Up in the Air as Philosophy: Buddhism and the Middle Path

Abstract

Up in the Air was favored by critics for its sympathetic look at the people most affected by the financial crisis of the late 2000s. The main character, Ryan Bingham, is the messenger of their losses and so is surrounded by people suffering. Yet, Ryan seems to have found a way to avoid suffering himself: he lives a life without any of his own relationships, without a home, and without any attachments to any things at all. He seems to have embraced the Buddhist philosophy that to rid oneself of suffering, one must rid oneself of attachments. While Ryan knows this on a cerebral level, he doesn’t yet understand it. Through his journey, Ryan learns what Zen Buddhism teaches about suffering, but he also learns that to really understand these truths, one has to experience them. Like in Siddhartha, the novel used by many to explain these Buddhist truths, Ryan has to experience both nonattachment and attachment in order to find his way to a middle path and to have the opportunity to live a better life.