In todayand#8217;s FBA Dharmabyte, and#8220;Tibetan Art as Religious Artand#8221; Sangharakshita talks about how every aspect of traditional Tibetan life is infused with religious significance, not least Tibetan architecture and iconographical painting, the topics of this lecture.
From the talk and#8220;Symbols of Tibetan Buddhist Artand#8221; given in 1968 as part of the series and#8220;An Introduction to Tibetan Buddhism.and#8221;
(upbeat music) Dharma Bites is brought to you by Free Buddhist Audio, the Dharma for your life. Our work is funded entirely by donations from our generous listeners. If you would like to help us keep this free, make a contribution at freebuddhistaudio.com/donate. Thank you and happy listening. Now this brings us to a very important point. Perhaps this is the main thing to be understood in connection with Tibetan Buddhist art. We speak of Tibetan Buddhist art. But strictly speaking, this is a tortology. It isn't really necessary to say Tibetan Buddhist art because in fact Tibetan art is entirely Buddhist or entirely religious. In Tibet, there is no secular art at all. Or at least not any secular art really worth mentioning. And this we may say this fact is in accordance with the general scheme or the general pattern of Tibetan life, at least traditional Tibetan life, now unfortunately disrupted the whole scheme, the whole pattern of Tibetan life is based on certain traditional values. That is to say it's based on spiritual values which have been handed down through a succession of teachers and disciples down the ages. And all aspects of life, all aspects of Tibetan life are related in one way or another, directly or indirectly to these values. And all aspects of Tibetan life therefore, inasmuch as they're related to these values, provide means of access to these values themselves. And this applies to all aspects of traditional Tibetan life. It applies to the economic organization, it applies to the government and administration, it applies even to social customs and manners. As we saw right at the very beginning of the series, at the beginning of the first lecture in Tibetan life, I was going to say Tibetan Buddhist life but that isn't really necessary, this idea of precedence occupies a very important place because it reflects on the mundane level, the social level, the spiritual ideal of hierarchy. So inasmuch as all these aspects of life are closely interwoven with certain spiritual ideals, it isn't surprising that art itself, Tibetan art is closely integrated with religion. And this applies, we may say, to all the arts, it applies for instance, to poetry. I think that Tibetans have got only one little collection of secular poetry. And this is a collection of love poems or love songs attributed to the sixth Dalai Lama of all people. But apart from these Tibetan poetry that is entirely religious, it's the same with painting. There's no secular painting. Sometimes the religious art does depict aspects or incidents of secular life with only as little details as when they come in the wheel of life for instance. Music is entirely religious apart from a little folk music. And the drama is religious, the dance is religious. Again apart from a little folk dancing, architecture is religious, sculpture. These things are all religious. And even one may say many of the applied arts such as wood carving, metal work, these two are basically religious. So the purpose of all these different forms, all these different expressions of art is not to give expression to the contents of the artist's own individual might. The purpose of all these artistic manifestations, whether in the form of music or poetry or art, painting, sculpture, architecture, the purpose of them all is to put the individual Buddhist, the individual member of the tradition in touch with what the Tibetan tradition itself calls the one mind, the absolute mind, the absolute also supreme consciousness, the dharmakaya or reality as it's also called. Or at least if that is not possible, at least with a higher and wider and more comprehensive level of being and of consciousness. And Tibetan Buddhist art or Tibetan art does this with the help of what we call symbols. (upbeat music) We hope you enjoyed today's Dharma Bight. Please help us keep this free. Make a contribution at freebuddhistaudio.com/donate. And thank you. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) [BLANK_AUDIO]
