Symbolizing the Awakened Heart: The Practice of Buddhist Visual Literacy

About This Book

The idea of this book is twofold: to lay the found-ations for understanding and recognizing basic symbols of enlightenment and awakening in a Buddhist context. And, how understanding and recognizing those are processes of awakening in and of themselves.

After an introduction to the topic of Buddhist visual literacy, in Part One you will find the core skills necessary for reading art in a Buddhist way: the inevitability of symbolism, its range of use and the mechanics of it in a Buddhist context. Part Two is a visual primer for ident-ifying meaning in the symbolic elements of Buddhist art.

Topics are connected in a spiral and sequential way, with key ideas being presented and refined as they are re-visited and applied throughout the book.

Part Three brings everything together in hands-on application. This final layer of method guides you in experimenting, sleuthing, and applying these skills to a series of different works.

This is Interactive

Necessarily, this book invites you to interact. Without personally experienced exploration the insight and inspiration that emerges from a good Buddhist art-based reading encounter, one that sparkles with awakening, can be elusive. So, topic specific experiments, investigations, and questions appear throughout. The joy of discovery lies in engagement, as such, please allow yourself the time and space to try them out. Many are short and can be done at home or taken into the field-for instance, to a museum, a bus stop, on a walk, while shopping, into any situation pretty much-and are more revealing when repeated over time.

Contents Guide

Introduction: Creativity and the Arts provides the historical and traditional landscape for Buddhist visual literacy, symbolism, and the art of creativity as a means to connect to awakening. It is grounded in the topics associated with Tibetan Buddhist higher education.

Based in that grounding, Part One: The Power to Illuminate focuses on the how of art having the power to illuminate. It outlines the mechanics of meaning based on symbols.

Part Two: What Does Awake Look Like? explores: What does awake look like and how is it portrayed? Key episodes in Shakyamuni Buddha's life are presented to reveal the vocabulary of its symbolism, a necessity for reading Buddhist art.

Part Three: Sleuthing for Awakening demonstrates how the materials from Parts One and Two work together through doing. Guided explorations and experiments bring the skills and tools of Buddhist visual literacy to bear on reading and investigating twelve different artworks.

Resources provides supports for this material. Valuable context for the life of the Buddha and Buddhism is given by the contemporary teacher, artist, and writer, Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche. In addition, a topical bibliography is offered as an assist to further exploration and research into the ideas and themes of this book.

By the end of this adventure I hope you will have a good sense of Buddhist visual literacy in action. And, that insightful experiences and playful discoveries abound along the way-within this book and without.