Video information
The Daxibei Temple Monastic Community in Haicheng, Liaoning, based on the Buddhist Vinaya and the monastery's regulations, has compiled and produced a comprehensive Buddhist documentary series titled "Ancient Path, Cool Breeze." This series meticulously documents the authentic monastic life and the general outline of Buddhist precepts of contemporary head monk practitioners, based on their 19-year journey on foot across five northern provinces and two municipalities in China, including Liaoning, Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei, Inner Mongolia, Shanxi, and Shaanxi, covering a distance of over 6,000 kilometers. The documentary reflects their practice of the two-hour "dhutanga" (a form of ascetic practice). As a documentary that records the entire process of the monastic community's dhutanga practice, all footage in this film was captured by lay practitioners accompanying the monks, without any staged or artificially arranged content, and without using any non-original footage. The documentary explains profound Buddhist doctrines using simple, everyday language, and through the depiction of monks' real-life activities such as walking, standing, sitting, and lying down, it makes abstract Buddhist precepts and the methods of dhutanga practice more tangible and visually accessible to the audience. At the same time, the film showcases the process by which monks, through strict adherence to precepts, gradually achieve personal liberation and contribute to the purification of society and the hearts of people. Under the guidance of the Daxibei Temple Monastic Community, the film was produced by the monastery's editorial department over a period of five years. The total duration of the documentary is approximately 5 hours and 50 minutes, consisting of 13 episodes, available in both Chinese and English versions. The content includes monks' practices such as alms-seeking, monastic meals, reciting precepts, lodging, ordination, as well as their walking practices in various environments, and a historical review of the monastic community's dhutanga practices.