Religious and Theological Themes in The Matrix
The four noble Buddhist truths are revealed here as an escape from the illusory world created by The Matrix. Neo, as an ascetic, thus manages to realize himself by escaping the inevitability of the cyclical worlds that engender only misfortune and suffering. Buddhist philosophy offers a soteriology that allows human responsibility to rise to an absolute, and to evacuate the weight of a theological instinct that was thought to be irreducible. The fainting of any supreme being (God) facilitates a Buddhist appreciation of The Matrix, and a world free for any divinity to emerge. The Buddha, as well as Neo, reject the existence of a God, thus making the deliverance a purely spiritual act. If such a perspective confers on humans the responsibility for their own enslavement, it also allows a salutary optimism to transcend the cycles of Saṃsāra.