“sabbe saṅkhārā aniccā, sabbe saṅkhārā dukkha, sabbe dhammā anatta” (Dhammapada Verses 277, 278 and 279)
Translated from the Vinaya-piṭaka, “material shape and the other khandhas are impermanent; what is impermanent is suffering; what is suffering is not-self; what is not- self–this is not mine, this am I not, this is not my self. This should be seen by means of right wisdom as it really is." (Conze 2014, 75) The tripartite principle of impermanence, suffering, and non-self is taken from the tilakkhaṇa doctrine of Buddhist thought that is transcribed in Pali as “sabbe saṅkhārā aniccā, sabbe saṅkhārā dukkha, sabbe dhammā anatta”. That is, all conditioned things are impermanent, all conditioned things are painful, all dhammas are without self. It partakes in the exposition of Tīraṇa-Pariññā as the three salient marks of all conditioned things, and is here applied to make sense of the seemingly paradoxical and incongruous aspects of lived reality. Departing from the characteristics governing all conditioned and sentient beings extracted from Buddhist thought, this essay will examine the potential of Arlene Shechet’s Buddhist sculptures in physicalising the abstract, transcendental and immutable doctrine of tilakkhaṇa. Thus, refracting the manifold ways in which truths about saṃsāra, and dependent origination or paṭiccasamuppāda have been transmogrified in contemporary Buddhist art.
Fashioned out of hydrocal paintskins, plaster, steel and concrete, Arlene Shechet’s models of the Buddha head appear at once macabre, shoddy, and profane. The particularities of expression and facial features have been exchanged for faceless busts devoid of identity, retaining only the distinguishable cranial protuberance or uṣṇīṣa, and distended earlobes as evidence of the prefigured Shakyamuni Buddha. The head is raised above a concrete pedestal and staked through with a pole as though the entire work is an act of abject decapitation. Why this confluence of materials instead of using a singular medium? What can a contemporary audience distil about the realities of life from her appropriation of a sacred image? More importantly, why this deliberate choice of violence and defacement of the sacred when sublimating the tilakkhaṇa doctrine in the works of her artistic pantheon?
The paradox of form and non-form, concrete object and abstract principle, the profane and the sacred finds its intersectionality in Shechet’s works. Her experience with corporeal impermanence, suffering and the absence of the self as she cared for her father who suffered from congestive heart failure fuelled the motivations behind her artistic practice, resulting in her use of “Buddhist notions of impermanence both as a subject and a model for her working process” (Shechet and Smith 2003, 42). Shechet also remarked that “plaster is a timekeeper because it starts out as a powder, water is added and it becomes liquid, and then it becomes harder and harder, describing very observationally how something changes” (Arlene Schechet qtd in Sheets 2020). Extending from and beyond the medium, the principle of impermanence, suffering and non-self transcends contemporary dualistic thinking, and negates dichotomic oppositions to acknowledge the multiplicity of lived realities and the coexisting presence of multiple truths reflecting one another as in the metaphor of Indra’s Net representing the concepts of suññatā and paṭiccasamuppāda. From the Vinaya-piṭaka, all corporeal beings subject to suffering and impermanence is non-self and by extension the “self” is an entity that exists only in the absence of both dukkha and anicca.
Anatta, or non-self, may thus be typified as the element which is absent in presence, and present in absence. The embodiment of a decapitated spirituality stripped of determinants and recognisable signifiers of identity in turn deconstructs the “self” as being at the centre of the universe. Instead, it gestures towards the essence of being, the unchanging truth body or dharmakāya that surrounds and transcends the physical art itself.
The “beyond” that reaches past the physical self into the realm of abstraction (dharmakāya), or immutable theological truths.
The viewer’s experience of violence in Shechet’s work is made manifest in the featural disfigurement, conflated collage of materials, and transgression of sacred beauty. That is, her oeuvre offers a visceral visuality of anicca because of the fragility of the artistic medium; it is dukkha first because it is conceived out of a suffering mind and second for its intentional, violent alteration of the conventional image; and it is anatta because what is seen by the eye is not the essence of what truly is. In this manner, the encounter with violence transfigures into an evocation of anicca because the intrinsic meaning moves beyond the materiality of the object which is ultimately impermanent. By extension, the “self” is not determined upon the basis of the manufactured object but on the transcendental doctrines (dhamma); the “beyond” that reaches past the physical self into the realm of abstraction (dharmakāya), or immutable theological truths.
As a method of seeing and interpreting the tilakkhaṇa in Shechet’s art, one must necessarily recognise the indivisibility of anicca, dukkha and anatta as key exponents in the sphere of Vipariṇāma and Aññathābhāva, standing for metastasis and subsequent change of mode respectively (Mahāthera Ledi Sayadaw & Aggamahāpaṇḍita 2016, 27). Centred on change as the only constant, Shechet’s art, based on Buddhist teachings on the impermanence of suffering arrives at the conclusion that corporeal existence is empty of self. Truly, there must be more to the finitude of what one perceives as “real” in front of one’s eyes. Therefore, I postulate that the importance of developing insight into paṭiccasamuppāda highlighted in the Vibhaṅga Sutta of the Saṃyutta Nikāya, distinguishing a “mere establishment of satipaṭṭhāna and its full “development” (bhāvanā)” (Anālayo 2008, 104) is contemporaneous with the fundamental purpose of Shechet’s art – to cultivate the mind; to realise the absence of “self” in reality; to contemplate and thereby transcend the perceived “self” with penetrating wisdom.
Works Cited
Anālayo. Satipaṭṭhāna: the Direct Path to Realization. Cambridge: Windhorse Publications Ltd., 2008.
Conze, Edward, Edward Conze, and David Snellgrove. Buddhist Texts through the Ages. United Kingdom: Oneworld Publications, 2014. Olinsky, Frank, and Robert A.F. Thurman.
Buddha Book: a Meeting of Images. San Francisco, CA: Chronicle Books, 1997.
Sayadaw, Mahāthera Ledi, and Aggamahāpaṇḍita. The Manuals of Dhamma. Onalaska, WA: Vipassana Research Publications, an imprint of Pariyatti Publishing, 2016.
Shechet, Arlene, and Kiki Smith. "Artist's Choice: Arlene Shechet." Art on Paper 8, no. 2 (2003): 42-45. Accessed March 20, 2020. www.jstor.org/stable/24559332.
Tan, Heidi. Enlightened Ways the Many Streams of Buddhist Art in Thailand; Singapore: Asian Civilisations Museum, 2012.
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