Iconography[edit] Emptiness[edit] In the early traditions of Buddhism, depictions of Gautama Buddha were neither iconic nor aniconic but depictions of empty space and absence: petrosomatoglyphs (Images of a part of the body carved in rock), for example.[20] Sky-blue[edit] Thondup & Talbott identify Dharmakaya with the naked (sky-clad; Sanskrit: Digāmbara), unornamented, sky-blue Samantabhadra: In Nyingma icons, Dharmakāya is symbolized by a naked, sky-coloured (light blue) male and female Buddha in union [Kāmamudrā], called Samantabhadra [and Samantabhadrī].[5][a] Fremantle states: Space is simultaneously the first and the last of the great elements. It is the origin and precondition of the other four, and it is also their culmination... The Sanskrit word for space is the same as for the sky: akasha, which means shining and clear. What is it that we call the sky? It marks the boundary of our vision, the limit our sight can reach. If we could see more clearly, the sky would extend infinitely into outer space. The sky is an imaginary boundary set by the limitations of our senses, and also by the limitations of our mind, since we find it almost impossible to imagine a totally limitless [U]niverse. Space is the dimension in which everything exists. It is all-encompassing, all-pervading, and boundless. It is synonymous with emptiness: that emptiness which is simultaneously fullness.[21] The colour blue is an iconographic polysemic rendering of the mahābhūta element of the pure light of space (Sanskrit: ākāśa).[22] The conceptually bridging and building poetic device of analogy, as an exemplar where Dharmakaya is evocatively likened to sky and space, is a persistent and pervasive visual metaphor throughout the early Dzogchen and Nyingma literature and functions as a linkage and conduit between the conceptual and conceivable and the ineffable and inconceivable (Sanskrit: acintya). It is particularly referred to by the terma Gongpa Zangtel [b], a terma cycle revealed by Rigdzin Gödem (1337–1408) and part of the Nyingma Northern Treasures (Wylie: byang gter).[23] Mirror[edit] Sawyer conveys the importance of mirror iconography to Dharmakaya: The looking glass/mirror (T. me-long, Skt. adarsa), which represents the dharmakaya or Truth Body, having the aspects of purity (a mirror is clear of pollution) and wisdom (a mirror reflects all phenomena without distinction).[24]
Posted on: Tue, 20 Jan 2015 23:43:13 +0000
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