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You're listening to imaginary worlds.

I show about how we create them and why we suspend our disbelief.

I'm Eric Mollinsky.

I got a message from a listener recently, asking if I had ever thought about doing an episode

about how often Buddhism is used as the basis for an alien religion or a philosophical

system in a fantasy movie.

I never thought about that before, but once I started looking into it, I couldn't believe

how often that was the case.

And later in the episode, I will delve into these specific movies and TV shows and I'm

thinking of and how they reflect Buddhism.

But first, we need to look at why this happened.

Jim Clark is a professor at Coventry University in the UK and he's writing a book about Buddhism

in science fiction.

He says it really began when Buddhism came to the West over 200 years ago.

Now that's pretty recent for a religion that's over 2500 years old.

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