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标题: 密宗's Mandalas [打印本页]
作者: choi    时间: 7 天前
标题: 密宗's Mandalas
Holland Cutter, Life's Circularity, Given Shape In the Majestic; Spectacular works that served as cosmic charts, meditation aids and so much more. New York Times, Dec 27, 2024, at page C1 (C being the "WeekendArts" every Friday).
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/ ... dalas-met-show.html

Note:
(a) This is art review on two exhibitions at the same location (The Met)"
(i) Mandalas; Mapping the Buddhist art of Tibet. The Met, Sept 19, 2024 to Jan 12, 2025.
https://www.metmuseum.org/exhibi ... ddhist-art-of-tibet
(ii) Siena; The rise of painting, 1300-1350. The Met, Oct 13, 2024 to Jan 26, 2025.
https://www.metmuseum.org/exhibi ... -painting-1300-1350


(b)
(i)
(A) Buddhism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhism
(Biddha lived "c. 6th or 5th century BCE"/ section 8 Schools and traditions: "Buddhists generally classify themselves as either Theravāda ['lit. "the Teaching of the Elders" '/ 上座部佛教 (in both Chinese and Japanese)] or Mahāyāna [Sanskrit for Great Vehicle 大乘]. * * * The Theravada tradition traces its origins as the oldest tradition holding the Pali Canon as the only authority. The Mahayana tradition reveres the Canon but also derivative literature that developed in the 1st millennium CE; its roots are traceable to the 1st century BCE. The Vajrayana [密乘佛教] tradition is closer to the Mahayana, includes Tantra, and as the younger of the three * * * ")
(B) 上座部佛教
https://zh.wikipedia.org/zh-cn/上座部佛教
(map caption: "佛教主要教派分布，红色地区即是上座部佛教流行的地区")
The blue in the (same) map denotes Vajrayana, and green, mixture of Vajrayana and East-Asian Mahāyāna.
(ii) Vajrayana  密乘佛教
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vajrayana
(lit. 'vajra vehicle'/ also known as Tantric Buddhism, and Esoteric Buddhism; "developed in Medieval India * * * originated within Hinduism during the first millennium CE"/ section 6 Tantra techniques: "Vajrayāna Buddhist traditions * * * also make use of unique tantric methods  * * * include
* * * mandalas * * * Vajrayana is a system of tantric lineages, and thus only those who receive an empowerment or initiation (abhiseka) are allowed to practice the more advanced esoteric methods")
(A) vajra
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vajra
(Sanskrit for thunderbolt [OR 'the hard or mighty one': per Wiktionary]/ "The use of the bell and vajra as symbolic and ritual tools is found in all schools of Tibetan Buddhism. The vajra is a round, symmetrical metal scepter with two ribbed spherical heads")

So Vajrayana, if translated literally, is not 密乘; at least vajra is not Vajrayana 密.
(B) vajra
https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/dictionary/english/vajra
(pronunciation)
(C) 密宗
https://zh.wikipedia.org/zh-cn/密宗
("而相对于密教，之前的佛教流派包括其他的大乘佛教、上座部佛教，则被称为显教。 * * * 目前密教在日本和西藏最为兴盛。日本密教传承自中国的唐密，唐密传承自印度的前期、中期密教。日本有东密（真言宗）和台密（天台密教）两大分支，东密的道场在东寺、高野山，台密在比叡山、三井寺，本尊是大日如来 [Vairocana; Sanskrit vi+rocana, for 'from the sun']。藏密流传于西藏、青海、蒙古和云南、四川西部，本尊是普贤王如来、金刚总持等。 * * * 佛教密宗的许多仪式与修行方式以密续（称为怛特罗 [tantra is translated into 密续 and 怛特罗, the former being by meaning and the latter by sound]）作为修行的主要依据，在师徒间一对一秘密传授," hence the name 密宗 (and ja.wikipedia.org says the same thing)
(iii) What are Tantric Sex Positions? WebMD, July 5, 2023
https://www.webmd.com/sex/what-are-tantric-sex-positions
("Tantra is a form of spirituality that combines sexuality, sensual pleasure, and religious life. Common to the Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain traditions in India, it dates back to the 6th century.   The modern focus on sexual practices is so different from Tantra's ancient roots * * * The Kama Sutra Is a Tantric Book [which is sectional heading:] The Kama Sutra is an ancient Indian text on love and sex. It’s similar to Tantric sex positions in that they both relate to sex. But Tantric sex positions are about gaining spiritual experiences, whereas the Kama Sutra focuses on how to gain pleasure")
(iv)
(A) Not found in any religion, Kama Sutra (or Kamasutra) 欲经 was written in Sanskrit by Vatsyayana Mallanaga in 2nd–3rd century AD.
(B) English dictionary:
* Kama Sutra (proper name; from Sanskrit [noun neuter] कामसूत्र (romanization: kā́ma-sūtra), from [noun masculine] काम (romanization kāma; meaning desire) +‎ सूत्र (sūtra) )):
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Kama_Sutra
(C) Sanskrit-English dictionary:
* सूत्र (noun neuter; romanization sutra):
1: thread, yarn, string, line, cord, wire
* * *
8: that which like a thread runs through or holds together everything[;] rule, direction"
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/सूत्र
(D) Sanskrit is written left to right.


