Everything Everywhere All At Once (2022): Fighting Fire With Water
“One of those movies that makes us remember why we love going to the movies.” A good friend’s words that sum it up perfectly. This movie had me slapping my knee laughing and tearing up sniffling at all the right times.
I believe there are metaphorical layers rooted in Buddhist philosophy, and at the level of its characters, it engaged in an intergenerational conversation. I’ll be focusing on these, my two favorite parts of EEAAO.
And if anyone reading this has a different/better understanding of Buddhist philosophy or it’s practice than me, definitely correct me. This post really comes out of my desire to challenge myself in delineating my understanding of the most interesting system of inquiry I’ve ever encountered.
Generations
As a man of South Asian heritage, I feel like I win when I see stories with any kind of Asian representation. Also loved that Joy wasn’t your typical Hollywood build and that the protagonist is my mother’s age. The characters felt like people in my own world that I care about. And I couldn’t help but see one of this movie’s threads as being an intergenerational dialogue of regret and forgiveness.
In my personal circle, I’ve come to appreciate a richer diversity, which is to say diversity of life-stage and ideals, on top of the typical ethnic sort. You know? When I was in college it felt like all my friends were in their 20’s and there are a lot of people I know today that still stick to their own age group, but all 💫 in different colors 💫 Really once I started working I started making friends with people across generational lines and it broadened my view of life as a result. Now in addition to this, I, along with many 30-somethings, am building new relationships with my parents, less rooted in the perception of their infallible authority that colored my youth and more rooted in a chosen love for them in their chaotic entirety, just like the attitude I take toward my friends. Saying all this because I see a similar maturity of family relationships illustrated in this movie. To start they do a good job of setting up these very relatable tropes in the beginning, with tense relationships between any pair:
- the second generation that feels more tolerated and indebted than accepted
- the first generation that have devoted themselves to their obligations
- the elder generation that expresses their desire for your well-being by focusing on your missteps
While their initial characterization feels like they would’ve been stereotypes for a movie about a customer passing through their laundromat, the characters then challenge each other and confront their relationships in an honest way. This enables them to grow by both forgiving and trying to understand one another. But this all happens eventually. Initially they hide behind what feels like the standard strawmen that people rely on to convince themselves they’re not the ones that need to change. To me this radical honesty is the most fictional part of this story about multiversal doom bagels. Kidding, but really people tell themselves casual lies too often. Anyway, these characters need to be driven to acknowledge their truths — first to themselves, then to one another. In this story their personal truths only become accessible to them by confronting certain loaded universal truths first, which takes the story in a refreshingly Buddhist direction. (Seriously, the Christian idea of vicarious redemption is not as profound as pop culture thinks it is). Which loaded universal truths do these characters have to confront?
- The meaninglessness of life in an infinite multiverse
- The hopelessness of an existence that will inevitably dissolve into void
Infinity and Self
Complicating the relationships in this movie is the 900 pound gorilla in the room — a multiverse of literally absurd potential. This part pulls straight from Rick and Morty and I am excited at the possibility of this becoming a recurring element in our sci-fi zeitgeist. It comes from the Everettian interpretation of quantum mechanics, as elucidated by Sean Carroll in some of his YouTube lectures and probably one of his linked blog posts. In short Hugh Everett interpreted the results of the famous double slit experiment as the electron going through both slits truly, following observation, despite only being observable in one slit. This is because an entirely new universe splits off for each possible trajectory of the electron. When no observation is made the electron fails to define a path, remaining a wave function (covering the spread of all possible trajectories), which is when the refractory pattern emerges. In this case, no new universes bud off. Take a moment to appreciate the magnitude of the multiverse as expounded by this view. For every fundamental particle, each possible interaction it can have results in a new universe. I mean sure, it probably operates at the level of your choices, but quantitatively, most of the universes that emerge would come from quantum interactions. That would still be a predictable, finite number of universes though, assuming the universe is finite. And any finite number is categorically infinitesimal in comparison to infinity, the number of universes Everett postulates. This is also called the Many Worlds Interpretation of the double slit experiment. Now what does this imply about the mechanics of the multiverse and its impact on our lives? This might mean there’s a universe where you’re famous, but the implications for such a multiverse extend far beyond that, even to universes where you’re not a reductive narcissist who thinks the coolest thing about MWI is that your ego might be better celebrated elsewhere.
