In the scenes leading up to the climactic Battle of Naboo in The Phantom Menace, two masters each tell their apprentices to “be mindful.” Qui-Gon Jinn tells the child Anakin Skywalker – whom he treats as an apprentice even though he’s forbidden from training him – that “I want you to watch me and be mindful.” Minutes later, Palpatine, caught off guard by Qui-Gon and Padmé Amidala’s return to Naboo, warns Darth Maul to “be mindful. Let them make the first move.”
In both cases, the apprentice’s willingness or failure to heed his master’s call to be mindful determines who lives and who dies in the Battle of Naboo. Anakin heeds Qui-Gon’s command – in a literal way – to “Stay in that cockpit!” When the starfighter he hides in goes into orbit by accident, Anakin makes the most of the situation and uses his preternatural attunement to machines to not only survive the battle but destroy the Trade Federation’s flagship. His mindfulness as a pilot wins the day. But Maul, though he has the upper hand for much of his duel with Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan Kenobi, becomes careless and presumes victory after he kills Qui-Gon and disarms Obi-Wan. Maul fails to be mindful of a weakness in his position and Obi-Wan – exercising the mindfulness that Qui-Gon long taught him to cultivate – exploits this weakness to triumph over Maul.
Unfortunately, these instances of mindfulness are the exception, not the norm. Although Anakin temporarily heeds Qui-Gon’s instruction to be mindful, he will ultimately fail to heed Mace Windu’s instruction to “Be mindful of your feelings,” leading to his downfall as an adult. Obi-Wan and the other victors will fail to consider Qui-Gon’s suspicion that the struggle for Naboo was never really about the taxation of trade routes. They celebrate after Naboo is liberated, blissfully unaware that their victory has given Palpatine exactly what he wanted. Only Qui-Gon and Palpatine were truly paying attention, and now Qui-Gon cannot foil Palpatine’s plans.
Qui-Gon’s command to Anakin to “be mindful” is followed by the admonishment that “your focus determines your reality.” The tragedy hiding behind The Phantom Menace’s upbeat ending is that the heroes’ misplaced focus determines a future reality of suffering across the galaxy.
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Characters: Anakin Skywalker / Darth Maul / Obi-Wan Kenobi / Palpatine / Qui-Gon Jinn
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Concepts: mindfulness / teachers and students
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