LIFE AS MYTH
JOURNAL
JOURNAL 2024
Of wonder
WINTER 2024
All the truth
LIFEWORKS
ATLAS
WINTER 2024
DAZZLED GRADUALLY
The Pure Land of Bhaishajyaguru. Water-based pigment over a foundation of clay mixed with straw. Yuan Dynasty. ca. 1319. Sackler Gallery, Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York.
But the obvious dynamism of these extravagant figures lies in the fact that they come alive in the dialectics of what is hidden and what is manifest.
Gaston Bachelard (1884 - 1962), The Poetics of SpaceNew York is full of places that restore the spirit. For instance, the parks are quite beautiful here. Riverside and Central Parks are the best known and the most sprawling. But there are smaller parks throughout the city, beautiful green gems that break the city rhythm with the comfort of a park bench, the chatter of a fountain, the unexpected intrusion of grass and trees.
Nature is a great healer and she has many temples. But art is a great healer as well and in a city full of museum-temples, the Sackler Gallery in the Metropolitan Museum of Art is a personal favorite.
My first visit in October 2003 is not particularly vivid in my mind. The museum is so immense and its treasures so rich that only a few individual pieces secured a place in my memory. Perseus with the head of Medusa. A bronze Florentine mermaid. Shiva dancing in the ring of fire at the far end of a darkened gallery. But somewhere in my cluttered remembering there was also a place for one specific gallery, the Sackler Gallery, a vast open room with veils of white light and a massive weathered painting.
Though vast and bright, the Sackler Gallery feels intensely intimate. I've photographed the room many times. I've spent hours with a sketching pad trying to capture the relationship between space and art and afternoon light. Yet it was only when I visited the gallery with a museum audio guide that I had an explanation of The Pure Land of Bhaishajyaguru, the painting which grounds the gallery.
Bhaishajyaguru is a bodhisattva and the healing Buddha. He cures illness, provides daily necessities and oversees the birth of healthy children. Bodhisattvas emanate a radiance which forms a "pure land" that fosters enlightenment. The pure land of each Buddha is not outside our world but is found embedded in it. When a bodhisattva attains enlightenment, he or she does not leave the world and its suffering but chooses to stay. Therefore, Bhaishajyaguru, Buddha of medicine, remains with us and within us creating a pure land for healing and enlightenment.
Life as Myth, Collected writings, Usher. (2006 - ). Adapted from a 2018 essay.
