Modernity offers uneasy secularists two seductive hedges: aestheticism and Buddhism. New York’s Rubin Museum yokes them together in a pictorial fantasia on the New Age-y theme of universal spirituality. No divisive truth claims mar the view from the $100 million monument to Multi-Plan founder Donald Rubin’s own purchasing power and those acquisitive cravings that Buddhist doctrine decries. But all contradictions and irreconcilable differences disperse in the solvent of art appreciation, that distinctly Western ideology at the heart of museum culture.
“Embodying the Holy: Icons in Eastern Orthodox Christianity and Tibetan Buddhism” is a visually splendid, conceptually shallow, exhibition. Organized to illustrate parallels between the two sacred traditions in function, subject matter, and story telling “strategies,” it pairs Orthodox icons with Tibetan thangkas (devotional paintings on cloth scrolls). The couplings follow a simple, thematic formula that shrinks the complexities of given symbols and the radical self-understanding that they generate. The particularity of Christianity dissolves in a superficial comparative religion jaunt.
An icon of the Christian Trinity accompanies an image of the Buddhist trinity, three divine bodies representing three aspects of buddhahood. Padmasambhava, patriarch of Tantric Buddhism, is attributed with magical powers, just like St, Nicholas the Wonderworker and St. Spyridon, a founding father of the Orthodox Church. Christ Pantocrator, born of a virgin, instituted one religion. Buddha Shakyamuni, born from a lotus, instituted another. Episodes from the life of one are as pictorially fruitful as the other. Each lays enchanted ground for what Plato called “dreams for those who are awake.”
Both traditions personify Divine Wisdom. See her on a Tibetan thangka here, and as St. Sophia on a Russian panel there. Both revere images of the Divine Feminine, synonymous with love and compassion. Christians have Mary; Buddhists have Tara, worshipped in 21 different forms—White Tara, Red Tara, Green Tara, et alia. Mary, in her multiple manifestations as Theotokos, Queen of Heaven, Our Lady of Sorrows—plus a myriad of other allegorical and devotional titles—corresponds functionally to the multifarious Tara.
A single sentence embedded in a wall text cautions viewers that the full meaning of these symbolic forms can be grasped only by believers of each tradition. One brief caveat, however, is no match for the impact of the theater of iconography. By the time contemporary viewers, accustomed to pedagogy by images, complete the tour, the inescapable impression is that Christians and Buddhists dip into the same kettle for their idea of the holy.
As an enthusiastic docent phrased it: “People are getting the spirit in all kinds of cultures.” Fair enough, but without reference to the character of the spirit in play, consumers of spirituality are helpless to distinguish one religion from another. They all say the same thing. It is a benign blur, with truth cheerfully and evenly distributed.
The single rupture in this hurrah for syncretic harmony is a vitrine displaying an enameled crucifix next to a chorten (stupa in Sanskrit). You do not have to be adept in the intricacies of Buddhist metaphysics, the presuppositions of Buddhist meditation, or its various sects to grasp the gulf between the two traditions. One careful look at the cardinal symbol of Christianity alongside that of Buddhism is enough.
Variable in size and shape, a chorten is a domed, mandala-like mound that originated in India to hold sacred remains. A charged symbol, its encompassing symmetry represents the enlightened mind of a buddha. In keeping with Donald Rubin’s expressed desire to keep scholarship from intruding on the “emotional rush ”of the visuals, the exhibition tutorial stops at that. The contents of a buddha’s mind and the nature of nirvana are left attractively vague.
While Buddhism has its deities, what the Dalai Lama calls “the God-theory” is irrelevant to the Buddhist system. Neither fear nor love of God, linchpins of Christian and rabbinic tradition, applies. There exists only an impersonal reality, the divine Whole which absorbs and extinguishes illusions of individual identity.
The ordered equilibrium of the chorten signals the Buddhist imperative to deliver oneself from the awful cycle of rebirth. It summons to nirvana: self-salvation through the dissolution of personality. Contrary to popular misconceptions, nirvana offers release into absolute nothingness. Ultimately, the shrinelet is a symbol of annihilation, of the succor of extinction. To eyes conditioned by biblical sensibilities, it is an appalling thing, ugly beyond the reach of formal concerns and the status of art.
The contorted corpus on the Russian crucifix depicts a radically different salvation story. It tells of a transcendent, personal God who assumed the clay of His own creation to ransom you and me from the death-grip of our iniquities (Sin, too, is a nonexistent concept in Buddhism.). The chasm between Buddhist conviction and biblical intuition was put succinctly by Will Herberg in Judaism and Modern Man: “In one case, salvation is from life and from the world; in the other, it is for life and for the world.” One finds its apotheosis in stupas, the other in the Cross.
The terrible love of the Cross and the detached compassion of smiling buddhas are contradictory realities. Their material symbols affirm divergent orientations. Showcased together as objets d’art—equal candidates for delectation—both are falsified. Evan Connell’s 1974 novel The Connoisseur caught the subtle deceit of free-range Western aestheticism imposed on the relics of nonwestern cultures. Connell’s aspiring connoisseur, insurance executive Muhlbach, is bored by his tour of a collector’s private museum. While the collector brags about the quality of his pieces, Muhlbach decides: “But finally, what matters is whether or not you identify with the spirit of a work.”
