Origin Story

Bodisutra is a cartoon about enlightenment, just as Snoopy is a cartoon about a thinking dog. How it came about is a bit of a mystery. It definitely was not planned. Nathan Curry, the creator of Bodisutra, has lived in 32 countries and travelled in over 80. He has studied evolutionary biology and nuclear fusion, Sanskrit and psychotherapy, worked on whale research ships, built companies and schools and taught in universities across the globe. He used to manage Shakespeare and Company Bookstore in Paris and run his own language school. He has seen the worst of humanity and the best of it. 

In his 30th year, Nathan moved to India to study yoga, after a series of powerful dreams and visions. A decade later, Bodisutra emerged out of his reaction to a humorous story told about Vyasa, the author of the Bhagavad Gita (and other great classics), by his yoga teacher in Chennai, TKV Desikachar, and a "chance" meeting with a puppy in the Himalaya. 

The story of Bodisutra began to garner legs on the Tibetan plateau. Nathan had gone to Tibet to visit Mount Kailash, the home of the Buddha and Siva and Parvati. It was born out of a serendipitous set of journeys and a profound life.

Friends helping Nathan with the idea suggested ditching the puppets and focusing on animation. He knew they were right. Over time, Bodisutra developed into two different paths: the animation, which focuses on "remembering to laugh" and Sutranovum - which showcases design and insights that help with the issues which Bodisutra puts in story form.

What Bodisutra is about

Bodisutra aims to marry the classic power of Winnie the Pooh, which lies in:

The innocence of loving simple things
Love among friends
The joy they experience
The fact that Eeyore is frequently depressed but not judged. 

It’s not pandered too like an illness that needs to be fixed.
There is no ideology in it.

However, beyond all these wholesome things Bodisutra has been specifically designed to look at how we heal the roots of suffering in the human condition. It is not about "-isms," organised religion or scientific materialism. 

Bodi is a character who has no filter. He calls a spade a spade. He singles out narcissists, wounded therapists, egomaniacal gurus, cruel bosses, nepotistic politicians, greedy swindlers, hypocritical activists, greenwashing polluters and the establishment that is switched off to its ignorance for the reprobates he sees in them. 

What Bodi fails to understand is that he sees in them only his own madness pushed out. He is blinded by his own projections. 

On the other hand, Norman is the voice of love. He represents the healed mind.  He understands that the eyes are useless when the mind is blind. He condemns no one. And loves all as his one Self. 

Despite the tensions that Bodi brings, we find a lot of love and warmth in the story. It becomes a vehicle for a deep understanding of the world and the mind that projects it into form. Bodisutra therefore becomes a profound reflection on what our real function is in time and space. We created a thinking monkey, one who is often delusional, to dive deeper. We explore the pain of the reactive mind by bringing it to the altar of gentle laughter. Putting such insights into an animation is no simple task. We are inspired to explore deep wisdom with levity and humor. 

We are not promoting veganism or carnivore diets, woke nor anti-woke. We are neutral on such things. Happiness cannot be found in attacking self or others. We don't represent any religion. Bodi looks at how ideology, religion and belief systems can (and often does) create divisions between people, breeding hate and intolerance. Bodisutra points out that a lot of tribalism and what masquerades as philosophy, is born of fear and superstition. Nor are we zealots of science; though we respect science and its enormous contribution to human life. We are not against, nor for, atheism. We hold the mirror up to the hypocrisy of toxic power structures and how the father and mother complex and other projections of insecurity, in general, often drive institutions. 

Bodisutra IS about the ending of the victim mind and the transcendence of the world. It’s about how difficult that process can be, and the humor that can help us in the process. It is a comedy about enlightenment; about the ending of anger and victimhood and the dropping of the various blocks to enlightenment.

We don’t believe feminism or chauvinism liberates the mind from victimhood. Feminism can do good things but it can also ensnare and bully and promote division and hate. All -isms can be used to engender harm or to liberate. A hammer can be used to build a house or kill a man. A poor workman blames his tools. No gender is superior to the other. The focus here is on the wisdom of the Triune society by Claudio Naranjo and Totila Albert. 

All of life is therapy. But few master the mind. Much of what we cover is social commentary. We look at the projection of the"sacred" onto certain worldly things and not onto other worldly things. We start from these premises:

Nothing is sacred in this world. 

Everything is a projection of the mind.

The world itself is a projection. 

