Study Journey
Buddhist Roads — West China 2026
A traveling seminar between text and place in the making of Mahayana Buddhism
Beijing to Dunhuang · West China · Spring 2026 · 8–12 participants · Completed
About this journey
A traveling seminar between text and place in the making of Mahayana Buddhism.
Our last spring tour between Beijing and Dunhuang ran through some of the most thrilling landmarks of early Buddhist history in west China, on its path to change the fate of east Asia as a whole.
What we actually do
- ·Cave temples and mural programmes read in their original landscape
- ·Monasteries where ritual, patronage and daily practice remain visible
- ·Texts considered alongside the roads, courts and communities that carried them east
From the field
Swipe or drag
Practical
- Where
- Beijing to Dunhuang · West China
- When
- Spring 2026
- Group
- 8–12 participants
- Languages
- English · Hebrew
Read first
Research
The Lotus in the Sands
How Buddhism travelled the trade routes into China — and how a Daoist caretaker at Dunhuang found the record of it behind a cracked mural.
Essay
A Tangut Blessing for the Road
The Cloud Platform, a vanished script, and the Dharma that echoed long after the fall of the Western Xia.
Essay
The Lidai Fabao: Memory, Lineage, and the Living Dharma
A look at the Dunhuang Buddhist chronicles, the radical Bao Tang school, and the collision of faiths in Tang-era China.
Completed
Ask about a future Buddhist Roads seminar
This journey has concluded. Write if you are interested in a future departure or a seminar adapted for a university, school or private study group.