(c) "Mandalas — the word has roots in a Sanskrit word for 'round' or 'surround' * * * Not coincidentally, the Met's Lehman Wing, where the show [for mandalas] is installed, roughly conforms to this model: It’s shaped like an angled sphere set within the four-square monument that is the Met."
(i) "Mandalas — the word has roots in a Sanskrit word for 'round' or 'surround' "
(A) mandala
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandala
(Sanskrit for circle)

Wiktonary and other online Sanskrit-English dictionaries defines मण्डल as both adjective (round) and noun neuter (circle) -- but not a verb.
(B) mandala
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/mandala
(pronunciation)
(C) Not to be confused with Mandalay.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandalay
(ii) "Met's Lehman Wing * * * s shaped like an angled sphere set within the four-square monument that is the Met."
(A) Here is floor plan for Floor 1 of The Met:
https://maps.metmuseum.org/galle ... 9448/-73.963517/-61

The top of this map is NOT the north. The main entrance of The Met is at the intersection of (5th Ave & E 82nd St), New York, NY. With maps.google.com, you may orientate this floor plan with Google Maps.

To me, The Lehman Wing does not appear to be "an angled sphere," though the rest of the Met is indeed a rectangle (more or less).
(B) Search images.google.com with ("The Met" "Lehman Wing") and you may see the top of Floor 1 (which is that of Lehman Wing).


(d) "Here you find the personage — divine, human or some combination of those — to whom the work is dedicated. One of the show's earliest large-scale works, of the kind called a thangka painting in Tibet, is a portrait of the Indian monk Atisha (AD 982 to AD 1054), who was instrumental in introducing later schools of Buddhism — Mahayana, Vajrayana — to Tibet. With his peaked cap and pudding of a face, he looks adorably babyish. * * * Extra special too was a class of wild-and-crazy characters known as mahasiddhas (or 'great adepts'). They practiced tantric Buddhism, an offshoot of Vajrayana, which espoused a counterintuitive path to salvation. To achieve it — right now, in this life, not after a string of stressful rebirths — you had to undergo a kind of moral shock therapy, which consisted of doing things you weren’t, socially speaking, supposed to do: spend your time getting high, having sex, and living rough in the streets. * * * gained superhuman power.   A mahasiddha named Virupa did, and in a large 13th-century thangka we see him showing it off. One day when he was drinking himself sodden in a bar, a server approached and demanded that he pay his tab by sundown, closing time. 'No problem,' Virupa said, as he reached skyward, froze the sun in its path and kept guzzling. In the painting we see the miracle in action, and we also see that he's not alone. Around him, dense as a swarm of tiny insects, float tiny images of fellow adepts engaged in all manner of outré shenanigans."
(i) personage
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/personage

