A Religion of Images

After the pagoda, it was the depth of the temple grounds that struck me. Temple after temple. Courtyard after courtyard. Prayer after prayer.

Another level. Incense smoke blows through the cool March morning. Murmurs of monks chanting and patrons praying sweep over a background cars and trains bustling in the city beyond the temple walls.

The builders of constructed the temple to worship Buddha. In terms of religious architecture, I found it inspired. Their design emanated balance, from the size of the individual buildings to their layout on the overall grid of the walled area. No building to large or small, residential long houses on the sides with central temples in a string of courtyards. Each step into the grounds felt like one step closer to God. The final temple brought a sense of completion and even reverence. As if some sort of spiritual journey or purification right had just been completed.

What I didn’t expect, however, was the extravagance. When one studies the central tenets of Buddhism and the hagiography of Gautama Buddha, one would easily suspect that it is a simple religion practiced quietly by Buddha’s devotees (hmmm…on thought of this, my recent reading of the Gospel of Mark reminds me that one might believe that the followers of Jesus would also practice their faith with a simplicity and humility that would belie the excesses of some churches and audacious spectacles of some church services.)*. What I experienced in the temples was both astounding and ambitious.

I’ve been in a lot Buddhist temples, but none matched this one. Aside from the fairly common image of a giant Buddha, this one had many. So many. There are traditionally 18 images of Buddha. Some of those were exalted in the temple to heights of 20 feet. Another temple had human sized images of all 18 times two – for different artists interpretations. The first temple had images of the 4 Gods from the North, South, East and West. Further on I saw a room dedicated to a statue of the Buddha with 1,000 hands of service. Another with the hundred faces of Buddha. And on it seemed to go, with each new room and building a new house of imagery in honor of the Buddha.

In a lovely wrinkle, I went to the Shanghai Museum later in the day. The first turn I took in the massive collection of historical Chinese treasures was into the 1st floor sculpture exhibit. In the display I found sculptures dating back over 2,000 years. A little discombobulated, I took the wrong entrance to the exhibit and started marching back through time. The common media of bronze, stone and ceramic all took shape in a front of me. About halfway through (almost 1,000 years back in time), I started to notice that most of the sculpture was religious in nature. The Buddha and boddhisatvas were the primary subjects of most of the art.

The observation that struck me the most was the incredible resemblance to ancient Indian art. Walking backwards through the chronological exhibit, the connection seemed only to get stronger. By the end, I felt that I may as well have been in an Indian collection. The lines of the sculptures, the clothes, the features on the face. Not identical, but an obvious connection. And why not, the Buddha’s message emerged from India and his devotees brought it to many points North and East, including Tibet, Eastern China, South East Asia and even Japan.

By the end of the exhibit, I got my lesson. Yes, Buddhist devotees had come through China with the message of Buddha. They used images to help explain their ideas to the people they met on the way. In response to this method, Buddhism had a nickname in Chinese for many years as “The Religion of Images”.

Icons and imagery have always been important to religion. Still, I wonder what Buddha would say if he walked into that temple. Or Jesus in Il Basillico di San Pietro.
*On further thought, I wanted to say that I believe firstly in each individual’s ability to experience God as a natural part of being human. The expression of that experience (whether pretentious or audacious – whether I agree with it or like it), I can appreciate as that individual’s understanding of how to express themselves as an individual in relationship with God.