Unit 2: Contextual Practice Essay Nimmi Hutnik Hut00041440

NB: This essay is framed as a lecture that Professor Ara Bodhisatva (a fictional character) has been invited to deliver to MA painting students at WCA.

Buddhist Art: The Ajanta Caves

Annual WCA Lecture

Prof Ara Bodhisatva

Head of Department of Painting and Buddhist Studies

SOAS

Prof. Ara Bodhisatva: Thank you, Geraint, for inviting me to Wimbledon to deliver this lecture to your MA students. I am really honoured.

 You asked me to talk about my recent trip to India and my experience of Buddhism and Buddhist art there. I would like to focus on the Ajanta caves in Maharashtra where the earliest siting of Buddhist painting can be found. These paintings are dated back to the 2nd Century BC with additions made till about the 5th or 6th century AD. The Ajanta caves then fell out of sight until 1819 when a British soldier named John Smith re-discovered them while hunting tigers.

 In this lecture I hope you will learn something about the essence of Buddhist painting, the philosophy underpinning it, the semiotics underlying it and some of the techniques commonly used in it. We will then consider the impact that Buddhist art has had on some Western artists and will discuss the question of whether Buddhist art can be created by people who do not profess to be Buddhists.

 The Story of the Buddha’s Life

Let us look first at the basics of Buddhism from which Buddhist art arises.  Buddha’ means ‘The Awakened One”.  The Buddha was born into a wealthy, princely family. It was a confrontation with the reality of old age, sickness and death that led Buddha to seek the answers to life’s big questions. He left his young wife, Yashodhara, and their son Rahul to embark on a journey, which many years later would result in an enlightenment experience. Of course Yashodhara was wild with grief and used many ploys to detain her husband but to no avail.

 Buddha began communicating the principles of his enlightenment i.e. the four noble truths and the eight fold path and he acquired a big following. Forty-five years later he died at the age of 80, a peaceful death.

 Basics of Buddhism

The four noble truths are the pillars upon which Buddhism rests. The first noble truth is that suffering is inherent in all of life, not just in old age, sickness and death: it runs through the whole of life. The second noble truth is that suffering is caused by three evils: hatred (symbolised by a snake in the Wheel of Samsara  (See below in the centre of the mandala), greed (symbolised by the pig) and delusion (symbolised by a rooster).

The third noble truth is that we can overcome all suffering by non-attachment. When we, through non-attachment, learn to transcend our desires, be they for love, comfort, freedom from pain and disease, we will achieve the fourth noble truth i.e. Nirvana. It is not easy to achieve non-attachment but we can do this via the eight fold path which, if we follow, we will attain enlightenment.. The eight fold path consists of eight practices: right view, right resolve, right speech, right conduct, right livelihood, right effort, right Samadhi ('meditative absorption or union'), and right mindfulness (Carter & Palihawadana 1992, HH Dalai Lama 1998, 2005, Walpola, 1974)

 To us artists what is perhaps most pertinent is right mindfulness, a term now often used by psychologists in the West to enable anxious clients’ to quieten their chattering minds.   Mindfulness (Hutnik, 2017) comes originally from Buddhist meditation practice and refers to a quality of alert, non-judgemental openness and attention. We will return to this later.

 The Ajanta Caves

The Ajanta cave paintings were created by Buddhist monks who begged for a living as part of their choice for asceticism and who took shelter in the caves during the months of monsoon rain (Behl, 2005) where they occupied themselves by depicting aspects of the Buddha’s life.

.The Ajanta caves represent both Himayana Buddhism and Mahayana Buddhism. The essential difference between these two types of Buddhism is that Himayana Buddhism did not believe in representing the Buddha in human form. Thus below we see a stupa of the Buddha, which is a symbolic representation of his philosophy. 

But in Mahayana Buddhism, which came around the 5th and 6th century AD, the Buddha is now represented in human form, usually in a quiet, meditative pose holding a lotus flower. 

Narrative in Buddhist art

The paintings represent narratives of the Buddha’s life and embody Buddhist philosophy in doing so. Below you see the grieving wife of the Buddha who has lost her husband. He has gone to the forest to seek enlightenment. In the painting below the queen has tutored her son Rahul to ask his father for his rightful inheritance but Lord Buddha presents his begging bowl as his only possession.

In the photograph below we see that Yashodhara has employed a dancing girl to entice Lord Buddha to stay and not return to the forest.

Yashodhara’s maids are shocked and saddened and angered that the queen has lost her husband. 

Thus the narrative is detailed and exquisitely painted.

 The role of semiotics in Buddhist art

Buddhist art is highly symbolic and gestures and postures are of crucial significance.  The Buddha is said to have 32 major symbols or mudras and 80 minor ones. The Lotus flower for example is a symbol of divine origin and of creativity. The seated Buddha is a posture of contemplation where the senses are completely controlled, the hands are in the Dharma Chakra position and represent The Great Teacher, the back is erect and firm, the legs are crossed the soles pointing upward. The posture is called Vajrasana, like a lamp that does not flicker (Iyer, 1958).

