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Lot Essay
There is only one other painting of this subject, a registered Important Cultural Property in the collection of Daigo-ji, a major Shingon temple on the southern outskirts of Kyoto. The Daigo-ji Amida Triad was exhibited in 1996 at the Sano Art Museum in Mishima, Shizuoka, and again at the Nara National Museum in 2014, dated to the thirteenth century. The cool palette and abundant use of gold and silver are characteristics of the Kamakura period. The Utterberg and Daigo-ji paintings are rare and important examples of the comingling of Esoteric Buddhist Shingon iconography with the Tendai Pure Land (Jodo) school of Buddhism focused on Amida, the Buddha of the Western Paradise. Amida has been transferred to an Esoteric Buddhist context. The painting was likely used as a visualization exercise for rebirth in Amida’s Pure Land.
Poised on a splendid lotus throne, a golden-bodied Amida sits in severe frontal symmetry within a geometrically precise, pearly white lunar disc. Both hands rest in his lap, thumbs and forefingers touching, in the gesture signifying the highest level of meditation. He is intensely, hypnotically focused. Behind his hands is a chakra (rinbo in Japanese), or “wheel of the Law,” one of the oldest Buddhist symbols; in the Shingon tradition, the chakra occupies a central position on the ritual altar.
Below, Amida’s two attendant bodhisattvas, Kannon on the left and Seishi on the right, face one another and hold pink lotus blossoms. Amida and the two bodhisattas are enclosed in double halos emanating tongues of flame, with a larger swirl of fire at the top. Above are two additional small moon discs. The one at upper left contains a standing vajra, resting on a lotus pedestal and supporting a pink lotus blossom, while that on the right encloses the Sanskrit seed syllable (bonji) for Amida. These are the samaya and bonji forms of Amida, as he appear in the Samayamaṇḍala (三昧耶曼荼羅) and Bija- or Dharmamaṇḍala (法曼荼羅) versions of the Kongokai mandala. In this Tantric rendering, Amida wears an elaborate crown in the manner of Shingon’s primary deity, Dainichi.
To explicate the complex iconography, Professor Max Moerman of Barnard College notes the seminal influence of Kakuban Shonin (1095–1143) in providing a unity of Pure Land and Shingon doctrine and redefining the place and nature of Amida. James H. Sanford unpacked these issues in “Amida’s Secret Life: Kakuban’s Amida hishaku” (Richard Payne and Kenneth Tanaka, eds., Approaching the Land of Bliss [Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press], 2004). He explains that Kakuban, who spent time at Kongobu-ji, the Shingon temple on Mount Koya, “is best known for promoting the view that the Buddha Amida, the central divinity of the Pure Land school, and Shingon’s own principal buddha, Dainichi, were the same and that the true nature of the Pure Land and was not transcendent but immanent.“ For Kakuban, Amida was a manifestation of Dainichi, in a fashion reminiscent of the Buddhist-Shinto conflations known as honji-suijaku. Kakuban’s esoteric explanation of Amida was widely circulated and his Shingonesque ideas about Amida are reflected in the Utterberg painting.
Poised on a splendid lotus throne, a golden-bodied Amida sits in severe frontal symmetry within a geometrically precise, pearly white lunar disc. Both hands rest in his lap, thumbs and forefingers touching, in the gesture signifying the highest level of meditation. He is intensely, hypnotically focused. Behind his hands is a chakra (rinbo in Japanese), or “wheel of the Law,” one of the oldest Buddhist symbols; in the Shingon tradition, the chakra occupies a central position on the ritual altar.
Below, Amida’s two attendant bodhisattvas, Kannon on the left and Seishi on the right, face one another and hold pink lotus blossoms. Amida and the two bodhisattas are enclosed in double halos emanating tongues of flame, with a larger swirl of fire at the top. Above are two additional small moon discs. The one at upper left contains a standing vajra, resting on a lotus pedestal and supporting a pink lotus blossom, while that on the right encloses the Sanskrit seed syllable (bonji) for Amida. These are the samaya and bonji forms of Amida, as he appear in the Samayamaṇḍala (三昧耶曼荼羅) and Bija- or Dharmamaṇḍala (法曼荼羅) versions of the Kongokai mandala. In this Tantric rendering, Amida wears an elaborate crown in the manner of Shingon’s primary deity, Dainichi.
To explicate the complex iconography, Professor Max Moerman of Barnard College notes the seminal influence of Kakuban Shonin (1095–1143) in providing a unity of Pure Land and Shingon doctrine and redefining the place and nature of Amida. James H. Sanford unpacked these issues in “Amida’s Secret Life: Kakuban’s Amida hishaku” (Richard Payne and Kenneth Tanaka, eds., Approaching the Land of Bliss [Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press], 2004). He explains that Kakuban, who spent time at Kongobu-ji, the Shingon temple on Mount Koya, “is best known for promoting the view that the Buddha Amida, the central divinity of the Pure Land school, and Shingon’s own principal buddha, Dainichi, were the same and that the true nature of the Pure Land and was not transcendent but immanent.“ For Kakuban, Amida was a manifestation of Dainichi, in a fashion reminiscent of the Buddhist-Shinto conflations known as honji-suijaku. Kakuban’s esoteric explanation of Amida was widely circulated and his Shingonesque ideas about Amida are reflected in the Utterberg painting.