Buddhism and American Cinema

Buddhism and American Cinema PDF Author: John Whalen-Bridge
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 1438453493
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 275

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Book Description
Discusses both depictions of Buddhism in film and Buddhist takes on a variety of films. In 1989, the same year the Dalai Lama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, a decade-long boom of films dedicated to Buddhist people, history, and culture began. Offering the first scholarly treatment of Buddhism and cinema, the editors advise that there are two kinds of Buddhist film: those that are about Buddhists and those that are not. Focusing on contemporary American offerings, the contributors extend a two-pronged approach, discussing how Buddhism has been captured by directors and presenting Buddhist-oriented critiques of the worlds represented in films that would seem to have no connection with Buddhism. Films discussed range from those set in Tibet, such as Kundun and Lost Horizon, to those set well outside of any Buddhist milieu, such as Groundhog Day and The Matrix. The contributors explain the Buddhist theoretical concepts that emerge in these works, including karma, the bardo, and reincarnation, and consider them in relation to interpretive strategies that include feminism, postcolonialism, and contemplative psychological approaches.

Buddhism and American Cinema

Buddhism and American Cinema PDF Author: John Whalen-Bridge
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 1438453493
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 275

Get Book

Book Description
Discusses both depictions of Buddhism in film and Buddhist takes on a variety of films. In 1989, the same year the Dalai Lama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, a decade-long boom of films dedicated to Buddhist people, history, and culture began. Offering the first scholarly treatment of Buddhism and cinema, the editors advise that there are two kinds of Buddhist film: those that are about Buddhists and those that are not. Focusing on contemporary American offerings, the contributors extend a two-pronged approach, discussing how Buddhism has been captured by directors and presenting Buddhist-oriented critiques of the worlds represented in films that would seem to have no connection with Buddhism. Films discussed range from those set in Tibet, such as Kundun and Lost Horizon, to those set well outside of any Buddhist milieu, such as Groundhog Day and The Matrix. The contributors explain the Buddhist theoretical concepts that emerge in these works, including karma, the bardo, and reincarnation, and consider them in relation to interpretive strategies that include feminism, postcolonialism, and contemplative psychological approaches.

Buddhism and American Cinema

Buddhism and American Cinema PDF Author: John Whalen-Bridge
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 1438453515
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 275

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Book Description
Discusses both depictions of Buddhism in film and Buddhist takes on a variety of films. In 1989, the same year the Dalai Lama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, a decade-long boom of films dedicated to Buddhist people, history, and culture began. Offering the first scholarly treatment of Buddhism and cinema, the editors advise that there are two kinds of Buddhist film: those that are about Buddhists and those that are not. Focusing on contemporary American offerings, the contributors extend a two-pronged approach, discussing how Buddhism has been captured by directors and presenting Buddhist-oriented critiques of the worlds represented in films that would seem to have no connection with Buddhism. Films discussed range from those set in Tibet, such as Kundun and Lost Horizon, to those set well outside of any Buddhist milieu, such as Groundhog Day and The Matrix. The contributors explain the Buddhist theoretical concepts that emerge in these works, including karma, the bardo, and reincarnation, and consider them in relation to interpretive strategies that include feminism, postcolonialism, and contemplative psychological approaches. John Whalen-Bridge is Associate Professor of English at the National University of Singapore. Gary Storhoff (1947–2011) was Associate Professor of English at the University of Connecticut, Stamford and the author of Understanding Charles Johnson. Together they coedited The Emergence of Buddhist American Literature, American Buddhism as a Way of Life and Writing as Enlightenment: Buddhist American Literature into the Twenty-first Century, all also published by SUNY Press.

Cinema Illuminating Reality

Cinema Illuminating Reality PDF Author: Victor Fan
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
ISBN: 1452964319
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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Book Description
A new critical approach to cinema and media based on Buddhism as a philosophical discourse How can a philosophical discourse generated in Asia help us reframe and renew cinema and media theory? Cinema Illuminating Reality provides a possible way to do this by using Buddhist ideas to examine the intricate relationship between technicity and consciousness in the cinema. The resulting dialogue between Buddhism and Euro-American philosophy is the first of its kind in film and media studies. Victor Fan examines cinema’s ontology and ontogenetic formation and how such a formational process produces knowledge, political agency, and in-aesthetics. Buddhism allows Fan to deconstruct binary thinking and reimagine media as an ecology, rethinking cinema in relational terms between the human and the machine. Along the way, Fan considers a wide variety of case studies from around the globe, while paying special attention to how contemporary Tibeto-Sinophone filmmakers have adopted relational thinking to detail ways of rebuilding a world that appears to be beyond repair. From Chinese queer cinema to a reexamination of Japanese master Ozu’s work and its historical reception to Christian Petzold’s 2018 existential thriller Transit, CinemaIlluminating Reality forges a remarkable path between Buddhist studies and cinema studies, casting vital new light on both of these important subjects.

