Reports    Published 07/05/10

Traces of the Buddha in the Material World

Pilgrimage and Buddhist Art
Asia Society, New York City
16 March–20 June 2010

by CINDI Di MARZO

The art that prepares the pilgrim – and that is sometimes created by him or her – has much to inform us about the physical and spiritual worlds that the pilgrim inhabits. Pilgrimage creates art; art, in turn, inspires pilgrimage. Chün-fang Yü (Pilgrimage and Buddhist Art, p.25)

In all major world religions, a complex relationship between spiritual practice and art production prevails. Political, social and economic agendas join personal devotion as primary motivators of works both great and humble; from elaborate, jewel-encrusted objects made of precious metals to simple drawings, carvings and homemade altarpieces. For Buddhists, art and spiritual practice are inseparable. The concept of darshan, or "auspicious site", ritualizes the transformational experience of viewing sacred images, objects and places. Whether pilgrimage consists of physically travelling the "path", a central metaphor of Buddhist practice, or doing so on the interior plane, searching for traces of the Buddha always requires visual aids, ceremonial objects and mementos. The material culture of Buddhism evokes the Buddha's life and words and chronicles the spiritual lives of countless, nameless Buddhists. Now on view at Asia Society's New York branch, Pilgrimage and Buddhist Art (16 March–20 June 2010) explores the nexus of spiritual and material culture as manifested in Buddhist pilgrimage traditions. Drawn from museum and private collections in North America, the 90 objects displayed demonstrate that art linked to sacred sites in South Asia, the Himalayas, Southeast Asia and East Asia contribute to broader aesthetic conventions evolving in these regions.

The Buddha, a documentary filmed by Emmy Award-winning American director David Grubin (Healing and the Mind with Bill Moyers; The Trials of J. Robert Oppenheimer) accompanies the exhibit. Narrated by actor and Buddhist Richard Gere, the two-hour film captures the Buddha's life as exemplified by pilgrimage traditions and art. Interviews with the Dalai Lama; Americans, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet W.S. Merwin, scholar Robert Thurman and author/psychiatrist Mark Epstein; Vietnamese American astrophysicist Trinh Xuan Thuan; and Buddhist monastics bring the story of Buddhism up to date. Video clips shown in Asia Society's galleries show modern pilgrims walking in the steps of peregrines from ages past. Although they may travel in planes, cars and buses rather than walk miles to sites within their own countries and across borders, Buddhist pilgrims today bear a striking resemblance to their predecessors. Tradition holds strong, reflected and revealed in the art works that such pilgrims will contemplate prior to embarking on their journey, along the way and at the sites.

Canonical accounts of the Buddha's death recorded in Pali and Sanskrit make clear the Buddha's intention for his followers. Merit, he stated, will accrue to those who seek him on pilgrimage, along with the possibility of enlightenment. In the Pali text, Buddhists are told to visit four sacred sites: Lumbini, the Buddha's birthplace in present-day Nepal; and in India, Bodh Gaya, site of his enlightenment; Sarnath, site of his first dharma talk; and Kushinagara, site of his death. The Sanskrit text indicates that spiritual pilgrims may gain merit by contemplating these events. Consequently, Buddhist pilgrimage traditions include a wide range of inner and outer practices. After the Buddha's death in the 5th century BCE, Emperor Ashoka dispersed his relics across and beyond India in the 3rd century BCE. Stupas (funerary mounds) began to dot the landscape, along with monasteries and libraries, and foundation legends circulated to encourage travel to these places. With their establishment, these sites became repositories of great art works, maps and mandalas, and manuscripts.

Curator Adriana Proser, Asia Society's John H. Foster Curator of Traditional Asian Art, has put together a catalogue mirroring the subtle balance achieved in the most accomplished Buddhist art: majestic and unpretentious; dynamic and delicate; eloquent and contemplative. Co-published by Asia Society and Yale University Press, Pilgrimage and Buddhist Art reproduces 130 full-colour illustrations of exhibited works, maps and photos. With its breadth of imagery, styles and forms; focused texts; and extensive appendices, the catalogue is a definitive introduction to this emerging field of study.¹ Eighteen scholars, including Proser, have contributed essays or analyses of objects, viewing the material culture associated with Buddhist pilgrimage from multiple perspectives: Robert H. Stoddard (Sacred Places, Sacred Spaces: The Geography of Pilgrimages) discusses the significance of pilgrimage to particular sites; D. Max Moerman (Localizing Paradise: Kumano Pilgrimage and the Religious Landscape of Premodern Japan) explains the ways in which Buddhist pilgrims travel on the inner and outer planes; Janet Leoshko (Sacred Traces: British Explorations of Buddhism in South Asia) details the rise, fall and reclamation of Bodh Gaya and the Mahabodhi Temple;² Katherine Anne Paul, a specialist in Himalayan art, looks at the recasting of Buddhist pilgrimage traditions at indigenous sites in Bhutan through oral and written texts, art works, dance, music and other popular media; Donald K. Swearer (Sacred Mountains of Northern Thailand and Their Legends) writes on pilgrimage-site narratives that transplant the Buddha from India to Thailand; Chün-fang Yü (Kuan-yin: The Chinese Transformation of Avalokiteshvara) examines mountain symbolism in Chinese history and the religious lives of its people; Susan L. Beningson, an authority on Chinese Buddhist art, describes the cave-chapels and grottoes of Mount Wutai at Dunhuang in Northwestern China, a thriving Silk Road trading post, conduit for the spread of Buddhism, and melting pot of influences on its material culture; and Ian Reader's (Making Pilgrimages: Meaning and Practice in Shikoku) essay delineates the specific character of Japanese pilgrimages, with typically a number of sacred sites associated with Buddhist, Shinto, Daoist and folk beliefs linked in a circuit and replicated on a smaller scale in other locations.