Cambridge dictionary (online) says this word is countable and formal.
(ii)
(A) thangka
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thangka
("Thangka serve as important teaching tools depicting the life of the Buddha, various influential lamas and other deities and bodhisattvas. One subject is the Wheel of Life (Bhavachakra), which is a visual representation of the Abhidharma teachings (Art of Enlightenment). * * * now only survive in a few sites such as the Ajanta Caves in India and the Mogao Caves in China, which have very extensive wall-paintings and were the repository for what are now the earliest surviving Tibetan paintings on cloth")
(B) Etymology of thangka, which is transliterated (or romanized) Tibetan ཐང་ཀ:
Wiktionary: "literally 'painting' "
New World Encyclopedia: "In Tibetan the word 'than' means flat and the suffix 'ka' stands for painting."  (Another way to romanize results in "thang" in lieu of "than"
Encyclopaedia Britannica: "something rolled up"
(iii) "Indian monk Atisha (AD 982 to AD 1054), who was instrumental in introducing later schools [as compared to Theravāda, which is earliest] of Buddhism — Mahayana, Vajrayana — to Tibet. With his peaked cap and pudding of a face, he looks adorably babyish."
(A) For Atisha, see Atiśa
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atiśa
(B) Googling "pudding of a face" will find a "round pudding of a face" to describe, say, Orson Welles.
(iv) mahasiddha
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahasiddha
(Sanskrit for great adept)

There is no online English dictionary which contains this word. Hence I am unaware of its pronunciation.
(A) Its Sanskrit is महासिद्ध (which is not found in Wiktionary), made up of महा (adj; romanization mahā): "combining form of महत् ([romanization:] mahát [meaning great])" (same as in Mahayana)
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/महा
and सिद्ध (adj; romanization siddha; from verb सिध् (romanization sidh, meaning to succeed) ): "proven, accomplished"
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/सिद्ध
(B) That is why the zh.wikipedia.org for mahasiddha is titled 大成就者.
(C) English dictionary:
* adept (adj or n; etymology)
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/adept
(v) Virūpa
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virūpa

There are various paintings or statues demonstrating this theme. Just search the word with images.google.com.

No online English dictionary contains this word.
(vi) English dictionary:
* outré (adj; etymology)
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/outré


(e) Yama Dharmaraja
(i) Yama
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yama
("also known as * * * Dharmarāja, is the Hindu god of death and justice")
(ii) Dharmaraja
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dharmaraja
(may refer to:
is not found in any online English dictionary, but is made of dharma and [Hindi noun] raja (from Sanskrit राज्, whose romanization is rā́j and means king).  


(f) "If some guardians win through intimidation, others gain power from sheer inner and outer beauty, and the Met show has several of these. One is the savior goddess Tara, as seen in a 14th-century gilt copper sculpture from Nepal. * * * Another is the shape-shifting, multitasking bodhisattva named Avalokiteshvara. Depicted as having, in one incarnation, dozens of arms and open-palmed hands, he is an icon of generosity."
(i)
(A) Tara (Buddhism)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tara_(Buddhism)
("She is one of the most important female deities in Vajrayana"/section 1 Etymology)

NOT to be confused with Hindi goddess of the same name (who does not manifest in skin color green or white):
Tara (Mahavidya)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tara_(Mahavidya)
(In "Hinduism, the goddess Tara (Sanskrit: तारा, Tārā) is the second of the ten Mahavidyas. She is considered * * * the tantric manifestation of Parvati")
(B) "White Tara is worshipped primarily in Nepal and Tibet as a compassionate figure.": from the Web.
(C) Tara, the Buddhist Savior. Nepal, Kathmandu Valley; 14th century. The Met, undated.
https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/50799
(ii)
(A) Avalokiteśvara
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avalokiteśvara
("While Avalokiteśvara was depicted as male in India, in East Asian Buddhism, Avalokiteśvara is most often depicted as a female figure known as Guanyin, Kannon [which is how Japan pronounce 観音: both kanji in Chinese pronunciations]"/ section 1 Etymology: "The name Avalokiteśvara combines the verbal prefix ava 'down,' lokita, a past participle of the verb lok 'to look, notice, behold, observe,' here used in an active sense [EVEN THOUGH lokita is lok's past participle in PASSIVE form, meaning being perceived] , and finally[Sanskrit ईश्वर] īśvara, 'lord' ")
(B) English dictionary:
* Avalokiteshvara (proper name; "from Sanskrit अवलोकितेश्वर (Avalokiteśvara, literally 'Lord of Perception' ")
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Avalokiteshvara
* Avalokitesvara
https://www.collinsdictionary.co ... lish/avalokitesvara
(pronunciation)
(C) Sanskrit-English dictionary:
* अव (adverb; romanization ava): "down"
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/अव
* लोक् (verb; romanization lok)
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/लोक्
   ^ लोकित (romanization lokita)
   https://www.wisdomlib.org/definition/lokita
   ^ Sanskrit verbs
   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanskrit_verbs
   (section 8 Participles, section 8.1 Past participles: Past passive participles by adding suffix -ta or -na to the root of a verb, whereas past active participle by adding suffix -vant to the verb root)


