Buddhism in Cinema

The Holy Fool and the Feather of Grace

Rocky Isn't the Alien — He's the Teacher You Already Had

Nature, Grace, and the Wound of Incarnation

The Awakening That Destroys the Vessel

Language as the Door to Non-Linear Being

The Bagel, the Void, and the Laundromat Bodhi

The Puppet Master as Digital Bodhisattva

The Tree of Life and the Death of Death

What Happens After You Die (According to the Tibetan Book of the Dead)

The Ocean That Reads Your Guilt

The Predator Who Learns to Feel

Time as the Final Attachment

The Dream That Escapes Its Dreamer

Millennium Actress Reveals the Beloved Was Only the Pretext for the Chase

Waking Life Is the Tibetan Book of the Dead for People Who Think They're Awake

Dream Yoga and the Totem of Attachment

Memory as Identity and the Pain We Need to Keep

The Self as Hostile Editor of Its Own Memory

The Bardo as Therapy Practice

The Bardo in Brooklyn

The Body as Stolen Vessel

The Wheel Filmed at 70mm

Tracks Is a Film About Chasing an Image, Made by People Chasing an Image

The Pride That Killed His Sister

The Poisoned Forest Is Cleansing the Earth. Nausicaä Knows It Before Anyone Else Does.

What the World Sends When the Adults Cannot Help

Even Paradise Is Worse Than This Dying World

The Wheel of Fortune Filmed in Candlelight

Memory as Liturgy of the Soul

Three Tempos Converging at the Threshold of Survival

The Palindrome as Cosmology

The House Has a Basement Has a Basement

Death as the Walker Who Will Catch You at the Speed of Walking

Past Lives Is About the Person You Had to Stop Being for This Life to Happen

The Bardo Loop That Cannot Be Broken

The Slave Wakes Up in Time to Die

The Karma the Mouth Could Not Stop Making

Everyone in Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance Acts from Love. Everyone Dies for It.

Lady Vengeance Is an Alchemical Portrait of a Soul That Chose the Wound Over Absolution

Every Time Kim Releases the Killer, He Releases More of Himself

Restraint as the Only Consummation

2046 Is the Realm You Enter When You Refuse to Finish Grieving

Chungking Express Is a Sutra on Impermanence Filmed as a Love Story

Happy Together Is a Map of Samsara, Two Souls Who Cannot Stop Restarting Their Suffering

Yang-Yang Photographs the Back of People's Heads to Show Them What They Cannot See

The Murders in Cure Are Committed by Emptiness Wearing Human Faces

Sadako Died in the Dark and Ring Is Her Transmission Forcing the Light

Pulse Encodes the Buddhist Bardo as an Internet Horror Film

Battle Royale Is a Bardo Text Disguised as a Dystopia

Survive Style 5+ Is Five People Refusing to Let a Self Die So It Can Be Reborn

eXistenZ Is a Gnostic Cosmology: Every Layer Has Its Own God, and None of Them Are the Real One

Vanilla Sky Is a Dream the Dreamer Is Afraid to Wake From (That's Why It Keeps Breaking)

Source Code Is a Man Learning to Die Well, Eight Minutes at a Time

World on a Wire Knew You Were a Simulation in 1973, and Filmed the Panic of Finding Out

The Replica That Requires Its Own Replica

The Endless Is a Horror Film About the Comfort of a Loop You Never Have to Leave

Archive Hides Its Real Story Until the Last Minute. The Grief Was Building the Griever.

Bliss Refuses to Tell You Which World Is Real, Because the Refusal Is the Teaching

Reminiscence Is a Man Who Builds a Machine to Never Leave the Past, and Calls It Love

The Color Does Not Destroy the Gardner Family. It Shows Them What They Always Were.

The Florida Project Is Paradise Seen Only by the Child Standing in Its Ruins

Boyhood Is Twelve Years of Impermanence Filmed as It Happened

Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring Is the Same Sin Watched Until It Becomes the Path

The Master Seals His Eyes So the Young Monk Can Finally See

Siddhartha Learns Nothing From Any Teacher and That Is the Whole Teaching

Little Buddha Answers the Question It Poses: How Can One Lama Be Reborn in Three Children at Once

Kundun Is Scorsese's Film About Losing Everything Without Losing Yourself

Seven Years in Tibet Is the Story of a Man Whose Mountain Had to Be Taken Away Before He Could Climb the Real One

The Cup Proves Enlightenment and Wanting to Watch the World Cup Are the Same Impulse

Milarepa Learns That the Black Magic Worked Perfectly, and That This Is the Catastrophe

The Martial Artist Who Could Not Surrender

Hero Is a Film About an Assassin Who Chooses Not to Kill and Calls It Enlightenment

The Grandmaster Is About the Woman Who Mastered the Art and Buried It With Herself

Ip Man Is a Film About a Master Whose Real Discipline Is Refusing to Fight Until Refusing Is No Longer Truthful

The Raid Is a Vertical Ascent Through Hell, One Floor of Suffering at a Time

The Sacred Head Must Be Returned (Muay Thai as Meditation)

The Man from Nowhere Is About a Dead Man Learning He Is Still Bound to the World

A Bittersweet Life Is a Buddhist Parable About a Man Who Died for One Moment of Real Feeling

The Chaser Is About a World Where the Truth Is Known and Nothing Can Be Done

Poetry Is About a Woman Learning to See Just as She Begins to Lose the Words

The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie Is About Six People Who Cannot Take a Single Bite

Hiroshima Mon Amour Says Memory and Forgetting Are the Same Act

Blow-Up Is About a Man Who Looks So Hard the Image Dissolves

The Camera Outlives David Locke. Antonioni Knew What That Means.