Proser has sectioned the exhibit and catalogue into three components: The Buddha and the Sacred Site; The Journey; and Merit, Mementos and Sacred Bonds. Images reproduced within these sections help to express the goals and actual experiences of pilgrims as they prepare for and make their journey. Portraits of the Buddha – for instance ones created in India (6th century), Myanmar/Burma (14th–15th century), Tibet (11th century) and ancient Gandhara (2nd century) – show marked stylistic similarities and differences, particularly the Hellenistic-influenced Gandharan examples.³ Stupa reliquaries from Sri Lanka (ca.200), China (955), Gandhara (4th–5th century) and Korea (8th–9th century) show native stylistic preferences but adhere to the stupa form as model of the cosmos; the physical plane as a square base; the sacred realm as a dome; and the heavens as a stack of rings, with a yashti, or umbrella pole, connecting the planes along a sacred axis. In effect, such reliquaries are three-dimensional mandalas.⁴

Mandalas also figure as aids on the journey, as do almanacs (consulted for auspicious travel times), maps (physical and symbolic), paintings on scrolls, portable shrines, prayer wheels, woodblock prints and folding screens. Closely aligned with the journey are objects that prepare pilgrims at home and those that commemorate their pilgrimages. Votive tablets, plaques, miniature stupas and icons are among the many mass-produced, portable items that pilgrims hold dear as trophies of their travels. Proser relates that in China, hand-coloured maps of Mount Putuo help pilgrims convey their journey to family and friends; in East Asia, books and scrolls with temple stamps are prominently displayed in homes; and in Japan, pilgrims might request that their stamped temple robes be buried with them at death. In fact, in Japan pilgrimage art is deemed an irreplaceable part of the country's cultural heritage, publicized in documentaries and popular films.⁵

Readers unfamiliar with Buddhist history and practice should consult catalogue appendices prior to approaching the introductory essays and descriptive texts for essential background. These include maps of Asia marking selected pilgrimage sites and major trade routes coinciding with the transmission of Buddhism from India to other Asian countries; and a timeline following this transmission and significant events in China, Korea, Japan, Tibet, Nepal, Indonesia, Myanmar/Burma, Thailand, Cambodia, Mongolia, Bhutan and Sri Lanka. With Buddhism's spread, sites associated with the Buddha, Buddhist deities, revered monastics and miracles multiplied in the aesthetic and linguistic clothing of individual countries and regions. For instance, echoing Ashoka's seminal act of building 84,000 stupas to house the Buddha's relics, 10th-century Emperor Quian Chu had 84,000 miniature reliquary stupas built and distributed to Buddhist sites in China. Little if any conflict arises from such transplants and layering of beliefs, legends, imagery, motifs and styles; within a miraculous framework, the Buddha may appear in any place and time.

As visitors to Asia Society exit the elevators to view the show, the first image they will see is a giant stone footprint from Myanmar/Burma (ca.16th century). Buddhists believe that portraits and relics contain the Buddha's physical presence. Foremost among these images are footprints. Some are considered to be natural, or actual, footprints, while others are created to remind devotees of his steps on the path to enlightenment. These steps, or traces, are revealed in pilgrimage and the vital material culture that has grown to support it. For contemporary Buddhist pilgrims, reading Pilgrimage and Buddhist Art is itself a pilgrimage in which traces of the Buddha can be found with every turn of the page.

References

1. The 224-page, unjacketed hardcover volume retails for US$65/UK£45.
2. Video clips played at the venue show recent pilgrims to Bodh Gaya worshipping at the site.
3. Present-day Pakistan
4. Pilgrimage and Buddhist Art, p.60
5. See Ian Reader's catalogue essay, p.33