Word: avalokiteshvara
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...souls are shown beside the Buddha. Among the gallery's most glorious artifacts are depictions of bodhisattvas - those who deliberately postpone their passage to nirvana, Buddhists believe, in order to help others along the eightfold path. In the 14th century, metalworkers from Nepal's Kathmandu Valley crafted the Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara, a manifestation of the Buddhist lord of compassion, in gilded copper and precious-stone inlay. An androgynous-looking deity with wide hips and sensuous form (in Chinese tradition, Avalokiteshvara or Guan Yin is female, in others male), Avalokiteshvara's serene face projects the harmony to which all Buddhists aspire...
John Clarke, the gallery's principal curator, says that Avalokiteshvara is sometimes depicted holding a blooming lotus - a symbol of spiritual purity. "It comes up from the mud, flowers, and remains untouched by the dirt that surrounded it," he says. You could say the same thing for the wonderful richness of Buddhist art. See www.vam.ac.uk for more...
Starvation and Sterilization. Most of Tibet's 3,000 monasteries have been destroyed or converted into barracks and their priceless art treasures carted off to China. Not long ago a rampaging band of Red Guards smashed the sacred 1,300-year-old Avalokiteshvara, the eleven-headed image of the Buddhist god of mercy. It was cast into the gutter behind Lhasa's ravaged Tsukla-khang (Central Temple) amid burning sutras and tantric scriptures. The last 400 of Tibet's former 150,000 monks and lamas, who were kept on as window dressing, have now been stripped...
Eternal Luster. In a devout send-off for the idol of Avalokiteshvara, Lord of Compassion (see opposite page), Nepalese monks sprinkled it with holy vermilion powder and packed it in flowers before sending it off to New York. The cast bronze has swelling contours that are not obscured by excessive ornamentation, with as much easy stylization and graceful gesture as the sculpted saints of the contemporary Gothic in Europe. Avalokiteshvara has one advantage to delight a sculptor: he comes in 108 different incarnations. Nepalese sculptors were equally adept at hammering out fully rounded copper-gilt figures from inside. Fond...
Another saint whose representations far outnumber the images of Shakyamuni is Avalokiteshvara. He has developed into one of the most important divinities among northern Buddhists and is regarded as the god (or goddess) of mercy, seafarers, as the bestower of children, etc., by many millions of believing Tibetans, Chinese and Japanese...
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