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.

Foreword
Danny Rubin

Acknowledgments

A Tribute to Gary Storhoff
Charles Johnson

Introduction: Some (Hollywood) Versions of Enlightenment
John Whalen-Bridge

Part I. Representation and Intention

1. Buddhism and Authenticity in Oliver Stone's Heaven and Earth
Hanh Ngoc Nguyen and R. C. Lutz

2. Buddhism, Children, and the Childlike in American Buddhist Films
Eve Mullen

3. Consuming Tibet: Imperial Romance and the Wretched of the Holy Plateau
Jiayan Mi and Jason C. Toncic

4. Politics into Aesthetics: Cultural Tranlsation in Kundan, Seven Years in Tibet, and The Cup
Felicia Chan

Part II. Allegories of Shadow and Light

5. Momentarily Lost: Finding the Moment in Lost in Translation
Jennifer L. McMahon and B. Steve Csaki

6. Dying to Be Free: The Emergence of "American Militant Buddhism" in Popular Culture
Richard C. Anderson and David A. Harper

7. Buddhism, Our Desperation, and American Cinema
Karsten J. Struhl

8. Christian Allegory, Buddhism, and Bardo in Richard Kelly's Donnie Darko
Devin Harner

9. "Beautiful Necessities": American Beauty and the Idea of Freedom
David L. Smith

Afterword: On Being Luminous
Gary Gach

Bibliography
Filmography
About the Contributors
Index