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You are here: Home / Archives for devotional practice

Object Lessons: The Television Buddha

August 15, 2012 by Iskra 1 Comment

Television_Buddha_Digital_Collage
The Television Buddha © Iskra Johnson

The Black Buddha, otherwise known as the “television Buddha” sat for years on my step-grandmother’s TV, his head unironically posed between two silver antennae. Even as a child who had not yet been taught the niceties of good taste I could tell that this statue, although hollow like my milk chocolate Easter bunny, was a Prince among objects. Where the black paint had rubbed away copper glinted. His robes had the sharp cast and sheen only found in metal, and when I picked him up and set him down I could tell he belonged to a different family of dolls.

At some point in my late teens, after reading a book or two by Alan Watts and becoming instantly hip and knowing, which I eagerly confused with being enlightened, it occurred to me that this object belonged in my life. Did I steal it? Did I stand in front of the television as though mesmerized by the cheap print of VanGogh sunflowers and off-handedly tuck the Buddha into my coat? I have a vague memory of light on a dusty window, of the pine tree outside, of family noise and clatter and a moment of rationalization. I hope I asked.

This Buddha has gone with me to every room I have lived in, presided over my inkstone and rice paper and the copying of sutras and 4 AM yoga sessions and detours into Gurdjieff, Guru Mai, and Yogananda. He has never gained or lost weight, or criticized me for being delusional, or asked for water, or offered a word of advice. For years at a time I have not actually looked at him; I’ve even lost him on occasion– buried in a box under the bed. Then I will find him and the fact of him starts all over again. The Buddha is a resonant object, and my mind changes when I look at him.

I puzzle over this quite a bit. What is this alchemy of the object? The historical and real person of Siddhartha, who became the Buddha, never asked to be made into a figurine. In fact the Buddha himself discouraged this as dangerous close-cousin to the worship of idols. Only the image of his footsteps was allowed or perhaps the trace of a wave on the shore, or a hand.  Yet today I doubt that any Buddhist anywhere meditates without some image in their mind of –not the breathing, sweating actual human being — but the statue.  Leave it to the Greeks to ruin a good thing, the void and the imagination, and to supplant it with idealized form. And now you can buy a guy in a robe with snails on his head anywhere, online next to blinking ads for a flat belly, or in an import store or from a catalogue full of clocks that wake you up with the sound of the ocean.

Through hundreds of years and thousands of places of manufacture, the significant details of the sitting Buddha rarely change. The graceful sloping of the shoulders, the relaxed ease and the simultaneous sense of absolute focus, the circuit of small spheres along the head. And form is important. The shape of the saints is common, but it is not ordinary. The power of shape is a mystery, devotional practice equally so.

Buddha_Garden_Statue
The Standard Concrete Garden Buddha

I have a second Buddha, a pale gray version mass produced and bought at a nursery twenty years ago. He has sat long enough in my garden to acquire the iridescent sheen of actual snails across his knees. Together both statues, indoor and outdoor, do a fine job of gentle reproach as I plunder time and waste it in mindless daily orbit. You would think two would be enough. However, I was seized this spring with a sudden overwhelming desire for a new Buddha, something life-size. I became completely obsessed with the idea that a statue was waiting for me and I had to find it right now. So abandoning my other obligations for a day I scoured every Asian import store in the city. The closest I came to my imagined find was a graceful, stupefyingly beautiful Thai god (god of what, I’m not sure) made of fragile wood and $15,000.87 out of my price range. As I started to leave the shop, my obsession defeated, I noticed the chairs. Simple, magnetically so, projecting a deadpan stoic humor and covered with the patina of decades in an outdoor cinema. If one wanted a reminder to “sit” what could be more potent than a chair, after all? I sat. In spite of the barracks-style severity the chair was surprisingly comfortable. And you can bargain for chairs, although you would never bargain for a Buddha.

