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The Dreaming Buddhas Project is a series of 25-minute documentary short films crafted for educators as a supplement to classroom lectures and readings. The films are narrated only by characters on-location: masters, monastics and laypeople who give voice to their communities and traditions. These films offer real images and sounds of daily life, ritual and practice in China’s most respected, yet undocumented Buddhist communities.

The Dreaming Buddhas short films simply augment the depth and detail of text and lecture-based teaching with living interactions on screen; allowing students an opportunity to identify the Buddhist ideals and elements of Buddhist thought they learn about in class as they play out in the actions and words of the films’ characters.  These films have been carefully crafted to use specific themes and situations in these Chinese Buddhist environments which express larger, more over-arching topics and points of discussion in Chinese Buddhist studies in general.

These films reach beyond the facts to reveal values, world-views and ideals that exist across all religious traditions and are at the heart of many secular issues. Each film can act as a vehicle to stimulate student discussions on the social, environmental and cultural issues in their own lives today.

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