Tao of Peace (2010)

An illustrious group of adventurers want with the help of an international support team to travel from Jerusalem across the Libyan border. Their goal is to have a cup of tea with Colonel Qaddafi around a campfire before the gates of Tripoli. The project is comprised of two parts: a two-week training period in the Jordanian desert and the 5,500 kilometers main trip from Jerusalem to Tripoli through the Near East and wide stretches of the Sahara. The route is to be traveled with the help of three old, desert-proven expeditionary vehicles and with camels. The intention behind the endeavor is, regardless of whether the participants will reach Tripoli, to stick together. The Zen master Alok, who occupies himself with the creativity of idleness and paints calligraphies of human auras, interrupts his sojourn in India and travels especially to Jordan, to give his contribution to the preparations for the adventurous desert odyssey. Stan, a master of negotiating techniques, having gathered experience in UN and NATO operations, participates in both parts of the trip. Geshe Ngawang Thapkhe, a Tibetan monk sent by His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama, conveys the technique of calmness and the path of compromise by his own example. He is the most highly trained Tibetan monk in Europe and the first Tibetan to set foot on Israeli, Palestinian, Jordanian and Egyptian ground. The film tells the tale of this exceedingly courageous action of those few who are ready to stand up despite unforeseeable consequences to follow fate, so that they in unity with the original stillness of the desert might discover something about the unsolved riddle of earth. The romantic conception regarding the possibility of a spiritual voyage of discovery is standing then in an extremely sobering contrast to the political context of the voyage and the 'real world'. This "real world" consisted of countless minefields from past, present and future wars that lay without number left and right of the path in unpopulated areas. It consisted of military restricted areas and of high-security areas. It consisted of embrasures, barbed wire, electrified fences, machine-guns and tanks, soldiers, policemen, secret service agents and sunglasses. The "real world" exalted itself in the form of armed escorts for the security of the group, since the governments, whose guests we were, were constrained to prevent that anything should happen to this international caravan just when in their land. The "real world" showed itself in the form of cynical journalists, smooth politicians, in the form of checkpoints, frontiers, verifications, authorization procedures, visa grants, renewed verifications, waiting periods, boundaries and further checkpoints that sometimes without recognizable reason loomed in the wasteland. And then it happened: Very friendly and hospital border officers had the convoy turned back at the Libyan frontier, reasoning that all were welcome in his land, but the Israelis as occupiers and aggressors must return to Egypt. Obviously they personally would have had decided differently. The group, however, refused to leave the Israelis back. The troop turned its back on Libya. Tensions between the participants grew, because the most palpable of their aims had ceased to exist. In its place, annoyance prevailed. In the support team the first open conflicts broke out. The film team itself was drawn into the mesh of moods and occurrences. The question of the sense of it all stepped onto the stage and took a sarcastic bow. Yahya, the Afghani, became the second Muslim to refuse to continue the journey. This brought the Arabs an assessment that, when the going gets rough, they quit. The emissary of the Dalai Lama and the German doctor, a woman, were apparently unable meet the physical requirements of the voyage and had already turned back, before reaching the Libyan border. And regarding Stan Siver, the American mediation expert, it seemed only a question of time before he threw in the towel. Over and again the question presented itself: what was the true aim of the trip? Was it a signal of hope to the world? Was it to create positive news, as asserted in the official draft of the non-profit organization? Was the endeavor really an American-Zionist propaganda project, as Latif, the Iraqi and former double of Udai Hussein, formulated it? He was beside himself when Yevgen showed a video of his Ukrainian battalion in combat in Iraq. Latif's rage towards the West has become greater than that towards the regime that had subjected him to perversion for seven years. He says that he was tortured more severely by secret service agents of democratic states than he ever was by Saddam Hussein and his son. The scars lend credence to his statements. Was it an informational trip, as Dan Sheridan, the New York fire fighter saw it? Was it to find out who or what these Arabs were who had attacked his country and killed 343 of his colleagues? Asked, if he could ever forgive, he kept silent, and, in the boots in which he had trod through the dust of the World Trade Center's towers, walked off into the desert sand. Galit, the Israeli woman who lost her mother in a suicide attack on a public bus, says, "There is no competition over the pain, because we are all suffering. Our needs are very similar - freedom and calm." After four thousand kilometers of dust and sand, heights and depths, the question of results remained. Had the efforts and privations, had the enthusiasm of trying to move things been worth it? Had the undertaking failed? What were actually the motives of the individuals who took part in this field experiment for peace? Was there something that bound them to one another? Was there something in this journey that tells us it was worth all the effort and risk? From where does it issue, this source that feeds the will of individuals as well as peoples to want to kill the others, the strangers? Had we found an answer?