The-Sitting-Chair
The Sitting Chair © Iskra Johnson

This is my new garden statue, for now. It lives in the bamboo reminding me to be still, to just sit.

__________________________________________

This is the first in an upcoming series of essays on Buddhist iconography in art and daily life. I will be featuring interviews with artists who work in a variety of contemplative paths, ranging from traditional devotional art to contemporary improvisations, in media ranging from painting and drawing to sculpture, music and video. If you are interested in the subject of the object as a source of contemplation you may want to visit the section of my blog that focuses on response to the book “A History of the World in 100 Objects.”

Filed Under: Meditation & Buddhism, Object Lessons: Essays and images inspired by "A History of the World in 100 Objects.", The Garden, The Spiritual in Art Tagged With: Buddha statues, devotional practice, devotional statues, objects of meditation, the Black Buddha, The Television Buddha

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Study of place, Volunteer Park Conservatory. I sta Study of place, Volunteer Park Conservatory. I start my morning pages with barely formed questions: 

What is a dream? Is a glass house safe or waiting to be broken? What is the effect of layering and repetition, a note repeated more and more softly without elaboration?
I am getting ready to start a new photographic-bas I am getting ready to start a new photographic-based series that I’ll be working on for the next six months. A friend here on Instagram gave me these praying hands years and years ago. They are quietly gaudy, and awful and simultaneously completely wonderful. I see them every day when I wake up in a house that I will confess is filled with devotional objects. This image is composed of two photographs, the sculpture and a street kiosk. When I walk down the streets, I cannot resist documenting kiosks, particularly when they are empty. The shredded strange paint residues and the battered metal frames are just waiting to be re-purposed as though the entire street was my personal goodwill junk department. Or you could call it a library. My cross training for the series is reading Virginia Woolfs stream of consciousness, novel, Mrs. Dalloway. Virginia Woolf’s writing gives an artist permission to own their interior world. Of course, letting the exterior world in on the secret can be quite a task. That is, what studio time is for…
I am thankful today for the symmetries of friendsh I am thankful today for the symmetries of friendship, even when they are asymmetric; for the guidance of those in the temple, who have practiced for years and send us their notes and their breathing lessons; thankful for the leaf that my friend saved for me of all the leaves in her neighborhood and thankful to the man who came yesterday when my back had laid me flat to sweep and to blow, as he noted in his documentation, 95% of the leaves in my garden, into piles then compressed with military precision into small liftable bundles stacked like muffins under the eaves. Now we can look out at the spare empty spaces. Feel the freedom of silence and space between branches. Rest, as growth goes quiet and invisible in the best growing season of the year.

May your Thanksgiving be bright✨
Artist Reception at SAM Gallery tomorrow, Seattle Artist Reception at SAM Gallery tomorrow, Seattle Art Museum First Avenue level, 2-4! Hope to see you there for our group show celebrating 50 years(!) This piece is called Water Kimono, a reverie on the ever-changing patterns of light on water.
My Narnia My Narnia
Last night I tried to get through more than 20 min Last night I tried to get through more than 20 minutes of the Golden Bachelor. It was Pickleball-date afternoon. The Golden Bachelor, truly a lovely man to observe and listen to under normal circumstances delivered this line: “Pickleball is a regular part of my life. Any woman who is going to share my life must also share Pickleball.” 

God help us. I’ve never been able to hit a ball with a paddle or a sock or a bat or anything else. Combat sports, like music, are abstract. No matter how much I pre-visualize the zen moment, the ball somehow remains in the air unrelated to my weapon of choice. I want to see the next Golden Bachelor rewritten for painters. “He said, fingering the smear of cadmium on his eyebrow, “Painting is a very big part of my life, and any woman who marries me is going to have to live with Painting.” Will he also say “I hope she paints too?” And we’ll have a full time maid and cook? Or will he say “She must be able to bring me my pipe and my slipper at the end of the day. And take the dogs for long walks alone while I try to decide the color of the sky?”

Feel free to write the script below.

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