Mandala is a Korean film that follows the careers of two Buddhist monks who pursue antithetical forms of religious practice—meditative self-cultivation, and antinomian pursuit of freedom. Mandala culminates in the enlightenment of both, as they come to realize the limits intrinsic in self-absorption in either form. The paper seeks to explore the larger ethical issues posed in the film in relation to their background in Mahayana Buddhism and to show their applicability in our own cultural setting to the emergence of a 'theological humanism', which articulates various forms of transcendence or depth experienced in the midst of human life.