L'Eclisse Ends by Showing You the World Where the Lovers Never Arrive

La Jetée Is a Buddhist Teaching on Attachment (The Prisoner Chooses His Chain)

Sans Soleil Is a Film About the One Thing Memory Can Never Actually Hold

Holy Motors Is a Bardo Manual. The Nine Appointments Are Nine Deaths.

Bird Box Is About the One Thing You Cannot Look At and Keep Your Mind

Sphere Is About the Terror of a Mind That Gets What It Imagines

Psycho-Pass: The Movie Is About a God Made of Criminals Who Sells Peace as the Absence of Choice

Memories Is Three Ways a Man Can Be Devoured by What He Refuses to Let Die

Sword of the Stranger Is About a Man Who Sealed His Blade and a Boy Who Needs Him to Draw It

The Girl Who Leapt Through Time Is About Learning That Every Rewind Steals From Someone Else

5 Centimeters per Second Is About a Man Who Grieves a Person He Could Have Simply Called

The Red Thread Across Time (Musubi and the Memory That Won’t Let Go)

A Silent Voice Is the Story of a Boy Who Bullied a Deaf Girl and Then Had to Learn to Hear at All

Maquia Is About Loving Something You Are Built to Outlive, and Doing It Anyway

Words Bubble Up Like Soda Pop Is About the Terror of Being Compressed and the Grace of Letting Go

Inu-Oh Is a Rock Opera About the Dead Demanding Their Story Be Sung Correctly

The First Slam Dunk Is a Grief Film Wearing a Basketball Game as Armor

Tales from Earthsea Is About the Fear of Death Turned Into a Man

Arrietty Is About the Sacred Law That the Small Survive Only by Remaining Unseen

Pom Poko Is a Shamanic Culture Watching Its Gods Lose the War for the Land

My Neighbors the Yamadas Is a Zen Teaching Disguised as a Newspaper Comic Strip

Ghost in the Shell 2 Asks Why We Make Dolls in Our Image, Then Blame Them for Having Souls

The Sky Crawlers Is About Children Who Cannot Die Until They Kill the God Who Made Them

Giovanni's Island Is a Boy Learning That the Train to Heaven Only Runs One Way

In This Corner of the World Survives the Bomb by Refusing to Look Away From the Ordinary

Ride Your Wave Is About the Moment You Stop Summoning the Dead and Learn to Carry Them

Fortune Favors Lady Nikuko Hides a Teaching on Loving Reality More Than Bloodline

The Big Lebowski Is a Comedy About the One Man in Los Angeles Who Refuses to Grasp

Inside Llewyn Davis Is a Man Trapped in the Same Week Because He Refuses the Lesson It Keeps Teaching

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs Is Six Rehearsals for the One Meeting No One in the West Escapes

THX 1138 Is About Escaping a Prison That Has No Walls, Only a Budget

The Platform Is a Vertical Diagram of the Realm You Are Born Into and the Message That Could End It

Gravity Is a Birth Filmed Backwards, From the Womb of Space to the Mud of Earth

The Midnight Sky Is a Dying Man Talking Himself Into Being Forgiven

Winter Light Is About a Priest Who Discovers That the Silence of God and the Absence of God Feel Identical, and Preaches Anyway

Au Hasard Balthazar Is a Passion Play Without Resurrection, Bresson Filmed the Saint Who Cannot Speak

Edge of Tomorrow Is a Coward Forced to Rehearse His Own Awakening Until It Takes

The Butterfly Effect Is a Man Learning He Is the Suffering He Keeps Trying to Fix

Nemo Stands on the Platform Because the Soul Resists Incarnation

The Materialist Who Met His Soul (And Couldn't Go Back)

Chronos Speeds Time Up Until You See That Nothing Solid Was Ever There

Microcosmos Films the Meadow at the One Scale Where the Human Ego Cannot Follow

Into the Wild Is an Initiation That Reached Its Threshold and Was Refused Passage

Lo and Behold Is Herzog Asking Whether the Internet Dreams, and Deciding It Cannot

Crash Is About People Trying to Feel Something Through a Body That Has Gone Numb

Suicide Club Asks If You Are Connected to Yourself, and Most of Japan Fails the Test

Noriko's Dinner Table Asks Whether You Can Be Connected to Anything If You Never Chose Your Own Self

Imprint Is a Hell Realm Where Every Kindness Was Already a Cruelty in Disguise

One Missed Call Is About Hearing Your Own Death Arrive Before It Does

Carnival of Souls Is a Bardo Film Made by People Who Did Not Know They Were Making One

Avatar: The Last Airbender Teaches Enlightenment as a Bending Discipline

The Archons Own the Farm — And You Are the Crop

What Happens When a Human Accesses 100% (It's Not What Transhumanists Think)

Anakin Falls Because He Tries to Save Someone. That Is the Trap the Dark Side Is Built From

Circle of Iron Ends With a Book of Blank Mirrors Because Enlightenment Has No Content

The Soul That Saw the Door and Chose the Coffin

The Flash-Sideways Is a Bardo, the Finale a Tibetan Book of the Dead

Nora Came Back With a Story No One Could Verify, and That Was the Point

The Cut to Black Is Tony’s Death, the Finale a Bardo

Winning Is Indistinguishable From Dying: the Self That Started Is Already Gone

The Bone Temple Is the Point. The Infection Was Never the Story.

Mia Became the Thing She Summoned

The Cat Survives by Learning When to Stop Swimming