A MODERN MEDITATION ON DEATH:

IDENTIFYING BUDDHIST TEACHINGS

IN GEORGE A. ROMEROS NIGHT OF
THE LIVING DEAD

Christopher M. Moreman

A confluence of increasing interest in popular culture as a source for religious inspiration

and the growing interest, both popular and scholarly, in zombie-fiction bring together
several possibilities for scholarship in the context of religious studies. This paper will
present one aspect of the zombie-craze in the light of Buddhist philosophy. The Buddha
taught that the illusion of self-ish-ness, and resulting attachments, are the greatest
hurdles to achieving nibbana. Through meditating on the decomposing corpse,
Buddhists may come to realize the Ten Impurities of the Body, and so come to grips with
the impermanence of the self. I will illustrate how George Romeros Night of the Living
Dead, recognized as the watershed film of the modern zombie sub-genre,
unintentionally conveys the Buddhist teachings of dukkha (suffering by attachments),
anatta (no-self), and anicca (impermanence).

Zombies were introduced into western popular culture by sensational travel

writings of the late nineteenth-century, which were then translated into
Hollywood by the 1930s. Interest in these walking corpses has increased steadily
since the appearance of George A. Romeros 1968 cult-classic Night of the Living
Dead. Romero is now recognized to have re-defined the zombie and to have thus
created a new sub-genre of horror fictionthat of the zombie apocalypse. Night
of the Living Dead has since spawned innumerable imitators, not to mention four
sequels of its own written and directed by Romero. This proliferation of zombie
cinema has spilled over into other areas of popular culture, with zombies
appearing in literary fiction, pop music, video games, board games, childrens toys,
and even zombie-themed flash mobs and zombie walks in which participants
dress up as zombies and march (or lurch) en masse, sometimes for political reasons
but often just for fun. Romeros spin on the zombie has certainly struck a chord
with modern society, and so deserves serious scholarly attention.

Contemporary Buddhism, Vol. 9, No. 2, November 2008

ISSN 1463-9947 print/1476-7953 online/08/020151-165
q 2008 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/14639940802556461
152 CHRISTOPHER M. MOREMAN

Specifically, this paper forms part of a larger project that reflects on the
religious implications inherent in this particular undead monster, from its
synchretistic Catholic/Vodoun origins in Haiti to its relevance to a post-counter-
cultural, largely secularist North American public. Below, I will focus on the film
that started the modern zombie craze, Night of the Living Dead, and how this film,
having appeared during the 1960s counter-cultural revolution, can be read in the
light of Buddhist doctrine. Such a study is especially important considering the
widespread impact that the film has had as the seminal work in the zombie sub-
genre, and the growing popularity of the zombie as characterized by Romero and
his ilk. In the light of my interpretation, a correlation between the growing
appreciation for this particular undead creature might be found in the increasing
acceptance of eastern philosophy, and Buddhism in particular, in the West since
the 1960s.
Filmed independently on a shoe-string budget during the 1960s, Night of
the Living Dead was released in the year that Martin Luther King Jr was
assassinated and the North Vietnamese Tet Offensive clearly turned the tides
of war against America. The political undertones of the film have been widely
recognized by critics since its release. Night stars a black hero, Ben, who is the sole
survivor of a small group of otherwise white hold-outs trapped in a farm house
surrounded by zombies. Ben survives through the night only to be killed upon
waking in the morningnot by zombies, but by a roaming sheriffs posse (of all
white males) who mistake him for one of the walking dead. The social criticism and
racial politics here are palpable, despite Romeros assertions that such a
commentary was unintentional; Romero has claimed that the original script for
Night did not require a black lead, and so any political and racial commentary
was purely accidental.1 Realizing the power of his films, Romero has subsequently
inserted very incisive social criticism into his later movies, attacking consumer
culture with 1978s Dawn of the Dead, the authority of militarism and scientism
with 1985s Day of the Dead, and capitalism and the Bush-doctrine with 2005s
Land of the Dead. He has also engaged racial and sexual politics throughout his
series of films, maintaining lead characters who are black or female. Robin Wood
describes Romeros work as:
one of the most remarkable and audacious achievements of modern American
cinema, and the most uncompromising critique of contemporary America (and,
by extension, Western capitalist society in general) that is possible within the
terms and conditions of a popular entertainment medium. (Wood 2003, 387)

Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari succinctly proclaimed that [t]he only modern
myth is the myth of zombies (1972, 335).
For Deleuze and Guattari the zombie illustrates capitalist oppression as the
root of the so-called death drive. Many have talked about the zombie as a symbol
for consumerism run amok, bent as they are on consuming the living. The zombie
is a mindless follower of the most primitive consumerist agenda, devouring for no
reason at all, not needing sustenance for survival. Although Deleuze and Guattari
 BUDDHIST TEACHINGS IN NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD 153

originally considered the zombie-myth shortly after the release of Night, this
interpretation retains scholarly interest almost 40 years later.2 As people become
de-humanized by commodification, they can increasingly look forward only to
death. The zombie, then, comes to represent the de-humanized person oppressed
by anonymous corporate overlords. An anti-consumerist or anti-capitalist
interpretation forces itself upon the viewer in films like Dawn of the Dead,
which transpires in a mall over which the living and the dead both fight each other
and amongst themselves, and the recent Land of the Dead, which portrays the
zombie-class rising up against a privileged (living) elite. So powerful is the
message in Romeros later movies that the zombie has often become analogous to
the consumerist thrall; this over-arching meaning has even been imposed ante
litteram upon pre-Romero zombies (a different breed altogether).3 The historical
relationship between zombies and slavery goes back to the origins of the creature
in Haitian folklore, and the interpretation of the zombie as a slave certainly fits
with modern depictions. For the purposes of this paper, however, the assumption
that zombies reference corporate and capitalist masters in all cases does not
dissect the zombie adequately. Certainly, the zombie since its Haitian origins has
represented slavery and the fears of becoming enslaved. The question is to what
master is the modern zombie enslaved? From a Buddhist perspective, the
attachment to wealth, status, consumables, and material reality of any kind are
certainly problems, but the Marxist focus on these aspects of social control does
not get to the core of Buddhist concerns. Ultimately, attachments of any kind are
problematic, and those to immaterial realities are even more damaging than
material ones. Furthermore, without these later films, Night on its own does not
necessarily depict any criticism of consumerism specifically, instead describing the
rejection of traditional forms of authority and society typical of the times. Some,
like Steven Shaviro, see:
the life-in-death of the zombie [as] a nearly perfect allegory for the inner logic of
capitalism, whether this be taken in the sense of the exploitation of living labor
by dead labor, the deathlike regimentation of factories and other social spaces,
or the artificial, externally driven stimulation of consumers. (Shaviro 1993, 83)

However, the fact that western society is largely defined by capitalism does not
necessarily mean that a criticism of western society is merely an attack on
capitalism itself.
Psychoanalytic approaches to deconstructing the zombie are as limited as
their Marxist companions. The slave-master moves from a societal ideology to
internal psychic drives, which brings us closer to the Buddhist understanding I am
moving towardsbut the psychoanalytic position stops short by emphasizing
specifically Freudian drives. One must preface with the observation that
Night nihilistically sees every character die, and all but the final survivor, Ben,
are depicted as having some familial connection that ends in getting them killed.
Barbras brother Johnny is killed defending her from a zombie, only to reappear
resurrected at the end of the film to drag his sister screaming to her death. A young
154 CHRISTOPHER M. MOREMAN

couple, Tom and Judy, are killed together only because of their inability to be
separated from each other even briefly. Most horrifically of all, the nuclear Cooper
family dies together as the zombified daughter viciously murders her mother with
a trowel and devours her dead father. Wood (2003, 102) goes so far as to claim that
[t]he zombies of Night have their meaning defined fairly consistently in relation to
the Family and the Couple. The formulation of social units can be seen as a form
of oppression in itself, and the zombie represents the return of the repressed
breaking through. The family unit, then, is seen as a model of the patriarchal
repression of social norms, against which we unconsciously struggle ceaselessly.
Society oppresses its members and so the walking dead rise in an inverted life to
destroy society. Shaviro sees the zombie as a postmodern monster:
The zombies do not (in the familiar manner of 1950s horror film monsters) stand
for a threat to social order from without. Rather, they resonate with, and refigure,
the very processes that produce and enforce social order. That is to say, they do
not mirror or represent social forces; they are directly animated and possessed,
even in their allegorical distance from beyond the grave, by such forces.
(Shaviro 1993, 86)

The zombie, then, is seen as an internal psychic force acting against society.
In Freudian terms, societys repression of the individual Eros causes
unconscious anxiety and tension. This tension is relieved in the so-called death-
drive, Thanatos. Eros, the sex-drive, inspires us all with desires and cravings that we
wish to immediately satisfy at any given moment, but society will not allow such
unmitigated satiation. So, we become guilty at our individual yearnings against
society, a feeling that transforms into the destructive drive towards death and the
abolition of the controlling social order. The zombie in this light is the incarnation
of these repressed and corrupted sensuous cravings. Interestingly, Romero himself
sees his creations as just the opposite. During one interview, Romero explains:
I always see the zombies as an external force. [ . . . ] The story is happening
around them and nobody is paying attention. [ . . . ] There is some major shit
going on out there, and in a distant way the zombies represent what we, the
global community, should really be thinking about. (DAgnolo-Vallan 2005, 24)