Kidding? But actually, I’d argue that the movie takes about the same stance. Evelyn realizes there’s a multiverse and her thinking takes time to expand. Initially her concern is primarily that she would’ve been a badass martial artist and actor if she didn’t choose Wayman. *YAWN* Get a personality. But once her mind splits to occupy multiple (maybe all?) versions of herself across the multiverse, she starts feeling how big an infinite multiverse is. Once she more than knows, once she really internalizes that there are also an infinite number of universes where she’s famous, each varying by a particle interaction, the thrill goes away. More importantly, when her mind splits, her sense of self splits. This reminds me of dissolution of self, referenced in Buddhist and meditation circles. When she becomes multiple versions of herself at the same time, the notion that she is a distinct person with something that makes her different than others begins to erode. I imagine she might’ve thought something like, “I mean forget how different I am from that guy, just look at how different I am from me.” This would affect the deepest fields of her perception, since her notion that she is the subject of her experience is probably rooted in her notion of her self being at the center of it, while her notion that there is an object of her experience requires that she perceive her self as being a distinct thing. So challenging her sense of self also challenges, her subject-object distinction.
Abruptly going from single-mindedness to a fracturing of self, Evelyn becomes reflexively apathetic and begins neglecting all versions of her life that she can access, very similar to Rick Sanchez. It’s also important to note that Evelyn’s apparent apathy is the result of an emotional state. It’s not truly apathy. Like Rick, her apathy is rooted in existential suffering. She senses the magnitude of existence and perceives pain. She feels the pain of a person confronting the scale of life and its apparent interchangeability. She feels the pain of a person confronting the replicability of self and nihilism of causality. She feels the pain of a person confronting one of the deepest fears of a metaphysical libertarian — the notion that neither your choices nor their consequences matter. That. Nothing. Matters. And she reacts to this with callous apathy, a defense mechanism for her to convince herself that because nothing matters, she doesn’t feel.
Shunyata from non-Duality
The dissolution of cardinal distinctions (like subject and object, self and other) is of critical significance in Buddhist theology, which I’m definitely an expert on since I read just the first part of a trilogy written by a self-proclaimed enlightened guy. I mean I believe him. But yeah, according to some fucking guy, enlightenment can be described as an abiding non-dual awareness. In other words it’s where you land after all distinctions dissolve. It’s when you stop viewing dualistic phenomena (like pleasure and pain, action and inaction, kindness and aggression) as being fundamentally different. (Sidenote: this is part of the reason the Mahayana pantheon has a deeply fascinating subset of wrathful buddhas within which the icon of this blog can be found *death metal intensifies*). And this kind of non-dual practice robs each element in any duality of its power. For example anger is no longer this fiery cloud that pours into every in every nook of your mind when it emerges; it instead becomes the same in character as any other cloudy emotion, like joy. Or the sensation of your chair against the seat of your body right now. Just another virtual signal arising in consciousness.
The Big Distinction though — life and death. That one’s a doozy when it dissolves (from what I hear). It’s also at the center of my favorite childhood story.
Siddhartha Gautama sits down under what would become The Boddhi Tree, determined to understand the nature of suffering. He meditates for 49 days or whatever number your Sunday school teacher told you and reaches a point where all distinctions in his mind begin to fade. Sensation becomes mere signal. Yama (Death, perfectly undefeated) hears about this and immediately understands its earth shattering significance — a human is about to release himself from the cycles of karma and dharma. In other words, the first human in the history of life on earth is about to defeat Death. How does this necessarily follow? Because when the distinction between life and death dissolves, it robs death of all of its power over you. So Yama comes to the Boddhi Tree, in full force, with every soldier in his army, infinite in its might, and launches his most desperate attack. When confronted with the literally infinite fury of Death, Siddhartha doesn’t fight back. He doesn’t even question why Yama felt so threatened. In humility, Siddhartha merely asks the Earth to bear witness, that there might be one, in the moment before his death, that could attest to what one human sought. Neither unending life, nor glory, nor wealth, nor fame, nor victory — there was one who wanted only an answer to the question “why do we hurt?” And when the cosmos stands still in anticipation, The Earth, mother of all life, speaks and says she will bear witness, in the warmth that only a mother can give. So Siddhartha reaches his right hand down in connection with her (pictured above). Yama, now terrified and enraged, launches a volley of arrows that drown the sky (amongst other waves of assaults). And in that moment connecting with Earth in her affection and with imminent Death in his fury, all distinctions collapse; Siddhartha becomes The Buddha. And the arrows turn to flowers and fall at his feet. And if I’m being honest I forget what happens to the rest of Yama’s assault because that part’s so god damn cool.
