by Sydney Norton, Curatorial Assistant

Four Mandalas (dkyil‘khor), 18th century; Tibet; thangka; colors on cotton, mounted on silk brocade; 31¾ x 24 in.; The Nelson Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri, Bequest of Joseph H. Heil, 74‑36 /16

Our next Frame of Reference is tomorrow at 2pm. Please stop by the Pulitzer to listen to Miao Han, director of the Fo Guang Shan St. Louis Buddhist Center, talk about Standing Buddha Amitābha (Amida Nyōrai) in the entrance gallery. The group will then move to the lower gallery to hear Dr. Qing Chang, Asian art professor from University of Missouri St. Louis, share his insights about Guardian King of the North (Vaiśravana).

Last month I had the opportunity to participate in a group of stimulating and varied Frame of Reference talks that addressed the theme of healing in Buddhist art. Neuroscientist Ben Kolber connected Green Tārā’s seated pose of royal ease to his own work as a pain researcher. He identified this pose, known in Sanskrit as lalātisana, as a relaxation posture, noting that the experience of pain is markedly less acute among people who meditate. John Mueller, professor of architecture at Washington University, shared his fascination with Monk Ananda’s ever-so-slight smile, noting that a comparable smile can be found on several Buddha and Bodhisattva figures throughout the exhibition. See, for example, Standing Buddha Śākyamuni (Shijiamouni) and Bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara (Karunamaya). According to Professor Mueller, the gentle smile conveys the peaceful contentment that enlightened beings experience through nonjudgmental acceptance and appreciation of their surroundings.

My presentation focused on the healing aspects of Four Mandalas, an eighteenth century Tibetan thangka, or portable icon, from central Tibet. A mandala is a diagram used as a guide to meditation. It represents the dynamic relationship between the Buddhist practitioner and the cosmos of the mandala’s central deity. As you move mentally through the various sections of the diagram, your consciousness dissolves and you temporarily become one with the deity’s cosmos.

Positioned at the center of Four Mandalas is Amitāyus, the Buddha of health and longevity. Clad in red, he sits crosslegged in the lotus posture. His hands, which rest on his lap in the dhyāna (meditation) mudra, hold his special emblem, the ambrosia vase. Many Tibetan Buddhists commission images of Amitāyus to gain karmic merit and to assure health and long life for themselves or someone close to them.

You’ll notice that Amitāyus is seated on an elaborate lotus throne which grows directly out of a body of water. The lotus functions as an important symbol in Buddhism and it appears on numerous artworks in this exhibition. Sprouting from the mud, this flower grows up through the water’s surface only to blossom in the sunlight. Buddhists regard this process as an ideal metaphor for the human spirit, which can transcend duhkha—the negative circumstances of daily life—through meditation and study of the dharma.

The four mandalas represented here are “palace-architecture” diagrams and they float against a blue-black background of mountain peaks and clouds. Each mandala is enclosed by a series of rings. The outermost ring is the belt of fire, signifying the knowledge essential for bursting the bonds of ignorance. The second ring is the narrow black “vajra” belt, which represents enlightenment, the threshold of the spiritual world. The third ring is the circle of eight cemeteries and features eight ascetics meditating in scenes of nature. The innermost ring depicts a circle of pink and red lotus leaves, indicating that the practitioner has left the world of senses and has entered the spiritual realm.*

After making your way inward through the four rings, you’ll notice a structure that resembles a town square. There are four T-shaped doors, each of which is located at one of the four cardinal directions. Each door is flanked by different colored bands that connect all of the doors. These bands represent the walls of the emperor’s city. Arches rise above the doors and encircle a series of stories that are supported by columns. All of these architectural elements represent different aspects of Buddhist teaching, upon which the practitioner meditates while moving through the diagram.

At the center of the upper left mandala you’ll see a dancing blue figure with four arms. She wears a crown of skulls and holds a skull cup in her lower left hand. This semi-wrathful deity is a dākīni, an accomplished yoginī, who acts as a guiding intermediary for practitioners during meditation.

As your meditation comes to an end, you’ll move outward from the center, through the four exterior rings, and back into the material world.

*The source for my discussion of the iconography of Four Mandalas is an unpublished essay titled “Amitāyus,” written by Dorothy F. Fickle for The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in 1968.