A project located at the confluence of the historical process in which a system of thought adapts itself to another culture and the development of new technology discourse.

The Virtual Mandala project is located at the confluence of two significant streams of change. The first is the long-term historical process in which a system of thought originating in one culture adapts itself to the visual and verbal discourses of another culture. Buddhism, originating in North India, spread in the millennium after the death of Gautama through Central Asia to East Asia and south to continental and insular Southeast Asia. Everywhere Buddhism was refigured, around a central corps of beliefs, to find its expression in idioms to which both the literate and non-literate populations would respond and to which they could contribute. Now Buddhism has started to spread to the West, in the case of our interests particularly to North America and Europe. This raises difficult questions concerning the development of Buddhist discourses appropriate to the West (rather than a simple orientalist adaptation of Chinese, Japanese or Tibetan cultural expressions). Moreover, it also leads to issues concerning the teaching of Buddhism in Western settings, including the University: is it possible to avoid the conversion of Buddhism into a Western system of thought in order to teach it to Westerners?

The second stream of change is the development of new technology and the ways in which that technology participates in, indeed becomes a part of, the new discourse. A good example of this, historically, is the way printing changed the social and even the intellectual content of Christianity in Europe. This project seeks to explore the ways in which computer technology of various sorts can contribute to the development of a Buddhist discourse appropriate to the 21st century and to the West while still holding true to the fundamental insights that constitute Buddhism. There are implications here for instruction about Buddhism in Western style academic institutions as well as for the private appropriation of Buddhism by individuals.

The first year of this project will include:

• an undergraduate seminar on the theory and practice of mandalas in Buddhism and experiments in designing a mandala based in Western visual idioms that can be designed and displayed on the computer;
• the exploration of the potential for the computer to serve as an instrument, and "efficient means," in Buddhist practice;
• discussion of application of commentarial instruments on the computer to the development of "Western Buddhist thought";
• the gathering of a team who will participate in this exploratory work and will be prepared to build on the results of this first year.

Core personnel:

• Dena DeBry
• Mark Mancall
• Arjia Rinpoche
• Greg Watkins

Contributors:

• Jason Hopper
• Jeremy Sabol
• Liz Seibert
• Carlos Seligo
• Peter Willhoite

Visit the Virtual Mandala project website