The Emergence of Buddhist American Literature

The Emergence of Buddhist American Literature PDF Author: John Whalen-Bridge
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 1438426593
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 271

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Book Description
The encounter between Buddhism and American literature has been a powerful one for both parties. While Buddhism fueled the Beat movement's resounding critique of the United States as a spiritually dead society, Beat writers and others have shaped how Buddhism has been presented to and perceived by a North American audience. Contributors to this volume explore how Asian influences have been adapted to American desires in literary works and Buddhist poetics, or how Buddhist practices emerge in literary works. Starting with early aesthetic theories of Ernest Fenollosa, made famous but also distorted by Ezra Pound, the book moves on to the countercultural voices associated with the Beat movement and its friends and heirs such as Ginsberg, Kerouac, Snyder, Giorno, Waldman, and Whalen. The volume also considers the work of contemporary American writers of color influenced by Buddhism, such as Maxine Hong Kingston, Charles Johnson, and Lan Cao. An interview with Kingston is included.

Silver Screen Buddha

Silver Screen Buddha PDF Author: Sharon A. Suh
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1474217834
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 232

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Book Description
How do contemporary films depict Buddhists and Buddhism? What aspects of the Buddhist tradition are these films keeping from our view? By repeatedly romanticizing the meditating monk, what kinds of Buddhisms and Buddhists are missing in these films and why? Silver Screen Buddha is the first book to explore the intersecting representations of Buddhism, race, and gender in contemporary films. Sharon A. Suh examines the cinematic encounter with Buddhism that has flourished in Asia and in the West in the past century – from images of Shangri-La in Frank Capra's 1937 Lost Horizon to Kim Ki-Duk's 2003 international box office success Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter...and Spring. The book helps readers see that representations of Buddhism in Asia and in the West are fraught with political, gendered, and racist undertones. Silver Screen Buddha draws significant attention to ordinary lay Buddhism, a form of the tradition given little play in popular film. By uncovering the differences between a fictionalized, commodified, and exoticized Buddhism, Silver Screen Buddha brings to light expressions of the tradition that highlight laity and women, on the one hand, and Asian and Asian Americans, on the other. Suh engages in a re-visioning of Buddhism that expands the popular understanding of the tradition, moving from the dominance of meditating monks to the everyday world of raced, gendered, and embodied lay Buddhists.

Seeing Like the Buddha

Seeing Like the Buddha PDF Author: Francisca Cho
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 1438464398
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 192

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Book Description
Considers film as a form of Buddhist ritual and contemplative practice. In this important new contribution to Buddhist studies and Buddhist film criticism, Francisca Cho argues that films can do more than simply convey information about Buddhism. Films themselves can become a form of Buddhist ritual and contemplative practice that enables the viewer not only to see the Buddha, but to see like the Buddha. Drawing upon her extensive knowledge of both Buddhism and film studies, Cho examines the aesthetic vision of several Asian and Western films that explicitly or implicitly embody Buddhist teachings about karma, emptiness, illusion, and overcoming duality. Her wide-ranging analysis includes Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter and Spring (South Korea, 2003), Nang Nak (Thailand, 1999), Rashomon (Japan, 1950), Maborosi (Japan, 1995), and the films of American Terrence Malick.

Seeing Like the Buddha

Seeing Like the Buddha PDF Author: Francisca Cho
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 1438464401
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 192

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Book Description
Considers film as a form of Buddhist ritual and contemplative practice. In this important new contribution to Buddhist studies and Buddhist film criticism, Francisca Cho argues that films can do more than simply convey information about Buddhism. Films themselves can become a form of Buddhist ritual and contemplative practice that enables the viewer not only to see the Buddha, but to see like the Buddha. Drawing upon her extensive knowledge of both Buddhism and film studies, Cho examines the aesthetic vision of several Asian and Western films that explicitly or implicitly embody Buddhist teachings about karma, emptiness, illusion, and overcoming duality. Her wide-ranging analysis includes Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter ... and Spring (South Korea, 2003), Nang Nak (Thailand, 1999), Rashomon (Japan, 1950), Maborosi (Japan, 1995), and the films of American Terrence Malick. Francisca Cho is Associate Professor of Buddhist Studies at Georgetown University. Her books include Religion and Science in the Mirror of Buddhism (written with Richard K. Squier) and Embracing Illusion: Truth and Fiction in The Dream of the Nine Clouds, also published by SUNY Press.

