Preparing for the 〈Samādhi〉 Solo Exhibition — At Work in the Kookmin University Studio (2012)

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• Text News 2012-11-16 · Hyunbul News

  Buddhist Enlightenment at Its Peak in 'Samādhi' Paintings

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  Text News 2012-11-16 · Hyunbul News

  Buddhist Enlightenment at Its Peak in 'Samādhi' Paintings

  Coverage of Kookmin University professor Shin Jang-sik's solo exhibition 〈Samādhi〉 (Nov 2012 — Nov 27, Space Sun+, Seoul). Eleven works depicting the Buddha in samādhi, drawn from the artist's pilgrimage research across India, Pakistan, Tibet's Gandharan ruins, Gyeongju, and Mt. Geumgang. The article traces how the artist's encounter with Myogilsangam relief at Mt. Geumgang led him into Buddhist imagery, and how Joseon star charts, Gyeongju Namsan pines, Dunhuang flying figures, and Yongjusa temple bells appear as backgrounds — positioning the artist as a 'practitioner on the road' in his fifties.

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  • Hyunbul News 2012-11-16 · Jeong Hye-suk
    Buddhist Enlightenment at Its Peak in 'Samādhi' Paintings ↗

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• Text Artist's Note 2012-11-15 · Shin Jang-sik

  The Mind, My Mind, Our Mind — Buddha-nature Spreading Through the Universe (2012)

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  Text Artist's Note 2012-11-15 · Shin Jang-sik

  The Mind, My Mind, Our Mind — Buddha-nature Spreading Through the Universe (2012)

  That mind was the light of the world

  The world is a life within a universe in which we live and perceive

  The world is the fruit of the time we have passed through, and our deeds

  Pratītyasamutpāda—dependent arising

  A mind that cannot be spoken of simply

  Mind

  Does the world bend to one's wishes?

  Even my own mind differs morning and evening

  And when we meet bearing spear and blade, there is only struggle

  We are the pulse of life

  To the one who taught us the beauty of life until life is spent

  I offer my thanks

  To the Buddha-nature spread throughout the universe

  In deep samādhi

  I study

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• Text Review 2012-11-15 · Choi Tae-man

  〈Pilgrim on the Road, or One Who Searches for the Path〉 — Choi Tae-man review (2012)

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  Text Review 2012-11-15 · Choi Tae-man

  〈Pilgrim on the Road, or One Who Searches for the Path〉 — Choi Tae-man review (2012)

  Seeking Samādhi (三昧)

  Having visited Inner Geumgang in 2007, Shin Jang-sik presented, alongside landscape paintings rendering the beautiful terrain of Inner Geumgang — Manpokdong, Bodeokam, Pyohunsa, and the site of Jang'ansa — the work 〈Myogilsang of Inner Geumgang〉. This Myogilsang (妙吉祥), designated by the North as National Treasure no. 102 in cultural relics, is said to have been carved by the monk Naong (懶翁), who restored Myogilsang Hermitage in the late Goryeo period. With the Buddha image alone reaching 15 meters on a cliff face 40 meters high, it is a vast work — a representative example of cliff-carved Buddha images of the Goryeo period. Because Myogilsang Hermitage once stood at the site of this cliff Buddha, the work is called Myogilsang, a name referring to Mañjuśrī Bodhisattva. Yet judging from the figure's facial features and the mudrā suggesting the welcoming gesture (來迎印), this is, evidently, an Amitābha Tathāgata.