In the version of this story you’ll read in most places on the internet, they replace Yama with Mara the demon (probably as a foil to Maya the illusion), which is fucking sick and probably the actual story buut that’s not the way I heard it growing up so I’m sticking with my favorite mythology.
Evelyn reaches a similar place, where the Big Distinction dissolves and EEAAO illustrates that scene beautifully. The final fight scene is awesome because it’s a fight scene that possesses a self contained narrative arc, with strong references to the story of The Buddha turning Yama’s arrows to flowers. This is when Evelyn starts reaching into alternative universes to find the thing that will quell the fire within each of her opponents, as opposed to fighting them to the end. If she were to fight, she’d probably win but would both occupy and perpetuate loops of suffering — things from which she now seeks release. She knows the crucial thing about each person she fights only after rejecting the nihilism of her initial despair, and healing each of the aforementioned relationships that were ruined in the wake of her reflexive apathy. Which is to say, she learns to fight fire with water. How does this dissolution of nihilistic apathy follow? Because as we stated earlier it’s not rooted in non-dual neutrality. Quite the opposite, it’s an expression of frustration. If it’s all the same, then why go out of your way to cause grief? Evelyn’s new understanding is symbolized by her act of balancing her opponent’s violence with that which would create equanimity in them.
A related concept is that of shunyata. From the Sanskrit shunya, or zero, yields zero-ness, nothingness. At the core of the perception of emptiness for anyone out there who practices mindfulness/vipassana, shunyata also manifests itself in our lives as death, among other things. It requires the dissolution of another crucial distinction to internalize — the distinction between thing and no thing. Which is to say that shunyata is the final reduction in the cascade of non-dual awareness. The distinction between Everything and Void dissolves, leaving the realization that Everything came from The Void and Everything returns to it.
I find it poetic that the void manifests in the real world as black holes, which in EEAAO seems to be represented by an everything bagel. That is, something you created by pouring a lot of stuff into the same spot until it eventually gets so dense it becomes nothing. Void™️ from Everything. Nothing from things. How can matter and oblivion exist in the same space? There’s a natural non-duality there. Important to note that no one beats the Void; Buddha “defeated” death but he’s still dead now. In that case defeating death is more of a statement about release from suffering and the nature of consciousness than a literal statement. So when Jobu Tupaki discovers The Void and realizes that it is actually made of Everything, she has the same nihilistic reflex that Evelyn will. She suffers and proliferates suffering. A multiverse of infinite and absurd possibilities, yet none free from death or pain. A universe with hotdog fingers flies but a universe where no one hurts anymore is where nature draws the line. It almost starts feeling less absurd and more cruel. And when Jobu witnesses this apparent constant across all universes and suffers upon reflection she seeks her mother. Why? For the same reason a bird flies. For the same reason rain falls. For the same reason Siddhartha asked The Earth to witness him instead of asking The Cosmos. Which is to say it’s a meaningless question. When distinct meanings of action collapse the only thing that remains is the action, fundamentally empty, unobscured from the opaque illusory haze of self and meaning. You do because it’s what you do. Buddhist theology tends to be deterministic so that’s how I’m going to read this too.
