THIS 'RICHARD' IS A CONSTRUCT, EXISTING ONLY AS MUCH AS I GIVE IT ENERGY

For Richard Gere, the boundary between acting and real life has been deeply revealing. “As an actor, I construct emotions to tell a story,” he says. This response once made the Dalai Lama laugh, as just as “we manufacture emotions in acting, we get caught in the illusion that the emotions of daily life are somehow more real,” he says.

- BY NAMRATA BIJI AHUJA

In Buddhism, this illusion is the root of suffering. “We're like magicians conjuring the universe but forgetting it’s a trick,” Gere recalls the learning.

In his own life, Gere, 75, finds clarity by regularly stepping back from the role of “Richard” itself—a character, he admits, that exists only as long as he gives it energy through his Buddhist teachings, meditation and understanding emotions better. “When emotions like anger or jealousy arise, recognising the self as an illusion softens their grip,” he says. Excerpts from an interview:

Q. How did you receive the teachings of the Buddha when you first encountered them, both philosophically and emotionally?

A. The teachings of the Buddha are incredibly vast, offering in-depth answers and advice for any issue or problem. The core message, particularly emphasised by His Holiness the Dalai Lama, is emptiness—everything lacks inherent existence. This is completely counterintuitive to our habitual belief that things exist solidly on their own. That's the root of our problems. Even the self is just a subjective experience, not an inherent reality. As a young man, perhaps even as a teenager, I sensed the world wasn't as solid as it seemed. There was a dissonance between my experience and what I intuitively knew to be true. In my late teens and early twenties, I explored various traditions—Sufism, Hinduism, and others—but the words of the Buddha, especially Zen Buddhism, resonated deeply. That's when I began meditating in earnest.

Q. Your transition from western philosophy to Tibetan Buddhism seems organic. How did thinkers like Bishop Berkeley or Sartre shape your understanding of emptiness in the Buddhist sense?