(g) "And in a 14th-century painting called 'Diamond Realm Mandala,' we see a version of the heaven these beings call home."
(i) Vajradhatu (Diamond Realm) Mandala. Central Tibet; 14th century. The Met, undated.
https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/42605
(ii) Diamond Realm  金剛界
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diamond_Realm
("Skt. वज्रधातु vajradhātu * * * The Diamond Realm Mandala is based on an esoteric Buddhist sutra called the Vajrasekhara Sutra [金剛頂経]")


(h) painting captions:
(i) Hevajra  喜金剛/ 呼金剛
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hevajra
(ii)
(A) The last photo appears online only but not in print, and has an online caption. The rest have print captions (which differ from the online captions).
(B) This last photo is a mere close-up view of
Mandala of Jnanadakini. Tibet; late 14th century. The Met, undated.
https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/37802

Jñānaḍākinī  ज्ञानडाकिनी -- or Jñāna ḍākinī -- is a Mayahana (blue) goddess with three faces and six arms.

作者: choi    时间: 7 天前
本帖最后由 choi 于 12-30-2024 13:12 编辑

-----------------NYT
The Metropolitan Museum of Art is, in these darkest days of midwinter, one of the city’s spiritual hot spots, thanks to the harmonic convergence of two outstanding and very different exhibitions, both closing soon.

On a visit to the treasure-chest display called “Siena: The Rise of Painting, 1300-1350,” a survey of religious art from one of Italy’s major alt-Renaissance art capitals, you’ll find yourself wandering hushed paths among grave-faced saints — ordinary people stunned into wisdom by grace.

“Siena” has been pulling in a lot of foot traffic since it opened, but another show of comparable size and beauty, “Mandalas: Mapping the Buddhist Art of Tibet,” seems to be less traveled. Celestials are gathered in force here, too. But their vibe is different. They encircle you, as if alert to your attention. They smile and snarl, boogie and plié, all against jewel-bright geometric designs that pulse with a dance-floor beat.

Mandalas — the word has roots in a Sanskrit word for “round” or “surround” — come in many forms, the most common being paintings. Some 50 examples, large and small, most from the 11th to the 15th centuries, make up the bulk of this show organized by Kurt Behrendt, the Met’s associate curator of South Asian art.

Like most religious objects, mandalas are conceived to be spiritually functional, though judging by descriptions in the exhibition catalog, their function seems not to be fixed. Depending on the account, painted mandalas can serve as GPS-style guides to the cosmos; as attention-sharpening aids to meditation; and as learner’s manuals in the ways and means of personal salvation as prescribed by Buddhist disciplines.

Visually, they also have something of the character of shrines. The image in a classic mandala painting is based on a kind of architectural design: a central circular or squared shape inside a larger squared shape with doorlike openings on all four sides. You can imagine this as a diagram of a temple, or palace, or fortress.

Not coincidentally, the Met’s Lehman Wing, where the show is installed, roughly conforms to this model: It’s shaped like an angled sphere set within the four-square monument that is the Met. As you do in a Buddhist temple or with a stupa, you circumambulate it, ending where you began.

And it’s the image set at the center of the mandala structure that gives the design power. Here you find the personage — divine, human or some combination of those — to whom the work is dedicated. One of the show’s earliest large-scale works, of the kind called a thangka painting in Tibet, is a portrait of the Indian monk Atisha (A.D. 982 to A.D. 1054), who was instrumental in introducing later schools of Buddhism — Mahayana, Vajrayana — to Tibet. With his peaked cap and pudding of a face, he looks adorably babyish. But his gilt-painted skin and henna-stained hands let you know that spiritually he is an extra-special being.

