is the senator who falls in love with Anakin. The word “padme” in Sanskrit means “lotus,” which is a very symbolic flower in Buddhist tradition. The entire Sanskrit phrase is difficult to translate, but it roughly means “jewel in the lotus,” with the words “om” and “hum” at the beginning and the end being untranslatable, spiritual sounds.

Attachment in Buddhism and Star Wars

     Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

Buddhism is also very centered around the idea of letting go of attachments. In the Four Noble Truths, which is the central teaching of Buddhism, attachment and craving are labeled as the cause of suffering, and the idea is to be free of them. Yoda counsels Anakin during the final prequel movie Revenge of the Sith, when Anakin is worried about the death of someone he loves (Padme), telling him that death is okay:

Additionally, Anakin tells Padme in the previous movie Attack of the Clones, “Attachment is forbidden. Possession is forbidden. Compassion, which I would define as unconditional love, is essential to a Jedi’s life.” Compassion is another very central tenet of Buddhism, which advocates for showing compassion to all living beings.

But we can also begin to see the way that Anakin is misinterpreting the message of attachment. By calling it forbidden, he is creating an attachment to the very idea of non-attachment - a circular and common mental trap along the Buddhist past. Rather than something like attachment being forbidden, it is more accurate to say that Buddhists practice a kind of letting go, which is more peaceful rather than controlling. But it is not easy. Even Luke succumbs to attachment in the sequel movies, when he hesitates at burning the ancient Jedi texts he has. Yoda appears to him as a Force ghost and tells him to let go of them.

The burning of the texts is very similar to an old Buddhist story about a Zen Master named Dahui, who burned the printing blocks for the Zen collection of koans called the Blue Cliff Record, after he noticed that the monks had become obsessed with it. This also closely aligns with the Buddhist concept of “kill the Buddha”, which compels us not to idolize even the Buddha himself, and destroy the concepts of what a Buddha is that we build up in our minds.

Zen Buddhism also has some similarity with the notion of a spiritual warrior. The founder of Zen, Bodhidharma, was, according to legend, the man who taught Shaolin monks how to fight. It’s even likely that the word “Jedi” is related to the word “Jidaigeki,” which is a genre of movies in Japan about samurai who often combined spiritual practice with their combat skills.

Taoism and The Force in Star Wars

Taoism first emerged in China around the 4th or 5th century BCE. It’s founder, Lao Tzu (Laozi), wrote the central text of the religion, the Tao Te Ching, the title of which means “Book of the Way of Virtue,” with the word “Tao” meaning “way.” (Interestingly, the earliest Christians called themselves followers of “the way”). The idea of the Force is similar to the idea of the Tao in many ways.

The Tao is described as eternal, infinite, the birth of all things, and present within all beings. The Force has been described as “an energy field created by all living things” by Obi-Wan, but perhaps the most famous, and most moving, description of the Force comes from Yoda, and can be related to both Taoism and Buddhism:

Yoda is attempting to teach Luke how to use the Force, but Luke is defeated (before he even begins) by his own lack of belief in himself and in the ability and power of the Force to do something like lift his ship out of a swamp. This poetic description of the Force is most similar to Taoism. Yet the concept of “luminous beings” rings closely to the Buddhist idea of the luminous or clear mind found in deep meditative concentration. Though the idea of the Force would later change and involve creatures called “Midi-Chlorians,” Lucas originally said anyone could train themselves to use the Force, comparing it to karate or yoga, saying in an interview that, “If you want to take the time to do it, you can do it.”

Yin-Yang and the Tao of Star Wars

     Creative Commons

The idea of the Tao being like the Force, both of which give birth to two opposing forces, the light, or yang side, and the dark, or yin side, is on its surface very similar. However, the yin-yang symbol with its striking black and white balance is actually older than Taoism. And the yin side, or the dark side, does not represent evil so much as it represents an opposite - for every day, there is a night; for every up, there is a down. Black cannot exist without white, and in that way, all opposites have an inherent interdependence.

But the idea of balance does show itself strongly in Star Wars. While the Dark Side may be closer to “evil” than it is to the more symbolic concept of “yin,” Light Side users are not immune from succumbing to a lack of balance. As George Lucas himself has said, “The core of the Force… you have the dark side and the light side. One is selfless. One is selfish, and you wanna keep them in balance.”

The Jedi Way is about balance, and aligning oneself with the Force, and the Taoist “way” is also about balance, and about aligning oneself with the flow of the Tao. The trick to doing this is not to try to control or push for things, but to align with things - to go with the grain, and not against it. This is very similar to a Taoist concept called “wu wei,” which is related to Yoda’s most famous wisdom: “Do. Or do not. There is no try.” Wu wei can be translated as effortless effort, or spontaneous, harmonious action. It is an act of doing without trying, without thinking. It is sometimes compared to the art of letting go of an arrow on a bow, without ever deciding to do so. In modern culture, it most closely relates to the concept of a “flow state” that athletes commonly experience.

And Taoism, like Buddhism, is about accepting things as they are, including difficult things like death. Just like black and white or up and down, death and life are inextricably linked, and that is not a bad thing in Taoism or in Star Wars. After his training on Degobah, Yoda tells Luke that he will die. “Master Yoda, you can’t die,” Luke says. “Ah, strong am I with the Force, but not that strong,” Yoda replies. “Twilight is upon me, and soon, night must fall. That is the way of things. The way of the Force.” Taoism would agree.