In Buddhist painting the eyes are seen to be the windows of the soul. Five styles of painting the eyes are depicted. 

Technique in Buddhist art

The paintings also show a sophisticated understanding of the principles of painting. Knowledge of foreshortening and perspective is seen in the placement of the columns and in the elliptical slant of the eyes (Behl, 2005).

The principles of shading and volume are demonstrated in the roundness of the breasts.

According to the art historian B.N. Goswamy, ‘These people knew what the rules were all about but had the ability and the freedom to go beyond them’. ‘Grammar does not make style’, Goswamy continues and ‘each painter had to find his own way of making the painting come alive’. (Behl, 2010, 2017).

The paintings are incredibly rich. The colours were taken from simple local materials: yellow and red from ochre, green from lime. Only the blue, lapis lazuli came from further afield, Afghanistan.

The Buddhist Concept of Time

The Buddhist concept of time and space is very different to that in the West (Hutnik and Gregory, 2008). Here in Britain time is linear and we progress sequentially from moment to moment. In Buddhist thought we talk of the Eternal Now:  past, present and future all co-exist in the moment.

 Thus in the painting below we see a sita prophesying the birth of the Buddha (future) and in the same picture we see the same sita talking to Queen Mahamaya who has given birth to the Buddha (past) all represented in the same mural.

In the west we progress from left to right and from top to bottom, in Buddhist painting we progress from left to right and from right to left, from top to bottom and from bottom to top. It is all contained in circular motions, as is time.  Thus Buddhist mandalas are always circular:

The Spread of Buddhism

Buddhism spread to Barhut, Sanchi, Mathura, Bodh Gaya, Sarnath, Karla, Amaravati, Jagayyapeta, Nagarjunikonda and then further to Central Asia, Myanmar, Thailand, Tibet, China, Japan, Indonesia and Malaysia. (Iyer, 1958) And over the centuries, the face of Buddhism changed and developed. From the placid, meditative, slender 5th century Buddha figure found in Indian paintings, we see, in 10th century China and Japan, images of the laughing Buddha embodying wealth, happiness and simplicity.

Mindfulness

And so we return to the concept of mindfulness.

When an artist of Buddhist persuasion faces the task of art making, she brings the quality of ‘open-mindedness’ or mindfulness to her work. From within the empty space of stillness she faces the canvas or installation with beginner’s mind (Baas & Jacob, 2004), seeing objects and ideas as if for the first time. She does not know the outcome, what shape the art will ultimately take. As Stephen Batchelor has so accurately put it, from within her position of non-attachment, resisting the temptation to edit and to eliminate, she allows the image to emerge (Batchelor, 2002). Motivated by non-attachment she transcends all previous conceptualisations and experiences and suspends all judgement. From this space of emptiness a fresh new creation arises.

 This is a process of gathering and adding, shifting and changing, the possibilities are endless. The performance artist, Hirokazu Kosaka, talks about horizontal conversations versus vertical ones. Unlike vertical ones, horizontal conversations are not about accumulation, amassing a pile that, when finished, is the work. Horizontal conversations are continuous and without end. (Rosenberg, 2012).

 Emptying the mind, the process of relinquishing one’s views, so as to be able to see afresh, is what links the artist, the psychotherapist and the meditator (Epstein, 2005).

 Artist Mary Anne Jacob (2005) exemplifies Buddhist philosophy when she says:

 ‘In the space of art dwells the ‘mind of don’t know’. The ‘empty’ mind is the creative mind….the process of art making in which the artist does not know the outcome, what the work of art will look like, or even be, is a process which shifts and changes, one of simultaneously seeing and finding a new way’.  pg. 164.

 Thus meditation and art have a lot in common. Both call us to sit still and to observe, to be aware, without judgement, with acceptance. In his chapter titled ‘Sip my ocean: Emptiness as inspiration’  (Baas and Jacob 2004) Mark Epstein cites an idea from the psychotherapist Donald Winnicot  (1971): the child uses the mother as a secure base from which to be curious and to explore and to play. Gradually the child will internalise the presence of the mother even if she is temporarily absent. Buddhist artists learn to trust Presence, being in the Now, which is a quality of bare attention to the breath and to being. Play (i.e. creativity) comes from Presence, a sense of a secure anchor. That is why, often, new ideas for art arise out of meditation. Thus Buddhist art details the inner spiritual journey rather than the outer material world of objects, which has been the primary focus of Western art (Behl, 2010).

 Western art influenced by Buddhism

Many Western artists have been influenced by the philosophy of Buddhism. Duchamp has been said to be one such artist (Lee, 2005) as have Van Gogh, Gauguin and Monet. Indeed Monet spent many hours in his Japanese water garden contemplating the impermanence of life and producing his paintings of water lilies (Greenblatt, 2016).

 More recently, Ryan Gander installed ‘Really Shiny Things That Don’t Mean Anything’ in Tokyo where he has studied the impact of Shintoism (a form of Buddhism) on everyday life.