For Romero, the zombies represent those external forces that should not be
ignored, not the repressed by-product[s] of dominant American culture (Shaviro
1993, 95). Of course, once we enter into the realm of the unconscious, then
Romeros conscious intentions do not necessarily matter in the final product.
In a psychoanalytic model, the sex-drive and the death-drive form two sides
of the same coin and often come into direct contact with each other, the
monstrous embodying ones own deepest (repressed) desires. Simon Clark, for
instance, describes the zombie as engorged with desirebloated by its own
sexual appetite. The awkward, stumbling zombie can therefore be compared to a
swollen erection, stiffly swaying this way and that in its quest for pleasure (2006,
203). Uniting the sex-drive for sensual pleasure (displayed by the zombies
 BUDDHIST TEACHINGS IN NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD 155

unquenchable desire for human flesh) with the death-drive (again appearing with
the zombies need to kill the living in order to unsuccessfully satiate itself), Clark, in
a nod to Barbara Creed, further explains:
the zombies mouththe very thing that consumes living flesh and turns it into
decaying matterbecomes nothing less than a manifestation of the vagina
dentata [the toothed vagina]. The bloodied mouth of the Undead corpse can be
interpreted as a horrific depiction of the consuming female genitals, whose
deadly bite removes the individual from the tensions and frustrations of civilized
life. (Clark 2006, 203)4

On the other hand, Noel Carroll echoes an apocryphal Freudian maxim, wondering
might it not be the case that sometimes a zombie is just a zombie, and being
devoured by one is simply cannibalism? (2006, 231).
Little has been said on the zombie-craze from the perspective of religious
studies. The obvious semblance to a perverted resurrection has oft been noted,5
which is not altogether surprising given Romeros own lapsed Catholicism. But
few have developed sophisticated thoughts on the religious implications of the
film. Kim Paffenroth is one scholar of religion who has devoted serious attention to
the zombie in his recent book, Gospel of the Living Dead. While Paffenroth makes
some important observations from a theological standpoint, his approach remains
flawed in that it applies a purely personal interpretation of Christianity and then
forces it to fit the films. Before criticizing his conclusions, I will first discuss three
observations of note in Paffenroths study.
Paffenroth correctly identifies what he calls a fierce and misguided
individualism (2006, 21 22) at the root of the problem in zombie movies; as
the crisis intensifies, the living fight amongst themselves instead of working in
communal harmony. Political scientist Leah A. Murray agrees here, arguing that
the film depicts a struggle at the heart of American political philosophy between
individualism and communitarianism. She argues that the film promotes the latter
position, despite the fact that ultimately all characters are left dead regardless;
although even the most communitarian figures collapse into individual power-
struggle, it is the collapse into individualism that is their downfall (Murray 2006).
Paffenroth goes on to identify the zombies as embodiments of sin, comparing
the sight of them with descriptions from Dantes Inferno. To some extent there is
agreement here between Paffenroth and the psychoanalytical interpretations
above, in that the zombie is seen to represent the inner desires that are repressed
and oppressed by social convention and control. Finally, Paffenroth recognizes the
over-arching fact of Night of the Living Dead: specifically, that the death of all of
the films main characters represents a rejection of any value for any human
relationship, institution, or virtue. According to this most cynical and nihilistic of
the films [ . . . ], nothing really matters, because the result is always the same
death (Paffenroth 2006, 40).
Paffenroth strains to match his interpretations with the facts of Romeros films,
however, as he searches for a strictly Christian response to them. He argues that
156 CHRISTOPHER M. MOREMAN

