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BUDDHISM
"From the right perception of sūnyatā ('the void') comes bija ('the seed"). From bija the conception of an icon is developed, and from that conception is derived the external representation of the icon." 100
“So the entire iconography of the Buddhist,” comments Dr. Benoytosh Bhattacharyya to this text, “proceeds from a correct understanding of the doctrine of Sūnyatā.” 101 Moreover, one might add, this creation of an icon is an act of the same order as the creation of the world: ars imitatur naturam in sua operatione. 104
Through the contemplation of an icon one's mind is united with the seed" (bīja), and through this seed then returned to the void. The external representation, which is simply the preliminary support of this realization, may be of stone, wood, bronze, or any other lifeless substance, but also, a living being --for example, the guru, or even the devotee himself in some symbolic role; the symbol most appropriately associated with the Mahāyāna doctrine of muhāsukha,“the great delight," being the divine male and female (Tibctan: Yab-Yumi) in embrace.
The primitive idea behind this icon is that of the female as the activating principle. Through her allure she stirs the dormant malc clement from its quict; through her embracc she integrates the male energy. In India, as we have secn,108 the
100 An alternate rendering: "The void brings forth thc seed; this develops into the mental representation; this concretizes externally, and from it Springs all that is conditioned-in-existence." Mahāsukhaprakāśa ("The Exposition of the Doctrine of the Great Delight"), fol. 82. This is a twelfth-century work by a Bengali cypositor, Advayavajra.
101 Benoytosh Bhattacharyya, The Indian Buddhist Iconography, Oxford, 1924, p. xiii.
102 "For the East, as for St. Thoinas Aquinas), ars imitatur naturam in sua operatione" (Ananda K. Cooinaraswamy, The Transformation of Nature in Art, Cambridge, Mass., 1934, p. 15).
108 Supra, p. 391.
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