On December 4th, 2021, devotees and friends of Fo Guang Shan Temple of Toronto had the rare privilege to listen to Dr. Irene Lok’s eye-opening and virtual lecture on “Dunhuang Iconography: The Art of Enlightenment”. Dr. Irene Lok is the Associate Researcher of the Centre for the Study of Humanistic Buddhism at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. In the one-hour lecture that was packed with stunning images, Dr. Lok gave the audience a glimpse of Dunhuang’s history, geography, cave temples, architecture, statues, murals, and the protection efforts of the exquisite and fragile arts.

Dunhuang is an invaluable treasure. Renowned scholar Ji Wianlin once said, "there are only four cultural systems in the world which have been recognized as having a long history, a vast geographical span, a self-contained cultural system as well as having a long history, as far-reaching impacts - China, India, Greece and Islam. There is only one place where all four of these cultural systems converge - the region of Dunhuang and Xinjiang in China”.

The learning opportunity in Dunhuang is exceptionally vast. All of Dr. Lok’s images of Dunhuang can lead to their in-depth discussions or even university-level courses. In the hour that we took this lecture, Dr. Lok showed us to take notice of early artistic styles from India and central Asia, as well as metropolitan Chinese artistic style during the Tang dynasty. The arts were adapted to the people’s needs in their respective periods. In the old days, not many people could read, especially for long and complicated sutras. The visual aid was very helpful in propagating Buddhist doctrines. As a result, murals evolved from depicting the Buddha’s stories in the early days of Dunhuang to showcasing elaborate Pureland images and narratives of the sutra at the peak of the Tang dynasty.

Dr. Irene Lok encouraged the audience to see Dunhuang in person, but of course, one has to obtain sufficient knowledge of this place in order to make this trip to Dunhuang a worthwhile one. Otherwise, one would not know what to see in Dunhuang and how to see Dunhuang.

According to the records, the first Dunhuang cave temple was constructed by a travelling monk in 633 C.E. He had a vision of a thousand Buddha shining in the sky above the Mingsha Mountain. Deeply inspired by the sight, he settled down and started the first cave temple. In Dr. Lok’s travel experience in Dunhuang, it was an immensely touching moment to be on the same soil where the historical events, such as the thousand Buddha shining in the sky, unfolded more than a thousand years ago. The history and her moment there merged. This is the beauty of visiting Dunhuang. This is why she strongly recommends we become knowledgeable about Dunhuang before making this spiritual trip.

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