Buddhism

From documentaries about eminent monks to dramas laden with sex and violence to animated adaptations of beloved folk tales, Buddhism and film have converged via a panoply of forms and postures. While such convergence may be expected of any religion that has arisen from and impacted human life, in the case of Buddhism it reiterates the tradition’s longstanding and exceptional plasticity vis-à-vis new cultural milieus and media technologies. This chapter offers a panoramic survey of Buddhism’s dynamic interrelationships with film. The first section provides a brief review of scholarly approaches to the study of Buddhism and film, before outlining three methodological frames—the psychological, pedagogical, and historical—for this ongoing project. The next section examines a few genres through which premodern Buddhist figures, practices, and narratives have been translated in the modern world: biopics, documentaries, and folklore and mythologies. Finally, the third section explores three distinctly Buddhist themes—karma, desire, and death—as they appear in notable works of world cinema. Whether explicitly or implicitly, the cinema serves as a capacious medium for the diffusion and cultivation of Buddhist wisdom, a wisdom as kaleidoscopic and illuminating as the art of film itself.