Like many, many others, I was a big fan of Christopher Nolan’s 2008 Batman film The Dark Knight. Among other things, I gave it a rave review for The Journal of Religion and Film, and it topped my list of the ten best films of 2008 here at elephantjournal.com.

As an admirer of the film — an unsettling, affecting, surprising, and masterful piece of post-9/11 art that sends the audience away mulling over important questions about values, violence, and civic responsibility — I was intrigued and delighted by Markus “Uku” Laitinen’s most recent post at Zen – The Possible Way: “Being Bodhisattva Is Like Being Batman”. Check it out.

I’d say it’s probably an open question just how heroic (or enlightened) Batman is in Christopher Nolan’s vision of Gotham City, but that’s part of the point of The Dark Knight. So Batman as Bodhisattva? Bodhisattva as Batman? Why not?

What do you think?