Extra special too was a class of wild-and-crazy characters known as mahasiddhas (or “great adepts”). They practiced tantric Buddhism, an offshoot of Vajrayana, which espoused a counterintuitive path to salvation. To achieve it — right now, in this life, not after a string of stressful rebirths — you had to undergo a kind of moral shock therapy, which consisted of doing things you weren’t, socially speaking, supposed to do: spend your time getting high, having sex, and living rough in the streets.

The thinking was that by pushing the ethical envelope, you turned ordinary notions of badness and goodness inside out, and moved beyond them to a different, realer, nonbinary plane. In the process, you made your soul whole and, if you were lucky, gained superhuman power.

A mahasiddha named Virupa did, and in a large 13th-century thangka we see him showing it off. One day when he was drinking himself sodden in a bar, a server approached and demanded that he pay his tab by sundown, closing time. “No problem,” Virupa said, as he reached skyward, froze the sun in its path and kept guzzling. In the painting we see the miracle in action, and we also see that he’s not alone. Around him, dense as a swarm of tiny insects, float tiny images of fellow adepts engaged in all manner of outré shenanigans.

In the quest of for [sic; quest as a noun is followed by 'for something' or 'to do something'] self-liberation, the hardest habit to break is the fear of death. Tantric Buddhism understood this, and reminders of mortality abound in its art, in images of skeletons and corpses, and in portraits of deities associated with death. Some of these beings are monstrous, dreadful to contemplate. But, again with contrarian logic, their dreadfulness is deceptive: Horror, it turns out, can be healthy.

It is so in the case of a carved wood sculpture of the apoplectically fierce-looking Yama Dharmaraja. Squat and scowling, he wears a crown of human skulls and a belt of severed heads, and has incisors as sharp as sabers. Yet he is revered as a protective presence, an action hero. His job is to oversee the mechanics of mortality (who dies when, and how), but also to defend and promote the Buddhist teachings — the dharma — that help us deal with our fear of death.

If some guardians win through intimidation, others gain power from sheer inner and outer beauty, and the Met show has several of these. One is the savior goddess Tara, as seen in a 14th-century gilt copper sculpture from Nepal. With her lithe figure and wholesome blondness, she is a Himalayan Taylor Swift, and has an avid devotional fan base to prove it. Another is the shape-shifting, multitasking bodhisattva named Avalokiteshvara. Depicted as having, in one incarnation, dozens of arms and open-palmed hands, he is an icon of generosity.

And in a 14th-century painting called “Diamond Realm Mandala,” we see a version of the heaven these beings call home. Sometimes referred to as the Pure Land, it’s imagined here as a many-tiered hall, rigorously linear in its design, sensuous in its glowing-ember colors.

It is filled with hundreds of minute figures — human, divine, everything in between — most at quiet attention (the saints of Siena would feel comfortable here), as if gathered for a stadium-scale yoga class. And embedded at the very center, small and pale as a seed pearl, is the Buddha, around whom everything turns.

By contrast with this vision of a meditational paradise, the show’s largest mandala, installed in the Lehman Wing’s skylit central atrium, is a walk-in image of an Impure Land, our 21st-century world. Titled “Biography of a Thought” and composed of four multipanel paintings and a set of handwoven carpets, the piece was created, on commission from the Met, by Tenzing Rigdol, an American artist born to Tibetan refugee parents in Nepal.

Like its historical predecessors, this mandala is a cosmic chart, but one of a cosmos in distress. Traditional Tibetan motifs of clouds and waves are here peppered with industrial spills and smokestacks. Old-style bodhisattvas share space with contemporary political martyrs and whistle-blowers.

You can read the paintings as evolving, thematically, from stillness to clamor, peace to violence. But in their circularity, they can also be read in the other direction. On the cusp of a year that promises — threatens? — enormous change, their suggestion that no direction is fixed is worth heeding, and that vigilance, guided by grace, works.


```````
Somehow the caption of the third photo from the bottom (Yama) can not be incorporated, Here it is: "A circa-19th century sculpture of Yama Dharmaraja, the god of death."


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