while Romero depicts a world in which both faith and reason fail to save anyone,
Christian faith does not claim to physically save whereas secular reason aims to do
just that. Paffenroth suggests that Romero actually describes a world in which
reason is defeated and faith is left unscathed (Paffenroth 2006, 4143). This
conclusion is premised on an assumption that is not presented in Night of the Living
Dead, nor in any of Romeros zombie films for that matter: namely that physical
death is not the end. Paffenroth thus projects his beliefs onto the nihilism depicted
in zombie cinema, allowing him to conclude that it is a lack of faith in and love for
God that is at the root of the zombie apocalypse: Without faith and hope, even love
fails, because God, the only real and eternal object of all love, is not there to draw it
upwards and complete it (Paffenroth 2006, 113). While Paffenroth sees a moral
warning in the zombie, I agree with Robin Wood when he says: Of one thing we
may be sure: the films are not about punishment for sin. Romeros universe is
certainly not a Christian one (the occasional religious references are always
negative) (2008, 29). The characters in Romeros films are often religious, and Night
begins with two characters in a cemeteryone of whom prays solemnly at her
fathers grave and chastises her brothers absence from Sunday mass before being
attacked by the walking dead. There is no indication that faith offers any sort of
salvation, physical or otherwise. Gregory Waller puts it well when he notes that
Barbras faith serves only to make her awakening to her dilemma that much more
rude and catastrophic (Waller 1986, 283). R. H. W. Dillard points out that the focus of
Night rests on the primordial fear of death, and that the film offers neither rational
nor religious relief (1987, 16). Paffenroth declares his position early on, stating that
for Christians the only way for people to be really happy is by loving God in
community with other human beings, and not by selfishly loving and accumulating
material possessions on their own (2006, 22). The second part of Paffenroths
premise is supported by the film, as it is the individual desires of the living that cause
in-fighting which leads quickly to death. It is the first part of the statement that goes
unsupported, as even religious and faithful characters not only die but die just as
horribly as others with no indication that their prayers have been answered in any
way. By taking a Buddhist perspective on the film, I aim to derive support for my
arguments entirely from the text of the film itself.
Taking a different approach, although still within a distinctly Christian
paradigm, David Pagano recently produced an interesting argument for Romero
as a prophet, and his films as his apocalypses.6 He compares Romeros work with
the apocalypse of St John in the Book of Revelation. Pagano describes Romeros
films as meta-apocalyptic. By this term Pagano means to point out that Romero
presents his quasi-prophetic message from a different perspective than that of
traditional (i.e. Christian) apocalypses. Namely, he argues that John of Patmos
presents space transcendent of time, predicting a future reality that will bring an
end but also a new beginning; Romero presents his apocalypse as immanent
within present space and time. The Christian apocalypse thereby predicts both the
corruption of this world, its (imminent) future end, and a new beginning, whereas
Romero describes (in typically prophetic fashion) the corruption of this world, and
 BUDDHIST TEACHINGS IN NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD 157

its imminent self-destruction without transcendent involvement nor eventual

rejuvination. Pagano explains:
Returning from death with no revelation and no insight beyond whatever
rapacious desire had been immanent within humans all along, Romeros
zombies are both autopoetic and insignificant. The structure of contagion they
embody both alludes to and undermines apocalyptic dualism, since their
infernal danger is precisely the transubstantiation of us into them. (2008, 76)

Pagano here hints at the idea that Romero appears to present an apocalypse,
but one that is non-Christian (perhaps even anti-Christian given the perversion of
the resurrection), one that deconstructs dualistic notions (beginning/end,
life/death, good/evil, us/them, self/other), and one that relates to an immanent
rather than a transcendent reality. Immanent, non-dualistic notions of reality are
common among mystics across cultures, but are particularly embraced in
Buddhist philosophy.
Bryan Stone (2001) positions Night of the Living Dead within a broader context
of changing horror cinema. Stone argues that the change in religious values that
accompanied 1960s counter-culture affected horror by breaking down black-and-
white boundaries of good and evil, and us versus them, as Pagano observes
above. As religious sensibilities and relations to the sacred became internalized, so
too representations of horror pointed to the monster within. The authority of
established religion was damaged during the counter-cultural revolution, and many
responded with individualized approaches to the sacred and the divine that were
entirely personal. While Stone merely nods to Romeros 1968 classic, the argument
certainly applies in terms of the changing religious landscape and the acceptance
by many of a personal religious life. In the context of the present argument, the
movement away from traditional religious authority can be seen to have resulted in
a growing concern for meaning, especially in the face of human mortality. Further,
as many searched for new answers to lifes meaning, alternative religions and
philosophical systems became popular, Buddhism especially.
A Buddhist perspective on Night of the Living Dead will resolve the flaws of
the previous arguments and so be shown to hit nearer the mark in identifying
the underlying meaning of the film and its ascension from cult-status to ground-
breaking genre creation. Most obviously, there is its similarity to Buddhist
meditations on death and the dead body. The living dead zombies are literally
walking corpses. These corpses appear in various forms, including each of the
so-called Ten Foul Objects of Buddhaghosas traditional set of forty meditation
themes.7 Jamie Russell points out the films focus on the body, or as Russell puts it
the horror of the body (2005, 67). They are rotting bodies in various stages of
damage, many of which are barely dressed, appearing in underwear, pyjamas,
hospital gowns, and nightgowns, with at least one completely naked. Many of
these risen dead seem to have been disturbed from sleep and reveal the body at
its most vulnerable. In Buddhist meditations on the corpse, the practitioner is to sit
near to a corpse and reflect on its state, realizing the similarity between the dead
158 CHRISTOPHER M. MOREMAN

