Chapter 25 Part III Taoist Academic Thought and Buddhist Esoteric Culture-6

For the continuation of human spiritual civilization, besides words and writing, painting should be the first to be promoted.In the ancient world, before writing was formed, in the field of people's thinking, when they wanted to express their consciousness and spread their imagination, they could only express it by drawing pictures.The eight trigrams and talismans that preceded Chinese culture, the spells of Egypt, and the Sanskrit script of India, etc., are all pioneers of the pictorial imagination of the ancestors.Descending to later generations, the wisdom of the people has become more and more diverse, and speech, writing, pictures, sculptures, and statues are each divided into systems.The content of the paintings also gradually increased; figures, feathers, flowers, landscapes, trees and stones were drawn from two-dimensional lines to three-dimensional ones.Abstraction and realism are presented side by side, and charm and imagery are arranged in between.It can be seen that the human consciousness modality is comprehensive and complex.But looking back at the source, all human speech, writing, pictures, etc., are all products of acquired emotions.The metaphysical was originally a blank, with nothing and nothing to trace.Therefore, Zen does not take words and words, but points directly.Confucius took "painting after the event" as a comprehensive reference, which is good for it.

From pattern painting to the description of figures and gods, in the history of Chinese painting, it can be used according to the facts, and the stone carvings of Wuliang poems in the Han Dynasty are the most recommended.In the past, historical materials have not been discovered, and it is probably not possible to casually determine the originator and who started it.Since the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties, Tang, and Song Dynasties in the Han Dynasty, Buddhist culture has come to the east, and Buddha statue paintings and figure sketches have formed a new era, such as the well-known Yungang Grottoes, Dunhuang murals, and Gu Kaizhi's "Victory Mojushi Tu", Wu Daozi's Avalokitesvara Bodhisattva, etc., are both wonderful in form and spirit, but they always guide the spiritual imagination of all living beings, sublimating in the heaven and the earth.

However, since the early Sui and Tang Dynasties, following the eastward expansion of Buddhism, the Esoteric Buddhist statues introduced to Tibet from central and northern India are exquisitely crafted and come in various forms, quite similar to Dunhuang murals at that time.Only Daxing sleeps on the side, and it is enshrined in the inner garden of the Central Plains imperial court, which is rarely seen in general.After the Yuan Dynasty, it became popular.Since the Ming and Qing Dynasties, it has been spread among the people a little but not universally.In terms of painting, Buddhist paintings and sculptures in Tibet follow the same rules as those in the inland areas before the Sui and Tang Dynasties.Most of the shapes of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas are slim and graceful, and their bodies are covered with jewels, just like the ones called "wreaths and solemnity" in Buddhist scriptures.After the Song and Yuan Dynasties, all Buddhist verses in the interior generally prefer big belly, thick waist, full belly, and it is best not to bring anything outside the body except for the body.It can be seen from this that the Buddha statues since the Sui and Tang Dynasties, whether they are paintings or sculptures, mostly have the religious atmosphere of Buddhist scriptures and a strong Indian cultural color.After the Song and Yuan Dynasties, portraits and sculptures were also influenced by Zen, with the simplicity of agricultural society and the plainness of personal culture.From now on, roughly speaking, it should be so.

Since the late Qing Dynasty, civilization has changed drastically, and Tibetan Tantric Buddhism has suddenly become popular in the mainland.The Chinese and Japanese sects of Sutra and Tantric are integrated with each other.In addition to old teachings and new theories, as well as long-secret Tibetan Buddhist statues, pictures, and sculptures, whether they are single, double, or mandala (mandala), they are no longer the style of Tongguan in the past, and most of them are openly circulated.During the Anti-Japanese War, the Sichuan Provincial Library in Chengdu once held a large exhibition of the original Tibetan Tantric Buddha statues.Thinking about it now, it is quite a pity that this batch of extensive cultural relics at that time has disappeared, and I don’t know if they are still in the world!

When I first came to Taiwan, there were quite a few classic portraits of the Prominent Religion, and there were occasional relics of the Esoteric Religion. Most of them were hidden, and they were regarded as sacred treasures that must not be made public. .The Buddha said: "There is no right and wrong in the law, and it is up to people to reveal it." Today's practitioners do not know the principle of keeping pace with the times. The dry text of "Yi" said: "The heaven is innate and the sky is not against it, and the day after tomorrow is the time of the sky." The reason for this is unclear, and then it changed suddenly.All Buddhist statues, paintings and sculptures brought out by Tibetan monks and laymen can be purchased at random overseas.However, practitioners in China lack the overall concept, and do not know how to make a comprehensive collection from a cultural point of view. As a result, my Buddha, Tathagata, and all the great Bodhisattvas also change with the situation at any time and wander in other places.Today, more than 20 years later, most of the Tibetan Buddhist statues have been collected in the United States for academic, artistic, and mysterious public reprints and public research.Regardless of whether it is a single, a double, or a mandala, there are photocopies of black and white and color collections, and sales of large and small portraits.When young students study abroad in other countries, either they buy it out of reverence, or they appreciate it for fun, and they generally regard it as strange and exciting and become suspicious.It is a pity that the country's national heritage is exiled and the family is obedient, and the treasures of one's own culture are not known, but they are sought in foreign lands!

