-3- Study of Dhamma from Pictures
~ By Buddhadāsa Bhikkhu ~
You have to know that the pictures and carvings contain riddles, that is, there are meanings hidden in them. That’s why they are called ‘Dhamma-riddle pictures.’ This is very good because they are a collection of the wisdom of the ancient people. It’s convenient for us to study them without first having to invent them – a shortcut to learning and accumulating wisdom. If we were to invent them ourselves, we would never be able to do the job our ancestors have done, even if we spent ten lifetimes on it. Try to make use of these pictures. If you understand the meaning behind one of them, you will surely gain insight into one aspect of Dhamma, or maybe more, because a certain picture can have many meanings.
Among the pictures, there are both those originally developed by the ancient people and those by later generations of Buddhists or non-Buddhists. There are pictures drawn by the Chinese and the Japanese, both being our main source of the most beneficial Dhamma-riddle pictures. Pictures and paintings from the West are mostly eccentric, sexually oriented, or about miracles. They don't have Dhamma-riddle pictures. Those by the Chinese and the Japanese, especially from Zen Buddhism, are all Dhamma-riddle pictures which are very good for Dhamma study. So try to make use of them.
In our Thai heritage, we have a set of pictures called ‘The Body City,’ and another set called ‘Tortoise’s Moustache and Hare’s Horn.’ Only these two sets happen to have been passed down to us, and we have preserved them in drawings. The Tortoise’s Moustache and Hare’s Horn was obtained through a great effort. We had to look for it at the National Library. The book was fragmentary, its bark-fiber pages being in shreds, when we got it all photocopied. We are indebted to Mr. Rabin Bunnak, who helped us until we successfully acquired the pictures for study and pieced them together into a complete story. We can say, as a challenge to the officials at the National Library, that they don’t know how to interpret the pictures and don’t even know what they are all about. We interpreted them and published them first. The officials still doubt whether we correctly interpreted the pictures; they examined whether Buddhadāsa gave the right explanation. As of now, they still have not published the book. The National Library and the National Museum have never advertised or published the book, but we deem it best to show it to Westerners, to demonstrate our ancestors’ ideas in Dhamma that were expressed by pictures. We want to show off to them that no other nations could do so well as our ancestors. The picture set illustrates Dhamma riddles, which are so profound as to outdo all other sets. It is truly worth showing off, but I don’t know who would be able to help do this.
Those sets by the Chinese and the Japanese are also marvelous. They are from the ancient past. New Dhamma-riddle pictures also exist, for example, those drawn by Emanuel Sherman, a Jewish American. While he was ordained as a monk, he described his thoughts in wood carvings and transferred the pictures on to coarse paper. They are most valuable, and it’s a miracle that they did not get lost. Mr. Sherman died on Pha-ngan Island and left them in a card-board box, which I found full of cockroach excrements when someone brought it to me. If the box had been carelessly thrown away or burned up, it would have been lost and never brought here. Venerable Pradoem (Komalo) of Phleng Wipatsana Monastery happened to get it and brought it here without knowing what the pictures were all about. We knew what they meant, and we selected some of them to be drawn on the wall of the Spiritual Theater to preserve them. It is fortunate that they were not lost with their painter’s death. They are all here as new, or modern, Dhamma-riddle pictures.
We also have the old ones, dated back to a thousand years ago. Some are the Chinese Zen pictures, others are our own Thai pictures. I have tried my best to find all of them and had them painted here. Even those Tibetan pictures which are considered best painted were also copied here as the subjects for visual Dhamma study.
I wanted to remark that we are ignorant about this kind of study, whereas the pre-historic ancient men were so knowledgeable about it as to have painted the pictures on cave walls. What some explorers found to be pre-historic paintings, whose meanings are not well understood, actually are something I believe they used to educate their children and grandchildren. There were no books in those days, so they used pictures instead. I guess this was how they taught their younger generations. For example, there is a picture of an ox attached to a rope. This should be a lesson on how to catch an ox. Don’t underestimate the ancient people; they could make a fool out of modern men.
Well, it’s wonderful that, even though they were illiterate, they could still pass down their knowledge, being able to teach others even when they did not have a written language or a book.
As far back as the Sukhothai Period only a few hundred years ago, the people did not have books either. But they had these kinds of pictures. They drew pictures to teach Dhamma to illiterate fellow people. In the Ayutthaya Period, temple walls were full of Dhamma-riddle pictures. However, in the Bangkok Period, they did not draw such pictures, but drew those showing the story of the Buddha, some literary figures such as the Ramayana characters and the like. I don’t know what they thought about.
The profound Dhamma-riddle pictures, such as those found in samut khoi (bark-fiber books) that depict a tale of an elephant and three ponds or a tale about defilements, could still be found in some monasteries originally built in the Ayutthaya Period, for example, Wat Pho in Bang Pho. When I went to see them the other day, I found them in the most pitiable state. The temple was nearly completely deserted. Rainwater was allowed to leak down the walls, and nobody cared about the algae that grew on the pictures.