and rotting corpse to that of the practitioners own body: As I am, so is that; as
that is, so I am.8 The body is but flesh that changes states through life and death.
The corpse represents the truth of the body in terms of its obvious lack of an
inhabiting self. For a modern, western audience, the decomposition of the corpse
is entirely outside of normal experience. Death itself, it has often been said, is
ultimately denied in western culture. Night forces the viewer to witness the body
in horrible ways, seeing the walking corpse as both the enemy and the neighbour,
the Other and the Self. Viewers are forced, in watching this film, to come to terms
with the disgusting Otherness of ones own body, to confront the horror that lay
within them, the Otherness of their own flesh (Russell 2005, 70). Herein lies what
Julia Kristeva (1982) termed the abject; that which we recognize as having been a
part of, but is now rejected from, the social order. William S. Larkin makes the case
that we intuitively recognize ourselves as primarily physical beings, and that,
whatever its fate, the persons locus remains in the body. He notes that zombie
films bring this intuition to the fore. For instance, the viewer is terrified when the
zombie kills Johnny, but recognizes the horror and tragedy of his return as a
zombie who then kills his sister; despite the fact that Johnny is reduced to an
animated corpse, the tendency is to recognize the corpse for what it was in life
that is, the person it embodied (Larkin 2004, 2006). The error here is in assuming
the illusory likeness of a self indicates its reality. Likewise, Dillard recognizes the
cyclical nature of life and death as represented in the film in terms of the fears
being preyed upon. At first, the fear of the dead and of death itself is invoked by
the walking dead, but as the film develops it becomes clear that the true enemies
are the living. As Dillard succinctly puts it: The traditional fear of the dead
sensitizes the audience to fear at the beginning of the film, but by its end, that
audience has been exposed to a much deeper and more powerful fearthe fear
of life itself (1987, 22). Indeed, life and death can be thus recognized as two sides
of the same coin, rather than as the dichotomous struggle they so often become
in a death-denying culture. As Romero sees the zombies as exterior forces while
the psychoanalyst sees in them internal fears, we can come to understand that
they are the combination of both, the meeting of Other and Self, of life and death.
Dillard notes that the true horror of Night goes further, and is not a result of its
inspiring a fear of the dead or even a fear of the ordinary world. It lies rather in its
refusal to resolve those fears in any way that does not sacrifice human dignity
and human value (1987, 27). This observation strikes at the heart of the films
underlying message as, for a western culture in denial of death and the finitude of
the individual, the fact that death is inescapable strikes at the very foundations of
meaning. Paffenroth attempts to resolve this anomie with an appeal to Christian
faith; but as far as Night itself is concerned, this is not the solution. The film forces
images of death upon the viewer, invoking fears that stem from a realization of
deaths equation with life, and so acts as a form of meditation on life, death, and
the nature of the self.
The ultimate purpose of the meditation on the corpse is to come to the
understanding of anatta, the doctrine of no-self.9 According to this doctrine,
 BUDDHIST TEACHINGS IN NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD 159

ultimately, there is no permanent, unchanging self that exists within the body;
there is no eternal soul. In Buddhism, there are only ever-changing aggregates that
exist in a semblance of continuity that stems from attachments. The most
pervasive, and insidious, attachment of all is that to the self. As humans, we all
experience our selves as ongoing and constant, having remained relatively stable,
although changing over time, since our earliest memories. For Buddhists, these
memories may even extend beyond our births in this present lifetime into
innumerable previous lifetimes as well. Since we experience the self as somehow
constant through memory, we imagine it to be equally constant into the future, and
so somehow permanent. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross suggests that in our unconscious,
death is never possible for ourselves (1969, 16). The belief in the permanence of the
self is played out by the ongoing cycle of birth, death, and rebirth that is known as
samsara. So long as we retain attachment to the false permanence of the self, we
will continue to experience the birth and death of subsequent lifetimes. According
to the Buddha, birth is the pre-condition of death, and birth occurs as a result of the
desire to become, the attachment to life in the first place.
That one life dies and another is born in itself illustrates the impermanence of
the self to many Buddhists. Even during one lifetime, the individual changes.
Memories are fallible, personalities change, likes becomes dislikes, and so on.
The apparent constancy of the self is but an illusion that causes us to live sham lives
that will never be entirely satisfactory; it is just this dissatisfaction that is called
dukkha, often translated simply as suffering. We are attached to the permanence of
the self, although we experience its changing regularly. We are constantly frustrated
by change, although ultimately this is the true state of being. So, the realization that
the self is impermanentthat is, there is in fact no constant, unchanging selfis
critical to achieving nibbana and the liberation from the cycle of samsara and the
frustrations of fighting against it. The meditation on the corpse can help to bring
home this realization by plainly illustrating the true nature of the body as
corruptible, changing, and essentially impermanent. The walking corpse forces
itself upon the living in the movie, and its abject gruesomeness is likewise thrust
upon the viewing audience, but there is more to the relationship between Buddhist
teachings and Night of the Living Dead than just the appearance of the corpse.
The film opens with a brother and sister travelling to visit the grave of their
father at the behest of their mother. Having driven three hours to get there, the
brother, Johnny, complains throughout this first scene. Echoing the anti-
authoritative bent of his generation, he complains of the uselessness of visiting
the dead, and of prayer in general, noting that there is little reason for him to go to
church. Tellingly, he complains also of the small flowered cross that he and his
sister place at the grave, wondering what happens to these tokens once left. His
sister, Barbra, profers the idea that the flowers die and somebody takes them
away, perhaps signalling her faith in some higher power. Johnny cynically replies,
Yeah, a little spit and polish, you can clean this up, sell it next year. Hinting at the
broader significance of the cyclical nature of these annual visits to the grave, he
ponders: I wonder how many times weve bought the same one. At the gravesite,
160 CHRISTOPHER M. MOREMAN