  Even from the time of his Arirang-themed works, Shin Jang-sik had been making works that revealed Buddhist features such as the lotus and the maṇḍala (a sacred geometric diagram in Buddhist tradition); in his 2001 solo exhibition he had shown his interest in Buddhism through paper-cast sculptures of his own meditating figure. The Myogilsang must be, I think, the first time he painted a Buddha image. Yet, by drawing alongside the Buddha visitors who had come to Inner Geumgang, this work might better be read as a painting of the actual landscape that contains the Buddha rather than as the Buddha image itself taken as theme. This time, however, he has set his heart on painting Buddha images. From the right-hand attendant Bodhisattva — the smiling, childlike attendant of the Maitreya triad excavated at Samhwa-ryeong in Gyeongju — to National Treasure no. 83 (the pensive bodhisattva), the cliff-carved Bodhisattva in pensive posture at Sinseonam on Mt. Namsan in Gyeongju, the stone seated Tathāgata at Mireukgok on Mt. Namsan, as well as bodhisattva images from the Maijishan Grottoes of China and Buddha images excavated from Gandhāra sites in Pakistan — the Buddha images he has painted span varied regions and periods. Yet within his works, the principal image of the Seokguram, representative of Korean Buddhist sculpture, is not to be seen. The reason is that, concentrating on the theme of samādhi for this exhibition, he attended to Buddha images that best show the state of samādhi.

  Sammae (三昧) is a transliteration of the ancient Indian Sanskrit "samādhi," but according to its meaning it is also translated as jeong (定), simil-gyeongseong (心一境性, the one-pointedness of mind), or ilsim bulran (一心不亂, the unstirred unity of mind). It is, above all, a concept that condenses the practice of Śākyamuni; "ilche-jebeop chesyeong pyeongdeung muhuiron sammae (一切諸法體性平等無戱論三昧)" — the samādhi of the equal nature of all dharmas without idle elaboration — which Śākyamuni Buddha spoke in answer to Moonlight Boy's question in the Candrapradīpa Samādhi Sūtra (月燈三昧經), can be said to show well the realm of samādhi. Śākyamuni reached awakening through the practice of samādhi, and taught that in samādhi one can penetrate the truth that all existence is without substance and is mere phantasm.

  Even before leaving home, Gautama Bodhisattva is said to have practiced meditation. After leaving home, through Brahmin teachers such as Āḷāra Kālāma and Uddaka Rāmaputta, he reached the spheres of nothingness and neither-perception-nor-non-perception, but realized that genuine awakening could not be attained by such means; after extreme ascetic practice, he entered deep meditation beneath the Bodhi tree and at last attained the way. Thus samādhi was the path that, transcending the self, reached the realm in which all dharmas are without self (諸法無我). So Shin Jang-sik, by painting again the Buddha images of bodhisattvas and Buddhas absorbed in the deepest meditation, seeks to draw close to that realm of samādhi.

  The Wayfarer on the Path

  Once Shin Jang-sik said of himself, "My fifties in life are those of a wayfaring practitioner." For my part, I do not think he defined himself as a religious practitioner in the strict sense. This can be confirmed in his own words: "I have come to think that the way of the artist is also the way of the practitioner, and that painting too is an instrument of practice. What was I looking for, wandering East and West, past and present? If I can express even a little of that light, that would be enough. I want to sing 'the Arirang of hope' in painting." The practitioner he speaks of is, in another phrasing, "one who searches for the path."

  He has walked countless roads. Among them, the Tibet travel from Lhasa to Kathmandu, two travels to India, and in 2011 the Silk Road pilgrimage from Xi'an through the Hexi Corridor, across the Pamir highlands, and on to Gandhāra — these became occasions that more deeply etched the figure of the practitioner that already dwelt in his heart. Through these travels he met Śākyamuni, the true wayfarer on the path. Was Śākyamuni not the one who was born on the road, attained the way in the forest where the road lay, walked countless roads bringing sentient beings across in compassion, and entered nirvāṇa (liberation from the cycle of suffering in Buddhist teaching) on the road? Among the many Buddhist scriptures, the one that best shows the "wayfarer on the path" must be the chapter "Entering the Dharma Realm" (立法界品) of the Avataṃsaka Sūtra. Sudhana (善財) — the practitioner and seeker of that chapter — did not set out merely to find bodhisattvas alone, those who, seeking awakening above and saving sentient beings below, embody the vow. Among the fifty-three good friends he met were not only bodhisattvas, monks, nuns, and laywomen but also Brahmins — formerly excluded by Buddhism as outsiders — wandering ascetics, sages, gods, and worldly people such as kings, elders, doctors, ferrymen, and householders' wives; even boys and girls, and a woman known as a courtesan. Thus Buddhism teaches that one can meet countless people on the road of seeking, and that through them one can reach the way. The openness and innovativeness of Buddhism — which does not separate subject and object and seeks freedom from attachment to self (我執) and to dharma (法執) — must be the dependent arising (緣起) that led Shin Jang-sik to walk the road.

