On-line Resource: Buddhist Cave Visualization

This website offers resources for students to study and experiment on Buddhist Cave Visualization www.buddhistcave.com.  The site is accessible to public for Buddhist studies worldwide.

The website provides supplementary teaching materials for the course HAA 282E: Buddhist Cave Visualization taught by Professor Eugene Wang. It presents video & audio-visual multimedia installations that replicate the imaginary universe and meditative experience of embellished Buddhist caves. The virtual tour of Mogao Caves (#254, 285, 220, 217, 31 and 3) enhances the experience of teaching and learning.

Course description:
Located at a religious and cultural crossroads on the Silk Road in Gansu province, China, the Mogao Caves are the best known of the Chinese Buddhist grottoes. Among the largest Buddhist cave complexes in the world, the Mogao Caves form a system of 492 temples and contains some of the finest examples of Buddhist art spanning a period of 1,000 years. Dunhuang is the largest art gallery in situ in the world.  The course explores the visual programs of Dunhuang caves. The disparate textual sources on which the murals are based do not explain their convergence in the same cave. A deep logic of world-making binds them together. Using available digital reconstructions that proffer spatial experience of the Dunhuang caves, we address some key questions: how do disparate murals add up? How does the cave visualize and stage the Buddhist mental cosmos?