“Sacred” and “profane” are projected judgments.

A healed mind is sacred. That is not a judgment.

Examples:

•  You are a goddess (are you really?),

•  the sacred vegan sunflower, 

• the sacred altar

We touch on the breakdown of relationships and the rise of life coaches and therapists; many of whom are not in happy marriages and don’t have successful careers. Without being aware of it, they often prey on others’ insecurities. All too often the blind lead the blind. Our humor is designed to parody the traps of the delusional mind, to liberate, not to attack and demean. 

From a Bodisutra script:

We hear Bodi sitting down in meditation in the garden and hear a voice in his head saying to the other voices:

“Gather round my pretties. Staff meeting.”

Pan to house with Lara and Norm watching: 

Lara: Bodi is a force of nature. But he is so angry with humans! To  be honest, I don't exactly blame him. 

Norman: No, he is angry with himself. He just can’t see it yet. What we see in the world is just a reflection of what we see in ourselves. We see only what we believe to be true about ourselves. And for most sentient life forms that means a cacophony of insane voices in our head. 

The world is not a cause. It is an effect Lara. 

We have this incredible belief in unworthiness. In judgment, in punishment, in shame, which we project out onto self and others. Love looks at this madness and heals the problem at its source, in our minds. That's how we go home from this place. That's how we heal. Home is within us.

Our senses and thinking report how justified we are, they help us protect the lie we have told ourselves. Our mind meets with the insanity and holds meetings to justify its wrath. But all it is doing is supporting its own self-loathing; it is all smoke and mirrors. A storm in a teapot. A lie to be carried away by the wind of hope and to washed away by the rains of kindness.

From the viewpoint of the sleeping mind, the world is the cause of all that happens to us. It is the cause of us. 

We think we are born. We think we are our genetics, our family history and our life story. We think our parents hurt us. We think our children hurt us. We think dictators abuse us. We think disease attacks us. We think that we pay an unfair share of taxes. We think we can save the world with biodegradable plastic and artificial nuclear fusion reactors. The ordained high priests of special knowledge in the cults of academic psychotherapy think they are special and above others though they don masks to deny this fact. The halls of revered scientific fact are full of know it alls but they are mostly trapped in their own ignorance. The reglious worship at the altars of their special gods and the activists at the altars of their grievances, always demanding "changes in policy"  to fix an imperfect world. We think we are bodies. But the world as we perceive it, is just a mirror reflecting the chaos - the madness- in our own minds, that is the cost of our “precious “belief in separation. 

Lara: Belief in seperation? 

Norman: Yes, I am a separate self. 8 billion other separate humans share this planet with me. The senses affirm this. What we actually see is an attack on the truth. And we spend lifetimes protecting that attack on the truth. Back in the realm of star dust I came from, I had lived in such a protected bubble from the truth. I was a scientist and I considered myself open-minded. I wasn’t’. Not even remotely. 

But something nagged at my mind. I was a lone traveler questioning my mind. We all are. Eventually. And that day in the ship orbiting the wormhole it all fell into place. I had an epiphany; a direct connection with reality. 

Simultaneously, in the world of forms my mind was swapped with a dog in this world. But at the level of meaning, I woke up. I ceased to prescribe or subscribe to the belief in ignorance in my mind. I was no longer a victim of the world I see. The guilty mind that believes in pain and separation died. To me there were no saviors left, no ideooogy or clever veils to cover the naked truth. Nothing trapped me anymore. Nothing could ever trap us anyway but our own thinking and looking. Yes, my body was swapped with a dog here in your universe. But, again, I am not a body. 

All the madness in the world appears to go on from the viewpoint of the sleeping mind. 

But the healed mind sees that as a reflection of one’s past deluded misinterpretation. It’s like you are under the spell of a crazed form of hypnosis until you are liberated from that. But the hypnotist is inside us. Sees it for what it is and its power ceases to trap us. All that is to be forgiven, let go. It is an illusion that I have made. When I cease to see it as real it has no more power over me. 

I see who I think I am in all situations and others. That is a law that is true no matter what. 

You can argue with it. You can’t change it. Thankfully.'

-

"You see how clever the ego is. I know and you don’t know. My -ism is best. This food is sacred. That food is not. All are projections which can’t be worked with if the mind is closed. And people will try to fix you according to their image of god. But man created god. And beyond the images of man is stillness. In that quiet what created us reveals itself."

Norman