  The road Shin Jang-sik walked was the road Hyecho (慧超), who had gone from Silla to the Tang for study, walked in seeking the Dharma. Before him, Faxian (法顯) and Xuanzang (玄奘) took that road. There were also others — the Goguryeo monks Seungrang (僧朗) and Damjing (曇徵), who studied in China during the Northern and Southern Dynasties; Gyeomik (謙益) and Hyechong (慧怱) of Baekje; Ariyabalma (阿離耶跋摩) of Silla — who set out from the Korean peninsula for China. Ariyabalma, having set out from Chang'an the Tang capital, made pilgrimage to Buddhist holy sites in India and studied the Vinaya and Abhidharma at Nālandā, but did not return to Silla; he is said to have passed away at Nālandā. Today, with travel programs and developed means of transport, one need not stake one's life on the road as the seeker-monks of old; yet Shin Jang-sik, walking the very roads they had crossed, was able to meet not only Śākyamuni but also predecessors such as Kumārajīva (鳩摩羅什) and Marananta (摩羅難陀). Such experience is what led him to paint Buddha images.

  Buddha-nature Spreading Through the Universe

  Then why does he, of all things, paint Buddha images? And why is he so attached to Buddha images — already well-known cultural heritage and objects of worship? From the time the Buddha image first appeared, the norms of the "32 marks and 80 minor characteristics" were applied to emphasize the transcendence of the Buddha; these norms must be observed whenever one makes a Buddha image as an object of worship. Moreover, since the sacred features of the Buddha are not to be carved carelessly by anyone, they must be made with utmost devotion and the pure heart of a practitioner. But the Buddha images Shin Jang-sik paints are clearly not objects of worship. His painting of Buddha images is only the outward manifestation of the reverent awe (畏敬心) toward the Buddha that he, as an artist, has carried in his heart. Even so, questions remain.

  The Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra (大般涅槃經) records the answer Śākyamuni Buddha gave Ānanda, who asked at the time of his nirvāṇa how the Tathāgata's body should be tended:

  "Ānanda, do not concern yourself with the tending of the Tathāgata's body. Ānanda, devote yourselves to the root, be absorbed in the root. Do not be careless in the root; abide diligent and self-driven. Ānanda, there will be wise Kṣatriya and wise Gṛhapati who hold a pure heart for the Tathāgata, and they will tend the Tathāgata's body."

  As his end drew near, Śākyamuni, with the final teaching "Monks, all formed things are subject to decay; do not be careless, strive on diligently," entered parinirvāṇa. When at last Śākyamuni Buddha entered nirvāṇa beneath the two sala trees at Kuśinagara, his disciples adorned the body with flowers and tended it for a week. Disciples who awaited Mahākāśyapa — who, hearing of the Buddha's nirvāṇa, was hastening to the funeral — after a week moved the body to the Makutabandhana temple. When Mahākāśyapa arrived, under his direction the disciples cremated the Buddha's body according to the traditional Indian funeral rites and gathered the relics. Despite the final teaching not to grieve at Śākyamuni's nirvāṇa nor to concern oneself with the tending of the body, eight kings, elders, and disciples who came from each region took the relics, each erected a stupa, and enshrined the relics within. At this very moment, Buddhist art too can be said to have begun.

  Later, Aśoka of the Maurya dynasty is said to have gathered the relics of Śākyamuni Buddha again and erected eighty-four thousand stupas throughout India. After a period of "aniconism," in which the Buddha's presence was symbolized by the wheel of dharma (法輪), the Buddha's footprint, the Bodhi tree, and the like — without a figural Buddha image — Buddha images in human form appeared around the first century in the Mathurā and Gandhāra regions, during the Kushan rule of India.