Buddhism beyond Borders

Buddhism beyond Borders PDF Author: Scott A. Mitchell
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 1438456379
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 308

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Book Description
Explores facets of North American Buddhism while taking into account the impact of globalization and increasing interconnectivity. Buddhism beyond Borders provides a fresh consideration of Buddhism in the American context. It includes both theoretical discussions and case studies to highlight the tension between studies that locate Buddhist communities in regionally specific areas and those that highlight the translocal nature of an increasingly interconnected world. Whereas previous examinations of Buddhism in North America have assumed a more or less essentialized and homogeneous “American” culture, the essays in this volume offer a corrective, situating American Buddhist groups within the framework of globalized cultural flows, while exploring the effects of local forces. Contributors examine regionalism within American Buddhisms, Buddhist identity and ethnicity as academic typologies, Buddhist modernities, the secularization and hybridization of Buddhism, Buddhist fiction, and Buddhist controversies involving the Internet, among other issues.

The Dharma of The Princess Bride

The Dharma of The Princess Bride PDF Author: Ethan Nichtern
Publisher: North Point Press
ISBN: 0865478384
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 213

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Book Description
An engagingly contemporary approach to Buddhism—through the lens of an iconic film and its memorable characters Humorous yet spiritually rigorous in the tradition of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and The Tao of Pooh, drawing from pop culture and from personal experience, The Dharma of “The Princess Bride” teaches us how to understand and navigate our most important personal relationships from a twenty-first-century Buddhist perspective. Friendship. Romance. Family. These are the three areas Ethan Nichtern delves into, taking as departure points the indelible characters from Rob Reiner’s perennially popular film—Westley, Fezzik, Vizzini, Count Rugen, Princess Buttercup, and others—as he also draws lessons from his own life and his work as a meditation teacher. Nichtern devotes the first section of the book to exploring the dynamics of friendship. Why do people become friends? What can we learn from the sufferings of Inigo Montoya and Fezzik? Next, he leads us through all the phases of illusion and disillusion we encounter in our romantic pursuits, providing a healthy dose of lightheartedness along the way by sharing his own Princess Buttercup List and the vicissitudes of his dating life as he ponders how we idealize and objectify romantic love. Finally, Nichtern draws upon the demands of his own family history and the film’s character the Grandson to explore the dynamics of “the last frontier of awakening,” a reference to his teacher Chogyam Trungpa’s claim that it’s possible to be enlightened everywhere except around your family. With The Dharma of “The Princess Bride” in hand, we can set out on the path to contemporary Buddhist enlightenment with the most important relationships in our lives.

Buddhism in America

Buddhism in America PDF Author: Scott A. Mitchell
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1472581954
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
Buddhism in America provides the most comprehensive and up to date survey of the diverse landscape of US Buddhist traditions, their history and development, and current methodological trends in the study of Buddhism in the West, located within the translocal flow of global Buddhist culture. Divided into three parts (Histories; Traditions; Frames), this introduction traces Buddhism's history and encounter with North American culture, charts the landscape of US Buddhist communities, and engages current methodological and theoretical developments in the field. The volume includes: - A short introduction to Buddhism - A historical survey from the 19th century to the present - Coverage of contemporary US Buddhist communities, including Theravada, Mahayana, and Vajrayana Theoretical and methodological issues and debates covered include: - Social, political and environmental engagement - Race, feminist, and queer theories of Buddhism - Secular Buddhism, digital Buddhism, and modernity - Popular culture, media, and the arts Pedagogical tools include chapter summaries, discussion questions, images and maps, a glossary, and case studies. The book's website provides recommended further resources including websites, books and films, organized by chapter. With individual chapters which can stand on their own and be assigned out of sequence, Buddhism in America is the ideal resource for courses on Buddhism in America, American Religious History, and Introduction to Buddhism.