Though he comes from a Jewish background, some of  Nadaf Kander’s work stimulates a kind of Buddha mind set within me.

Alongside these brilliant photographs of the Thames estuary is a video of Nadaf’s face being lapped by water, over and over again, set to the music of Max Richter’s ‘Sleep’ (Richter 2018), It takes me to a place of meditation and stillness and a consideration of the meaning of life and death and the hereafter and thus, to me, it is Buddhist art.

So in my opinion, non-practising Buddhists can create Buddhist art if it has originated from the qualities of a Buddha-mind and/or if it produces a Buddhist mind set within the viewer. Whether Kander would like his art to be labelled Buddhist is another question altogether. After all, non-practising Christians can produce ‘Christian art’: David Hockney was invited to create the Queens Window in Westminster Cathedral

and Chris Gollon was invited to paint the stations of the Cross at St John’s church in Bethnal Green, though neither profess a personal faith in Christianity.

 Chihiaru Shiota is a Japanese born (b.1972) installation artist currently showing till January 2019 at Blain Southern (https://www.blainsouthern.com/exhibitions/me-somewhere-else). She suggests that consciousness may reside outside the body, an idea that biologist Rupert Sheldrake propounds in his book, The Science Delusion (Sheldrake, 2012). Her reams of red yarn tied to a cast of her feet but splaying out in many dimensions all over the gallery seek to express this idea. Is this not contemporary Buddhist art? It certainly takes the viewer into a space of meditation where she is encouraged to consider the larger questions of life and death and soul and consciousness. It seems to me, therefore that both practising and non-practising Buddhists can produce Buddhist art if the art originates in ‘beginner’s mind and ‘mindfulness’ and if the viewer is transported to a Buddhist mind set where she considers the larger questions of the spiritual life and death.

Summary and Conclusion

So to conclude, in this lecture we have looked at the concepts of Buddhism as exemplified in ancient and modern Buddhist art. We have looked in detail at the origins of Buddhist art in the Ajanta caves, unpacking both the semiotics and the techniques of Buddhist painting and we have looked at how Buddhism has influenced painters in the West and continues to influence painters in the East. We have also considered the question of whether non-practising Buddhists can create Buddhist art and have arrived at the conclusion that they can. To conclude then in the words of art historian Benoy Behl (2010):

‘The attitude of the (Buddhist) artist is not one of struggling against the vicissitudes of life. Instead it is of surrender, there is no valour, there is no heroism, there is only the search for the still centre of the turning world. With all the activity of life, the look is within.’ 

References

Baas, J. & Jacob, M.J.E. 2004, Buddha Mind in Contemporary Art London, University of California Press, London.

Batchelor, S. 2004, Awake Meeting 2002 cited in Baas and Jacob 2004 'In the Space of Art' pg. 165, University of California Press, Los Angeles.

Behl, B. 2017, The art of India, Frontline, New Delhi.

Behl, B. 2010, The Paintings of India, Doordarshan Archives, New Delhi.

Behl, B. 2005, Ajanta caves: Ancient paintings of Buddhist India, Thames and Hudson, New Delhi.

Carter, J. & Palihawadana, M. 1992, Buddhism: The Dhammapada. History Book Club, New York.

Epstein, M. 2004, "Sip my ocean: Emptiness as inspiration" in Buddha mind in contemporary art, eds. J. Baas & M.J.E. Jacob, University of California Press, Los Angeles, pp. 29.

Friedman, T. , Connecting the Dots [Homepage of Stephen Friedman Gallery], [Online]. Available: https://fac.umass.edu/UMCA/Online/default.asp?BOparam::WScontent::loadArticle::permalink=ConnectingTheDots&BOparam::WScontent::loadArticle::context_id= [2018, 12/24].

Gander, R. 2011, Really shiny things that don't mean anything, Japan.

Greenblatt, L. 2016, How Buddhism Inspired Monet’s piece, Lion’s Roar: Buddhist Wisdom for Our Time, Nova Scotia; Canada.

HH Dalai Lama & Cutler, H. 1998, The art of happiness; A handbook for living. Hodder and Stoughton, London.

Hutnik, N. 2017, "Mindfulness" in Becoming resilient: Cognitive Behaviour Therapy to transform your life. Harper Collins, New Delhi, pp. 269.

Hutnik, N. & Gregory, J. 2008, "Cultural sensitivity training: description and evaluation of a workshop", Nurse education today, vol. 28, no. 2, pp. 171-178.

Kander, N. 2017, Dark line: The Thames Estuary., Flowers Gallery.

Shiota, C. Nov 28th 2018 to January 19th 2019 Blain Southern , Me somewhere else. Available: https://www.blainsouthern.com/exhibitions/me-somewhere-else. [2018, 12/12].

Walpola, R. 1974, What the Buddha taught, Grove Press, New York.

Wikipedia , The Eight Fold Path. Available: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noble_Eightfold_Path [2018, 12/10].