  Gandhāran style, influenced by Hellenism, Rome, and Persia, and Mathurā style, formed within the Indian sculptural tradition, each developed their own idioms; and at the Gupta dynasty — which, after the fall of the Kushan dynasty established by a foreign people, was re-established by Indians — they entered another era of remarkable flourishing. In the museum at Sarnath, where Śākyamuni delivered his first sermon at the request of Brahmā after his awakening, there are beautiful and refined Sarnath-style Buddha images of the fifth-century Gupta era. By that time Buddhism had already, through Aśoka's vigorous missionary policy, spread throughout India and on into Sri Lanka, the southern and western Asian regions, and the Hellenistic realms. The Kushans, who had invaded India from the region of present-day Afghanistan, converted to Buddhism and held it with particular devotion; under King Kaniṣka's grand patronage and missionary policies, it was transmitted along the Silk Road to China.

  According to record, our country received Buddhism in the 2nd year of King Sosurim of Goguryeo (372), when Fu Jian (苻堅), king of Former Qin (前秦), sent the monk Sundo (順道) with an envoy. Since Sundo is said to have brought Buddhist scriptures and Buddha images with him, one can say that Buddha images were transmitted to our country through him. Of course, the records in the Samguk Sagi or the Samguk Yusa describe the formal acceptance by the ruling class, so Buddhism must have been received earlier among the common people. In the 1st year of King Chimnyu (384), the Indian monk Marananta came through Eastern Jin (東晉) to Baekje and transmitted Buddhism. Silla, too, after the painful martyrdom of Ichadon under King Beopheung, received Buddhism with difficulty; yet as we can confirm from the record that "in Seorabeol, monasteries and pagodas were as numerous as wild geese," it quickly established Buddhism as a state religion and built great temples such as Hwangnyongsa and Bunhwangsa. Through the Goryeo period, our country took Buddhism not only as faith but as governing ideology, building countless monasteries, Buddha images, pagodas; transcribing sutras and painting Buddhist images.

  Such cultural heritage appears in Shin Jang-sik's works as motif and theme. Having traveled through Lumbinī, Mt. Pragbodhi, Bodh Gayā, Sarnath, Rājagṛha, Jetavana, Veṇuvana, Vaiśālī, Kuśinagara, Nālandā, together with Sāñcī Stupa, Ajantā, and Ellorā — and having encountered Buddha images at museums across many regions — he renders, within his paintings, not only Korean Buddha images but also images of the Gandhāran and Mathurān styles, and from the Gupta-era Sarnath style, those in the realm of samādhi.

  But what meaning would there be if he merely reproduced these Buddha images? What would distinguish such imitation of what already exists from the painter — as Plato spoke of in the Republic — who imitates the phenomenal world, itself an imitation of the Idea? To resolve this problem, he imagined the Buddha-nature spreading through the universe. Consider, as one example, a work in which behind a Gandhāran Buddha holding the dharmacakra-mudrā — the gesture of the first sermon at Sarnath — yet showing the features of deep samādhi, he renders "Cheonsang Yeolcha Bunyajido Gakseok" (the early-Joseon engraved chart of the heavens, 天象列次分野之圖刻石), and to either side places the celestial maidens (bicheonsang) rising with fluttering robes from the Yongjusa (龍珠寺) Brahma-bell — a configuration in which the two flanking celestial maidens transmit Śākyamuni's first sermon (the words of compassion) into cosmic space; this can be called a visual embodiment of the Ubiquitous.

  This Buddha-nature spreading through the universe rises still more dramatically in works that place the Buddha's head within an oval nebula, or in triptych-form works. A work in which the surface is divided into three — on either side, the lithe celestial maidens of the Sacred Bell of King Seongdeok, and at the center, half-length, National Treasure no. 83 (the pensive bodhisattva) with a subtle smile holding the realm of liberation beyond all thought and the wish to save sentient beings — shows a structure in which the bodhisattva suddenly emerges from a deep abyss like a black hole in cosmic space stitched with countless constellations.