Those who stake their lives on the Cross can only choose against the discordant spirit of Tibetan Buddhist ritual art. Undeniably, thangkas are interesting and, yes, decorative. But that does not make them beautiful. The distinction cuts to the heart of commitments larger than formalist sympathies and superficial analogies.
Maureen Mullarkey is a painter who writes on art and culture. Her essays appear online at Studio Matters. Her other contributions to “On the Square” were a review of an exhibit on the myth of the idyllic co-existence of Christians, Jews, and Muslims in medieval Spain, The Popular Myth of Vivencia; a review of an exhibit of the devotional paintings of the nineteenth century painter James Tissot, Selected Watercolors from James Tissot’s Life of Christ; and a review of an exhibit of medieval art, Faith Behind Glass.
The exhibit Embodying the Holy: Icons in Eastern Orthodox Christianity and Tibetan Buddhism runs through March 7, 2011. The website of the Rubin Musem of Art (150 West 17th Street in New York City) can be found here and a description of the exhibit here.
Comments:
In a sense, Christianity can be seen as essentially, Easternized/asceticized or "monk"-ized Judaism. While this is quite possible, historically and geographically.
In a sense, Christianity can be seen as essentially, Easternized/asceticized or "monk"-ized Judaism. While this is quite possible, historically and geographically. "
The first point seems to me exceedingly unlikely given the geographical distance. However people did in fact travel a long way at times so you can take it or leave it as chosen.
The second part is not only "quite possible" it IS and has always been accepted as such by Christians except in obscure sects. And no that is not incompatible with anti-semitism as that was seen as a sectarian quarrel. That is, Anti-judaiism was considered no more incompatible with recognizing Jewish origins of Christianity then Anti-catholicism was incompatible with Christianity or vice-versa.
There are multiple saints of the Orthodox Church named Spyridon. None of them are a "founding father" of the Orthodox Church which was established by our Lord God and Saviour, Jesus Christ.
The misrepresentation of comparative religion as an enterprise that is inherently superficial and geared towards establishing that all religions teach the same thing is easily refuted, even by consulting the pages of First Things itself. My teacher Paul J. Griffiths (Buddhologist, comparative theologian, Warren Professor of Catholic Theology at Duke, and frequent contributor to First Things) is someone whose comparative work proceeds primarily through attention to difference rather than similarity, and is by no means intended to promote syncretism or religious indifferentism (the idea that all religions teach the same thing and/or are of equal value) but to advance the superiority of the Christian tradition. In perhaps the opposite camp, even a less apologetically-inclined comparativist such as Francis X. Clooney argues that the point of interreligious comparison is precisely to uncover differences which allow for novel readings of dissimilar texts which yield new insight when read in light of one another. Griffiths and Clooney are not anomalies - if you consult a good, recent bibliography in the fields of comparative religion or comparative theology, the majority of scholars will have methodologies which emphasize differences between religions, rather than making a dubious claim that all religions are somehow the same.
The representation of Buddhism is particularly galling - if one of my undergraduate students characterized Buddhism in the same manner, there would be some question as to whether or not they could pass their Introduction to Buddhism exam. Buddhism neither teaches nor advocates impersonality - anatman is simply the absence of a permanent essence/soul to undergird the dependently-arisen person, not the absence of personality as such. Persons are real but dependently-arisen. Nor is Nirvana the same thing as annihilation or nothingness - it is the cessation of karma and other afflicted states, not cessation as such. (Indeed, in Mahayana Buddhism the very point of attaining Nirvana is precisely to continue to be available to help other sentient beings from the superior soteriological vantage point of a Buddha - the very opposite of annihilation). Nor is the "detached compassion" of a Buddha the same thing as apathy or not really caring about people - apathy is categorized as a form of aversion (a bad state, something a Buddha by definition cannot have) by the Buddhist tradition, so if you were to attempt to understand what "detached compassion" means for Buddhists, you would be better off to think of it as detachment from manipulation or lust or what Christians call libido dominandi rather than detachment from warmth and feeling (ie, apathy). Neither are devotion to or reliance upon the help of superior beings absent in Buddhism - bhakti is as significant to Buddhism as it is to devotional Hinduism, and some forms of Buddhism such as the Japanese Pure Land tradition even warn that salvation through self-effort ("self-power") is impossible so one must trust in the merit of Amitabha Buddha ("other-power") instead. Nor is reality a "whole" into which individual persons "dissolve". And while there is no "sin" in the sense of incurring guilt through disobeying the will of a personal deity whose sovereign decision established what would be right and wrong in his universe forever, there is certainly such a thing as right and wrong - actions in conformity with the dharma lead to happiness for oneself and others and should be pursued while actions contrary to dharma lead to suffering for oneself and others and should be shunned.
"You do not have to be adept in the intricacies of Buddhist metaphysics, the presuppositions of Buddhist meditation, or its various sects to grasp the gulf between the two traditions."
No, you do not. But it would help to have at least a basic grasp of what Buddhism teaches in order to avoid blatant misrepresentation.
I should also register my deep disagreement with the aesthetic judgment of this piece. Precisely in view of Christian and Biblical sensibilities, Tibetan Buddhist art is sublime, beautiful beyond the reach of articulation. Rather than being discordant, its beauty is that of counterpoint to the Christian cantus firmus:
"Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things."
Thanks again for a great column.