Each moment is the universe: filming the Tibetan Buddhist community of Yumbulakhang in China

© 2017 Dr. Yu Su ChengThis practice-based creative PhD project consists of a 135-minute PhD essay film and a context-driven dissertation, to demonstrate a research outcome for a relational, non-duality, improvisational, reflexive and formless filmmaking of “right now, right here” in the everyday world. This is an exposition which reflects a Buddhist framing of “each moment is the universe” as explored through 20 months of fieldwork and film production in the Tibetan Buddhist community of Yumbulakhang of China. The research showcases a process of filmmaking that emerges through a process of limitlessness to accommodate a possible film becoming, within and across a spectrum of key references, including Jean Rouch, Nathaniel Dorsky, Karl Heider, David MacDougall, inter alia, for interpreting a larger cultural and social context where the practical filmmaking here is refined