Pictures like these taught us the absolute truth. Our ancestors drew them in samut khoi and left them inside a temple. The laymen and laywomen who came to the temple took up the book, looked at the pictures, discussed the meaning, and understood the hidden Dhamma shortly later. They learned Dhamma from a temple’s samut khoi. At Wat Chaloem Phra Kiat, an old monastery, I saw such books left in its temple so that the almsgivers on uposatha (‘Buddhist sabbath’) days could look at the pictures and could learn Dhamma without reading. Later on, temple boys sold most of them to farangs (Westerners), and it was very difficult for me to find one.
In learning Dhamma from pictures, we are trained at the same time to think very wisely without realizing the process. It is better than skillfully giving a lecture on a raised platform. The latter does not sharpen our view as does scrutinizing Dhamma-riddle pictures. We saw their benefits like this; so we redrew them here as a tool to sharpen people’s brains. But the fools do not like them.
Let me talk about Bhikkhu Sherman a little bit more. He was a smart man, at first working as a scene setter for movie studios in America. Being an innately intelligent man, he became interested in Buddhism and went to study the religion in China, Japan, and Tibet. After all those places, he intended to come to Suan Mokkh. But he was brought to Pha-ngan Island by Ven. Pradoem and got stuck at Khao Tham Monastery. Not long after, he died without ever having come to Suan Mokkh. If you take a look at Sherman’s drawings, you will see that all of them are very profound to the extent that the foolish would say they are meaningless. Profound pictures are usually viewed as eccentric or meaningless by the foolish. But we should not belittle such pictures.
The first of Sherman’s pictures is on the left of the entrance to the Spiritual Theater. It’s called ‘Buddha behind the Curtain.’ If you slightly push aside your curtain of ignorance, you will see a Buddha sitting there. You don’t have to waste time or money going to look for a Buddha at a monastery or in India. Just push aside the curtain of ignorance. Try to think about it. The foolish nowadays never know where their curtain of ignorance is. As they are so dumb, how can they unveil the curtain? But if they are wise, they will know their curtain of ignorance, and upon pushing it aside, they will see Buddha there. This picture can be considered invaluable. Looking at it as a means of teaching, we can see that it teaches us extremely profoundly. People walk past the pictures tens of times each day, and they never benefit from them. I have to call those who ignore them ‘eternal fools.’ This is because they don’t gain anything from the educational pictures, which I would say are silently scolding them. Teaching the fools brings little or obscure benefit, except when they are cured of ignorance and understand all the pictures. So, in a way, Sherman drew the pictures as a means to scold the fools.
There are good pictures from Zen Buddhism and pre-Zen China. One is the ‘Crooked River and Straight Water,’ which the foolish don’t understand but try to show off their view just the same. Children won’t accept that the river is crooked but the water in it is not. This is because they know neither what water is nor what river is. Some grown-ups may also be as stupid as children if they consider water to be crooked like the river. Try to study it yourselves. The painter did good work and put in an invisible scolding word for the foolish. You should know that, however crooked a river can be, the water in it is never crooked.
I think these pictures are invaluable. But people benefit very little from them because of their ignorance. They look down upon the pictures and are not interested in studying them earnestly. Doing so takes time because the pictures have profound meanings. But if one gets to know them, then it’s worth the time spent. Therefore, whoever comes to Suan Mokkh should try to benefit the most from the Dhamma-riddle pictures.
Another good picture of Sherman’s is the one showing a man striking a bell, with the caption ‘from infinity to infinity.’ This picture implies the cause and characteristics of conditioning: conditioned things come from some other conditioned things and will cause the like in an unending succession. It characterizes the absolute truth. I don’t know whether the guide would correctly explain it, but I have to confess that I have not tutored the guide with the right meaning. There could certainly be a wrong explanation because the meaning is profound. I have thought about reviewing explanations for the Dhamma-riddle pictures so that they are correct, but so far I have not done this. Anyway, the Spiritual Theater is where you can study the Dhamma-riddle pictures.
(From "Benefits You Should Get from Coming to Suan Mokkh," a talk given by Tan Ajahn in December 1988 at the request of Tan Dusadee Bhikkhu, as translated from the Thai by Aj. Mongkol Dejnakarintra.)
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“24 Benefits of Suan Mokkh,” is a series of weekly posts published to commemorate the 88th anniversary of the foundation of Suan Mokkh in May 1932 in Chaiya, southern Thailand.
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For other Dhamma teachings by Buddhadāsa Bhikkhu (audios, free ebooks, interviews, poems), please visit Suan Mokkh – The Garden of Liberation.
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Photograph from the Buddhadāsa Indapañño Archives collection (Ref. BW-08-016_003)
