Tuesday

“As You Wish”: The Princess Bride on Service and Basic Goodness

by Frederick Meyer

The video below traces a thread in the classic movie The Princess Bride: the phrase “As you wish,” as code for “I love you.”

Spoiler alert! The video is the first two minutes and the final minute of arguably one of the best movies of all time. If you haven’t seen it in full, you may want to pause reading this and rent The Princess Bride instead. This article will be here when you’re done.

On Service

To me, the end of The Princess Bride is one of the most touching moments in film. When I try to understand why, what emerges is a discussion of service.

Since I first heard it, I have loved a quote by Rabindranath Tagore:

“I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted and behold, service was joy.”

As is certainly the case in The Princess Bride, the type of service Tagore is describing isn’t a chore, and it isn’t a form of inferiority, being “servile.” Instead, it is a delightful act of putting love into practice.

This form of service is something that we love, and even need. As people attest who work (even well-paid) jobs they find meaningless—jobs that don’t seem to serve the good of others, to be for anything wonderful—a lack of genuine service can be its own kind of starvation.

True service is a delightful act of putting love into practice.

Service and Basic Goodness

For me, service is a direct window into basic goodness, the inherent power, dignity, and worth of our nature itself.

Part of our basic goodness is that we can give boundlessly to one another. In fact, this quality of generosity, known as dana paramita, as well as the broader spirit of love and benevolence known as bodhicitta, form the cornerstone of all Mahayana Buddhism.

Around fifteen years ago, a man named Paul told me a story that has always stayed with me as an example of the spiritual power of generosity. Paul is a senior meditation practitioner who, when he was much younger, had served as security for one of the Sixteenth Karmapa’s visits to the US during the 1970s. (The Karmapa is the leader of the Karma Kagyu lineage, and is one of the most powerful and revered figures in Tibetan Buddhism).

Paul was standing guard in a hallway late at night, when the Karmapa came out of his bedroom. He saw Paul.

To continue reading, please visit the Shambhala blog webpage here.