where life meets death, the realization of an ongoing cycle in which the same
token is refurbished and reborn time after time is suggested. This flowered cross is
laid to rest at the site of their fathers grave, the flowers die and it is collected by
somebody, only to be refitted with new flowers and laid to rest upon the same
grave once more the following year. While this is but a brief scene at the films
outset, it sets the stage for the films overall message: so long as the living
maintain the attachment to the permanence of the self, even beyond death, the
cycle of samsara, and the suffering that entails, will carry on indefinitely.
The walking dead, then, come to represent more than simply the corpse and
death itself. Just as Paffenroth sees the zombie as the embodiment of sin, in a
Buddhist sense it represents the embodiment of the attachments and cravings
that drive the cycle of birth, death, and rebirth in the first place. Zombies have but
one purpose and that is to consume the living. Their craving is incessant and
single-minded. Quite simply, they desire only the living, to consume life. These
zombies are enslaved by their own cravings, just as the Buddha describes
humankind when he is reported to have said: The world lacks and hankers, and is
enslaved to thirst [cravings] (Rahula 1974, 30). The Buddha delineates several
forms of craving or thirst (tanha). The craving for sensual experience is primary
among forms of attachment emphasized in the Buddhas first sermon.10
To consume is the most sensuous of experiences, absorbing the body of the other
into the self. This sensuality is what elicits psychoanalysts to observe the erotic in
Night of the Living Dead.
More than simply the sensuality of the body, however, the zombies
represent attachment in other ways. The other two forms of attachment explained
by the Buddha in his first sermon are those of the desire for the maintenance of
positive states and the elimination of negative states. For the individual who
maintains the belief in the importance of the permanent self, which is the normal
state of human experience, then the ultimate maintenance of the positive is that
self-same permanence achieved through life, and the opposite of life is death,
which would in turn be that negative state that must ultimately be eliminated.
The living dead, by definition, embody the combination of these latter two desires
in that they live beyond death, having somehow overcome death. As noted earlier,
however, this same attachment to the permanence of the self simply locks one
into the frustrating cycle of death and subsequent rebirth. So, with the life that is
thus craved comes death hand-in-hand. The living dead, then, illustrate the
inseparability of life and death at once. These zombies stand in for the cycle of
samsara itself, embodying the interconnection between life and death created
and driven by a single-minded craving after an illusory permanently living self.
Further to the zombies themselves, the living characters in the film
exemplify the human response to the struggle of life and death in ignorance of the
Buddhist nibbana. In reaction to the embodied samsara, and antecedent suffering
through frustrated cravings, the living are made to behave in negative and
harmful ways. In this and later films, it is the human survivors who are a greater
threat to themselves than are the zombies. It is regularly the interactions between
 BUDDHIST TEACHINGS IN NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD 161