Meaning through Distinction
Now this last part may or may not align with my understanding of Buddhist teachings but I think it might land on what EEAAO is trying to say. Given the deterministic implications of shunyata, one can imagine it would be difficult to wanna do anything anymore. If Everything is just an expression of math then why try and struggle and strive? Why not just sit back and watch the weather change? Indeed, according to that one enlightened guy, most who find Enlightenment end up just sitting back. But not all. Some have a predetermined hard coded urge to do. So they do. Like your fun friend, the one on crackhead time, the one that make jokes and wants to keep the party going and maybe likes cocaine a little too much. Imagine them becoming enlightened. Do you think them becoming aware of their programming means their programming necessarily changes? Do you think becoming aware of meaninglessness changes their brain chemistry enough to make them stop doing stuff? They might still act like a crackhead after becoming enlightened. The idea here is not that you should respond to shunyata a certain way. The idea is that you will. This is because you don’t choose the response; again your self doesn’t exist. As we alluded to earlier, the implications of shunyata on self are that what you perceive as being yourself is really a decentralized, center-less constellation of mental processes that do what they do (cue free market libertarian boners)(what, no boners for self lessness? hmm). I think this is ancient peoples’ way of saying you’re a biological computer executing programs with no more autonomy than an actual computer. The equations and programs of life, cognition and the cosmos have already been written; you are just their expression. There’s beauty in that. Dignity too. It doesn’t have to be hopeless. Hopelessness is a choice you have already made (in this universe). But hopelessness can coexist with beauty; some might even say there’s no difference between the two. Shunyata represents an underlying reality, but that doesn’t mean it’s all there is. All the things that bring joy exist in the same space as the things that cause suffering.
Likewise once you internalize the empty nature of life (not necessarily become enlightened, just internalize a truth), it’s natural to feel a dull sorrow at all times. Like that one enlightened guy still feels emotions; he just understands that they’re fundamentally hollow, like a sapient hologram acknowledging its own nature. This gentle, ever-present, background sadness that characterizes the emotional states of some on the non-dual path is so common it’s given a name in Japanese Zen: Mono No Aware. I believe Evelyn connects with this feeling, although I’m not sure how accurate it is as a descriptor of an abiding state of non-dual awareness. But it’s the driving emotion of that one scene. You know the scene. The one that made you cry. When she asserts that she will figuratively and literally stop her Joy (alpha Evelyn’s Jobu) from merging with The Void. When she says she will seek out Joy wherever she is in every universe. That scene captures the purest mix of emotions: love and grief. What you feel when your outer adult meets your inner child; when innocence confronts regret and responds with forgiveness. How appropriate that they blend into one sentiment, neither distinguishable from the other. The scene that had every single person in the theater thinking “man I gotta start calling my folks more.” When Evelyn says something to the effect of her cherishing the life she has in its chaotic entirety because of our limited time here, this sounds like MNA to me. Because when you’ve internalized the impermanence of all things, it makes you appreciate the fleeting beauty of a happy moment that much more. MNA isn’t just an expression of sorrow in a meaningless cosmos, it’s an expression of love for a life you can build. Why do we build? Why do empires crumble? From a non-dual perspective those questions are as void of meaning as their answers. There are only the acts of building and crumbling. Though that doesn’t have to cheapen what we feel when look at what we’ve built. If nothing matters, why choose suffering when we’re hard coded to seek joy?
Evelyn also wears a symbolic third eye which feels more like a Hindu affirmation of self than a Buddhist affirmation of emptiness. But whatever it was a great symbol and I loved it. In her newly found state of awareness, Evelyn settles into the feeling of MNA. She is actualized here and starts looking beyond the nihilism of shunyata, because to feel hopeless upon the discovery of emptiness is an act of imbuing meaning. To stop doing because you feel hopeless reflects the wrong reason to stop doing. The inherent hollowness of things doesn’t mean that they aren’t things to cherish. Distinctions might exist fundamentally, but maybe in an emergent way. That is they may emerge from nothing and return to it, kinda like those sand mandalas.
So some who achieve Enlightenment detach from the causes of suffering while others feel. Neither choose it and neither know why. Same as us and that’s okay. After all, if we’re expressions of math acting on star stuff then we are an expression of something built into the logic of the universe. When we build what become our lives we are necessarily conduits for the universe to experience fractals of qualia and emotion. Meaningless? Sure. But still a wonder to behold. Ultimately one way to alleviate our suffering is to instead create beauty and richness. Something that can only happen if we do.