But in the United States, the collection and reprinting of Tantric portraits was initially carried out by a small number of doctors to try out the mysterious practice of Tantric Buddhism for medical treatment experiments.Gradually expanding into the research of spiritual science, it will get rid of religious color and form a series of new culture.It is quite different from the form of primitive religious belief.And some people have made Guru Padmasambhava and various mandala cases into travel bags or decorations on belt vests, which has become a popular trend for a while.Ideological forms have changed from ancient to modern, and religious beliefs and material civilization are in conflict with each other. Those who defend the Tao only look at it from the outside, and are quite worried and indignant.Little do they know that the direction of future scientific development is exactly the same as the goal of dissecting the past religions.In the past, when people's wisdom was not developed, religions showed the true meaning of life in a mystical style.From now on, science uses detailed analysis to explore the mystery of life.That is, the vulgar is the truth, there is no duality between emptiness and existence, and you are not restricted by form, but seek the essence of spirit, and eventually the two will complement each other without interfering with each other.

However, the public publication of foreign esoteric art Buddha statues in foreign countries today has raised questions and inquiries, and debates are flourishing.Today, I would like to send a message to those who have the most serious problems among them. One is the form of Tantric portraits. From the surface, such portraits have lost the majestic and benevolent nature of Buddhist statues, and frankly speaking, they tend to make people feel horrible and disgusting, not to mention that most of them are not human-like, and they are not familiar with objects. What is the reason?Said: In terms of Buddha, all Buddhas take the aliases of the three bodies of dharma, retribution, and transformation based on body, appearance, and use.The majestic and benevolent faces of the teaching Buddha statues represent the original nature of the pure dharmakaya.The strange shapes and abnormal shapes of the Buddhist statues of Esoteric Buddhism represent the respective causes and conditions of the incarnation body and the sambhogakaya.Such as multi-eyed, multi-headed, multi-handed, multi-legged, multi-body, heterogeneous body, etc., are collectively the table of the connotation of Buddhism.To put it in a word, such as the strangeness of the statue of Yamantaka, it is actually a figure of the teachings and teachings, and a representation of the old title.Such as the cloud: The one with nine faces represents the nine parts of the Mahayana scriptures.The two corners represent the two truths of the true and the common.Thirty-four hands, plus the three gates of body, speech and mind, represent the thirty-seventh grade.Those with sixteen feet represent sixteen emptiness.The eight objects such as humans and animals danced on the right foot represent the eight achievements.The eight birds such as vultures on the left foot represent the eight freedoms.Bow-shaped, there is no hindrance to the table.The hair stands upright, expressing all the hardships.If he has thirty-six feet, he is the representative of the thirty-seven Bodhisattvas.The eighteen hands are the eighteen empty spaces of the great prajna, and also the eighteen realms.The three-eyed person, that is, the three eyes, is also the manifestation of the Buddha's eye, the wisdom eye, and the Dharma eye.Those with nine heads are the ninth set, which also shows that Mahayana is headed by ten degrees.The two horns are the manifestation of the dignity of wisdom and the dignity of merit.Those whose face is a bull's head have the meaning of strength.All of these contain Indian cultural habits and are a symbol of respect for cattle.The customs are different, so there is no need to treat them as one.The person who is full of cherry blossoms and solemn, represents the perfection of all different wisdom.There are many bulls, ghosts and snakes at the feet, people are not human, etc., which means to get rid of the lower realm, get rid of the magic army, and sublimate the vulgar.Other portraits, such as those with six arms, represent the six perfections.Those with four arms show compassion, joy and abandonment.All these and so on are all images of the meaning of the Buddhist scriptures, so it is only for shallow-wisdom beings to understand the meaning by recognizing the images.According to the scriptures, Yamantaka is the incarnation of Manjushri.Taking this example, I can know it by analogy from the wise, so there is no need to explain it in detail.

As for the various mandala expressions, they are also related to the air pockets of the body.For example, the lotus flower is the heart chakra, and the triangle is the sea chakra. But looking at the shape of a newborn baby, you can know that the perineum is a triangle.Here is a side note that today's acupuncture and moxibustion studies are generally not carefully studied.The air pockets covering the human body are not completely circular, just like the stars in the heavenly bodies, there are triangles, rectangles, ovals, hexagons and so on.Therefore, sometimes a needle is used to pull out a person with a little blood. Although it does not harm the human body, one does not know that the human body is a small world, and a certain acupuncture point is like the arrangement of celestial stars. What kind of shape should it be? The outer corner is no longer the positive point, and slightly deviates from the periphery, so it touches the microvessels, and there will be blood stains when pulled out.If this is clear, it should also open up a new realm for the general application of acupuncture and moxibustion.This is the secret of ancient legends, and I will also explain it clearly here, so that it will be more beneficial to medicine.If you use Buddhist terminology, you can say: With this merit, it is a wish to dedicate to all living beings in the Dharma Realm, and to obtain a happy body together.