the living that lead to their downfall. The Buddha explains how the ignorant
attachment to the self leads to all manner of harmful behaviours. From
attachment arises possessiveness, then defensiveness, which then results in lies
and conflicts.11 The characters in Night fall victim to just such a series of emotions.
The lead character, Ben, remains level-headed early on as he works to board up
the abandoned farmhouse, keep the living dead at bay, and protect the hysterical
Barbra, whose brother Johnny was killed in the movies opening scenes. As he
appears to get matters under control, the situation changes when it is revealed
that a group of survivors had been hiding in the basement throughout Bens
struggles to secure the house. He immediately reacts in anger over their lack of
support while he worked alone. The most nefarious of these new survivors, Harry
Cooper, responds just as angrily, defensively lying about what they could or could
not hear going on from their hiding place. Confronted by his own contradictory
stories, Cooper blurts out: We luck into a safe place and youre telling me we gotta
risk our lives because somebody might need help, huh? This reluctance to risk his
life prompts Cooper to forcefully argue for the security of the basement over what
he perceives as the dangerous open floor of the farmhouse with its loosely
boarded windows.
Ben, however, prefers to remain upstairs in order to have a fighting chance
against the living dead. Here is a position with which the western viewer easily
empathizes. Waller remarks on the senseless chaos the characters in Night are
forced to experience: Yet what the film also demonstrates is that regardless of
what they have experienced, human beings to the end will continue to act as if
they can make a difference, as if action matters and life is worth preserving (1986,
289). This sense of individual worth lies at the heart of the difficulty for the average
westerner in accepting Buddhist teachings generally, and the impermanence of
the self in particular. Ben is attached to his life, but his attachments include more
than simply that. When Cooper moves to retreat to the basement, he seeks
support for his decision by trying to take others into the basement with him.
He turns to take the now catatonic Barbra, which prompts Ben to reveal his
interests. Keep your hands off her, he yells, and everything else up here, too,
because if I stay up here, Im fighting for everything up here, and the radio and the
food is part of what Im fighting for. So, while Cooper admits to his own fear for his
livelihood (and perhaps that of his daughter and wife as well), Ben admits to
greater attachments that would allow him to put his life at risk. Still, those things
that Ben would fight forthe radio and foodrepresent only longer-term
requirements for further survival than an immediate retreat to hiding would allow.
The conflict between Cooper and Ben escalates to a point where Coopers
fear causes him to hesitate at a crucial point when Ben is trapped outside the
farmhouse and surrounded by zombies. Cooper wavers between retreating to the
cellar and moving to unlock the door to the house for Ben. Only when Ben breaks
the door in himself does Cooper come to his aid in order to re-secure it, thus
acting once again in his own interests. Once the door is secured, Ben responds by
viciously beating Cooper. Soon after this, Cooper tries to turn the tables on Ben,
162 CHRISTOPHER M. MOREMAN

only to see Ben actually shoot Cooper in cold-blood. So, despite the threat from
without, it is their own competitions that result in one man murdering the other.
Other forms of attachment are also shown to be troublesome in the film.
Firstly, there is the infatuation between the young lovers Judy and Tom. Romantic
love is often celebrated, but in a Buddhist sense it represents yet another source of
pain in its frustrating impermanence and changeability. As Bhikkhu Nyanasobhano
(Leonard Price) (1985) puts it: Love, or possibly the myth of love, is the first, last, and
sometimes the only refuge of uncomprehending humanity. While Tom readily
cooperates with Bens plans, Judys clinging love for her boyfriend causes her to
behave selfishly, ultimately ending in death. She first does not want to tend to the
Coopers injured daughter, preferring instead to simply be near Tom, and she only
goes to the girl when Tom asks her to do it for him. More damaging, however, is
when the men formulate a plan to facilitate their escape from the farmhouse, Judy
asks Tom not to play his part for fear of his being in danger. Tom explains that his
role is crucial to the success of the plan, and Judy (revealing a certain agreement
with Coopers cowardice) responds that she would simply rather hide with him than
risk seeing him in danger. When Tom and Ben then leave the house to embark on
their plan to retrieve gasoline for an escape, Judy impulsively runs out after them,
throwing an unnecessary and ultimately deadly wrench into the plan. Both she and
Tom die when she gets stuck in the burning truck, leaving Ben to fend for himself.
Here, she is driven by her own selfish attachment to Tom. Her fear of being left
without him ends in both of them being killed.
In the most shocking scene of the movie, Helen Cooper returns to the
basement to find her now zombified daughter gnawing on her dead husbands
arm. In her defenceless horror, Helen is then viciously murdered without struggle
by the undead girl, of whom she had earlier said Shes all I have. Helens inability
to recognize her daughters absence from the risen dead corpse causes her to
meekly succumb to the girls attack, muttering only Its Mommy before her death.
This scene, coming towards the conclusion of the film, can be seen as a fitting
bookend to the opening cemetery visit in terms of the inability to accept the
impermanence of the self especially across family bonds. At one point in the film,
a television broadcast includes a scientist who warns that the bereaved will have
to forgo the dubious comforts that a funeral service will give. Theyre just dead
flesh, and dangerous. The message could not be driven home more clearly than it
is in this gory matricide. Redundantly hammering at this same point, the film
includes Barbras demise at the hands of her own now zombified brother, Johnny,
whom she had been constantly demanding the group move to rescue from the
cemetery despite all indications that he must already be dead. From beginning to
end, the message is clear: the dead are just dead flesh, the body is not the person,
there is no permanent self.
The final scene of the film sees Ben awakening alone in the cellar to the
sounds of gunfire and sirens as a sheriffs posse sweeps across the countryside
shooting down the living dead. As Ben carefully peeks from a window, he is
mistaken for a zombie himself and shot squarely between the eyes. As the sheriff
 BUDDHIST TEACHINGS IN NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD 163

