Step Into a Mandala at The Met
One of the most beautiful aspects of Buddhist art is how intertwined an image is with its philosophical meaning, giving us a deeper understanding of the world around us.
by AX Mina 
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While harrowing, the violence we see today has also sparked broad social movements and awakenings that challenge existing power structures and even our own cosmologies. Charnel grounds, as Lourdes Argüelles writes in the Buddhist magazine Tricycle, can be anywhere we see tremendous suffering, and by not turning away, we aid our enlightenment and that of others. Rigdol’s work, which he developed over the course of five years, seems to be guiding us in this direction.
The final painting in “Biography of a Thought” pictures an empty chair amid calm waves, with clouds settled atop the water’s surface. In Rigdol’s rendering, the waves represent the emotions and the clouds represent our minds and thought processes. This stillness of this work after a long journey through the mandala reminded me of the 19th- or 20th-century skeleton dance costume elsewhere in the show, a silk and flannel outfit from Tibet assembled with a papier mache mask from Bhutan. White bones and flesh reveal the realities of our own physical bodies.
One point that’s difficult to appreciate about many of the traditional works on view is that they weren’t always accessible to the general public, as they were by their nature designed for monastic practice. But skeleton dances did make their way to lay practitioners, according to the exhibition’s text, and they were considered auspicious for those fortunate enough to see them. Rigdol’s installation, like the skeleton dance, takes us on a journey with someone who’s clearly dedicated time to a deeply meaningful practice and wants to help others along the way.
Mandalas: Mapping the Buddhist Art of Tibetcontinues at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (1000 Fifth Avenue, Upper East Side, Manhattan) through January 12. The exhibition was organized by Kurt Behrendt, associate curator of the department of Asian Art.
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