One is a double-body Buddha statue of Tantric Buddhism, which is close to the issue of obscenity. This fact has been doubted for a long time in ancient and modern China and abroad. People in the past kept it secret, but now because of the development of education and the openness of sex education in foreign countries, there is a tendency to conceal it.Even, the spread of the virus abroad, there are people who promote the spread of sexual behavior.In China, people who don't know the inner meaning often regard the Buddha of Huanxi in the Lama Temple in the Qing Dynasty as the suspicion of obscenity.Those who regarded this as the secret of Esoteric Buddhism in the old days should also have the intention of avoiding suspicion.In fact, this question has three important meanings, but it is not generally known.

First of all, in terms of religious teachings, this is my Buddha's compassion, and I want to seek this way for all sentient beings in the world of desire, just as the "Lotus Sutra" says, "First hook with desire, and gradually lead you into Buddhism." For education. The convenience of inducing people to be good as a last resort, the wise man knows at a glance, and it is not enough to teach. Secondly, in the past, Chinese and foreign cultures, whether religious, philosophical, educational, or ethical, either prevented the issue of gender from being discussed, or avoided it morally.However, the text is beyond quality, and human beings through the ages have never been a little bit lustful because of religion or education.Even, it can be said that it has become more and more intense with the evolution of the times.In ancient times, to face reality without avoiding suspicion, and to be an educator of untying bells and connecting bells, only Tibetan secrets and the Southern School of Taoism are the only ones.To sum up, its educational purpose is to get out of Australia by caring, and warn the world that those who indulge in sex are nothing more than this, and they should turn back quickly.But in everything in the world, the advantages and disadvantages multiply together, and the changes are reversed, which will lead to disadvantages, not just this one thing.Even with the publicity of sex education in Europe and the United States today, we dare not say that the advantages outweigh the disadvantages.But the power of two evils is not necessarily as obvious as it is hidden.

Secondly, the image of the double body actually means that the human body originally has the functions of Yin and Yang.Ordinary people can't self-neutralize the yin and yang without strict practice, and they can let go and wander and arouse lust.If you can neutralize the two qi of your own life, then "heaven is the place, and all things are nurtured." You can transcend the ordinary and become holy.Otherwise, they are sentient beings in the desire realm, concrete ordinary people, who are born and die due to lust.If one can strictly uphold precepts, samadhi, and wisdom and be free from desire and love, then one will be able to reach the state of "touching the wonderful bliss within a Bodhisattva."In the end, there is no male and female appearance, and there is no rush to seek outside.As stated in Volume 21 of "Great Wisdom": "People's sexual desires are mostly liberated by increasing their lusts. People's anger is mostly relieved by increasing their anger. Like Nanda and Uloupin Mule Dragon. So it is. Wait for all kinds of causes and conditions to be liberated." The wise man contemplates this way, not being bound by the law, not following appearances, and he can smile and get rid of stickiness and bondage.Then you will know who should be saved, that is, what body should be presented for the Dharma.The so-called male-female phase, that is, non-male-female phase, can get less points corresponding. One is the anthropological and theological issues of contemporary reality. For Tantric portraits, those who have religious elements regard them as easy to open up the realm of spiritual illusion.From the perspective of academic researchers, they think it is ridiculous.There should also be an explanation for these two concepts. As far as the former is concerned, it must be clear that the rise of Tantric Buddhism is indeed the inheritance of later Buddhism.Only its teachings are based on the study of consciousness-only dharmas.The expression method used is to take the legacy of Brahman and other teachings inherent in India, and sublimate it with Buddhism.If you really see the statues of Brahmans and other religions that have been handed down from India to the present, then it is no different.The example is roughly the same as this.Collectors at home and abroad, there are many single and double statues of Indian Brahmins and other teachings, and it can be seen from the proof that if you don’t understand the true meaning of consciousness-only dharma, you will blindly praise it, and it will be ridiculed by knowledgeable people, and you should reflect on yourself. As far as the latter is concerned, it is very interesting that all religious gods in all parts of the world should be the same as the human figures in the place where the religion originated, and those who have never left the human world and can draw another god in the heavens.Even those who talk about ghosts are the same, there is no difference.Only the images of Esoteric Buddhism mainly take the abstraction of the world of desire and color, and the graphics of mixed human nature and material nature, so they regard other schools as different.Whether it is in the shape of a god is indeed the case, and it will be confirmed in the future. In short, the Buddha said that there is nothing beyond the mind. "The heart produces all kinds of dharmas, and the heart is destroyed. All kinds of dharmas are destroyed." The ancient virtues of Zen have said: "The heart is the Buddha." Mantra. "Let's take this explanation as a conclusion, and when Qian Haoqian and Zhu Jinghua made photocopies of this book, they made several pious and earnest wishes, whether they were right or not, and they all fell into disrepute. Knowing that I am sinful and self-nature is empty, return it Maitreya smiled.