matter-of-factly replies Okay, hes dead. Lets go get him. Thats another one for
the fire, men move in with meat hooks to lift Bens corpse onto a growing pile of
bodies. Before being lit aflame, we see Bens corpse lying next to that of the first
zombie from the cemetery at the beginning of the film. As it begins, so it ends; as
is the zombie, so is Ben; ultimately, as is the corpse, so am I.
Night of the Living Dead can thus be seen to be inflected by central Buddhist
teachings. As with the meditation on the corpse, the viewer is directed to realize the
similarities between the dead and the living, and in so realizing to move beyond the
ignorance of attachment to an illusory sense of self-permanence. The rotting corpse
in its abjection brings home the fact that the body is impermanent and imperfect.
Death brings a finality to being that is far removed from everyday human experience
despite its being an ever-present reality. By understanding the walking dead as the
embodiment of the suffering of samsara, the viewer can sympathize with the desire
not to become one of them. The zombies are shown to be enslaved by their single-
minded cravings, just as the Buddha teaches that all humans are as well. This
enslavement to cravings keeps us all yearning after the impossible, forever
hankering after the ephemeral permanence that will always be lacking.
The inevitable dissatisfaction that results from unsatisfied cravings is what the
Buddha called dukkha, the first Noble Truth. As a viewer sympathizing with the
horror of the zombies fate, we recognize ourselves in the zombie. We recognize
their empty quest for fulfilment in our own. By thus sympathizing, however, the
viewer must also recognize in the zombie the fact that it is through self-delusion and
ignorance that this cycle is perpetuated. The zombie mindlessly pursues its cravings
only to find that once its desire has been achievedonce it has killed a person and
consumed his or her fleshthe two-fold result is a lack of satisfaction on the part of
the zombie, and also the reproduction of a new craving undead corpse. The craving
after permanency in the form of eternal life is not only an impossible goal, but its
pursuit ends only in the creation of further unsatisfied craving. Attachments and
cravings are self-perpetuating; they support further attachment and craving
through the production of the illusion of a self. Buddhism teaches that so long as we
believe in the illusion of permanence, we will continue to experience that illusion.
In the illusion, we will constantly fight for permanency and suffer over never
achieving it. The solution, for the Buddha, is to eliminate our attachments, especially
to our selves. The first two Noble Truths correspond to the realizations of suffering
through attachment, and the Third Noble Truth indicates that our liberation from
such suffering is possible. By literally getting over our selves, we can overcome the
sufferings that result from attachments to false realities, and so achieve nibbana.
If we yearn after the illusion of a permanent self, then we are already zombies,
walking corpses clinging to an unsatisfactory false life. On the other hand, by
realizing the impermanence of the self, one can give up attachment to the illusion of
permanence, and in so doing escape the cycle of samsara. Thereby one might reach
nibbana and avoid the fate of being eternally and repeatedly reborn as one of the
living dead.
164 CHRISTOPHER M. MOREMAN

NOTES
1. George A. Romero, as quoted in Jones (2005, 118).
2. For a recent discussion of Deleuze and Guattari on death as related to Romeros
zombie films, see Brent Adkins (2007).
3. Philip Horne, for instance, references the Val Lewton 1943 classic zombie film
with his article entitled I Shopped with a Zombie (Horne 1992).
4. See Creed (1993).
5. See Dillard (1987, 24), for instance.
6. See Pagano (2008). Note, also, that Dillard (1987, 24) makes reference to the
similarity in form between the action of Night and St John of the Crosss dark
night of the soul.
7. Visuddhimagga, 110 111.
8. For a good overview of such forms of meditation in the Theravadin Buddhist
tradition, see Bond (1980).
9. Hamish Thompson follows David Hume and Derek Parfit in deconstructing the
absolute self in the light of the modern zombie. See Thompson (2006).
10. Digha Nikaya, 15; Samyutta Nikaya, 56.11. See also Majjhima Nikaya, 44;
Samyutta Nikaya, 22.22.
11. Digha Nikaya, 15.

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Christopher M. Moreman, Assistant Professor, Department of Philosophy,

California State University, East Bay, 25800 Carlos Bee Boulevard, Hayward,
CA 94542, USA. E-mail: christopher.moreman@csueastbay.edu