MOVIES, MEDITATION, AND BUDDHISM

Credit Hours: 3 · Undergraduate Lower-Level

This course introduces the cultural background of Buddhism in modernity and in traditional Asia. The class consists of cognitive, affective, visual, and aesthetic registers. Select films are discussed on their own aesthetic and narrative terms and their themes (impermanence, death, rebirth, sites of contesting ritual and secular perspectives, and these are juxtaposed with analogous issues found in our readings. A further register is engaging in simple, secular contemplative exercises which allow students to explore classic meditative arts of quieting the mind, cultivating kindness, and the power of the introspective imagination. These exercises also serve as an intro to the value of nuanced attention to ordinary experienced, principles central to the rapidly emerging discipline of micro-phenomenology.