  Pictorial considerations also occupy an important place alongside such meaning-bestowing. To bring out the actuality of the Buddha images he has himself seen, he neither alters nor distorts the form; as seen in his painting of the attendant bodhisattva of the Maitreya triad at Samhwa-ryeong, he applies paper pulp to the surface to evoke the texture of granite and renders the shadows. The granite texture of the Buddha images is thus emphasized, while the celestial maidens are rendered in planar, linear fashion, and the candles cut from prints are pasted on — embodying a surface in which reproduction and expression, the three-dimensional and the planar, the figurative and the abstract coexist in harmony. The same can be confirmed in the work where Buddha images of the Northern Wei period from the Maijishan Grottoes are placed facing one another. As if a decalcomania, this work — projecting each other's forms — not only evokes in its content the Buddhist thought of non-duality (不二) but achieves, through the sense of space on the surface, a visual effect of forms dissolving into cosmic space. Toward the center of the surface the forms vanish, and one feels an audiovisual space in which faint, abstract waves of light pulse and are drawn inward, or waves of sound resonate outward.

  From Sarnath to Mt. Namsan, and Back to Oneself

  As he wished to be a wayfaring practitioner, Shin Jang-sik loves to travel. For him, travel is not merely a pause to escape the chains of daily life and recharge, nor a reward bestowed upon a hard-working self. He is one who searches for something, and when the object appears, he sets out on the road in order to remain absorbed in it. At Sāñcī Stupa he discovered the Śākyamuni Buddha of the aniconic age, expressed through the Bodhi tree, the footprint, the dharma wheel; at the Taxila Museum he found the Gandhāran Buddha images where Hellenism and Roman art met Buddhism. At the Sarnath Museum he encountered masterpieces of fifth-century Indian Buddhist art; crossing the Taklamakan desert he met the asceticism of countless seeker-monks who had died on that road. When he saw a cliff-carved Buddha at Gilgit in the Gandhāra region — where Taliban incursions might occur — what was he thinking? The travel we made together was by no means an ascetic ordeal. It might rather have been a happy time that fulfilled the romantic fantasy of the Silk Road.

  After returning from the Silk Road, he went alone to Mt. Namsan in Gyeongju. Attending to the fact that reliefs such as the Seosan Maaebul appear different according to the amount and angle of light, he sometimes visited at different times of day. And not only Buddha images. To find the source-evidence (典據) for his work, he diligently studies Buddhism, so that recently the topics of his conversation are filled with Buddhism. It was the same when he painted Mt. Geumgang before tours to it had opened. He collected, surveyed, and studied an abundance of materials related to Mt. Geumgang and reconstructed it on the surface. After the opening of Mt. Geumgang, this passion, through countless field surveys, also became the driving force that made him "the Mt. Geumgang painter."

  Excessive passion can become attachment, but his painting of Buddha images, too, must be driven by some kind of vow-force (wonryeok, 願力). What might it be? He is not, drawn by religious faith, painting the Buddha as an object of worship. Perhaps he has taken the Buddha image as a means not for the image itself but in order to know the deep thought that dwells within it. Just as Descartes (René Descartes) did, he is aware of himself as one anguished over what he must search for. Because such a desire to know operates as a motive, his work carries an intuitive and at the same time analytic character.

  From Arirang to Mt. Geumgang to the Buddha images, there is no conflict or opposition in Shin Jang-sik's paintings. What he is searching for, as he himself has said, is "the Arirang of hope." Is not art just such a thing — searching for a light that cannot be declared in clear terms but rises faintly into view? To reach it, one may see the object as it is (vipassanā), may concentrate (sati), and may even enter a state of supreme non-conceptual stillness, having released even that concentration (samādhi). The way of art and the way of dhyāna are different. That difference is what makes art rich, but in seeking, beyond the suffering of reality, that which is ultimate, there is something they share. Prajñāpāramitā belongs not to Buddhism alone — is it not also needed in art?

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