Introduction: Traditions and Transformations in Modern Buddhism

Abstract

Abstract Several movies that have gained worldwide popularity in recent years have highlighted a sense of diYculty and dismay in accepting the inevitable and sometimes radical challenges and changes that Buddhist institutions and practitioners have undergone in modern times. The 1980s film The Funeral, by the late Itami Juzo, portrays a Japanese Buddhist priest performing traditional mortuary rites, such as the bestowing of a posthumous Buddhist name, as an activity that seems hypocritical and corrupt in a modern world characterized by avarice, jealousy, greed, and the breakdown of long-standing family structures. Similarly, The Cup (1999), by Khyentse Norbu, a Tibetan lama who studied Wlmmaking with famed director Bernardo Bertolucci, shows a group of young monks who, despite their monastic robes and shaved heads, are more eager to watch an important soccer match on television than to adhere to their strict training program that does not allow for secular distraction. Such images of Buddhism caught between worlds—one seemingly archaic and pure and the other fragmented and contaminated by impurity— are frequently reinforced by other ironic media constructions of Buddhists. These include a variety of postmodern drawings of Bodhidharma shown as a kind of corporate samurai that graced the covers of Mangajin, a magazine on Japanese culture that was popular in the 1990s, as well as television ads for IBM that show monks secluded in remote mountains mastering the art of high-tech software.