Unknown Date, Serial 00712, Side C

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BZ-00712C

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Side A - part of an unknown talk after end of Mel's talk (labeled 00712C); Side B - long pause before beginning kept in

Transcript: 

from the earliest, whoops, the earliest. This one I don't know, but this is from, we can look that up. I haven't seen this, it's from a book. But I would guess that it's probably not very big, that it's probably about this big. When we look at, and that it's probably architectural, and that somebody ripped it off a stupa or something. Am I going the right direction? Why do we have such a big gap? Oh, okay. I've used my interior logic on arranging these things. It's a little weird, because now we're going back to the caves, which in a way I think of as architectural.

[01:02]

And this is among the earliest caves. And this is Ajanta. And that valley is sometimes very dry, and sometimes we'll have rushing rushing river, and you can see the extent, I mean, when you read books about Ajanta and look at the paintings, you know, we have, hey, the 129D, and of course the artwork, these took centuries to develop and to excavate, and you're going to get just a vast number of different periods, years of art within them, and This is one of the Jataka tales.

[02:07]

I brought my book from Ajanta, which I bought many years before I was interested in Buddhism. I think it's one of the books that got me more and more interested. This is one of the Jataka tales that is a lot like a lot of Christian tales, where he gets married marries a wealthy woman and then he rejects, usually in the Christian tales of Santa Barbara, it works the other way around. It's the woman who marries somebody wealthy and then wants to become Christian and rejects it all. And he, you can see the servants and things on this side and there he is meditating on the other side. And the use of the pillars in the painting are often a way of dividing time. We'll see that in some sculpture later. And this is just one, I just wanted to give you an idea of some of the depth.

[03:15]

There's sculpture in the background, and these very, very heavily decorated walls. That's part, these are all inside here, And that book is here. It's a fairly late... I think it was published in 1965. And if you get a chance to browse it, please do. I have not seen one for sale at any place. I've had it for years. And I've wanted... How do you spell? Ajanta? It's hard. I do the same thing. I miss Janica and Ajanta together. Ajanta is A-J-A-N-T-A. And here we're going to, and I'm going to have to look at the name because it's one of those Chinese names, Yung Kang. And here again, cave, mostly hewn right out of the rock. This rock hasn't come in. The figures are hewn out of the rock.

[04:16]

Is that probably me? It's not bodily leave or is it? No, it's pretty much free standing. The two attendants are bodily. I'm going to go back a minute to this because later on we may hear this is a stylized form of shading which is called the Ajanta style and it's It's apparently the first place, or at least existing, the first place they've seen these things. This is about 2nd century A.D. in the paintings, that painting. And we're up to the 6th century, and now we're in China. And the next five or six slides, these things are mammoth. And this gives you some idea of how mammoth they are.

[05:20]

You know, we were talking, say that again, the topknot. The ears, though, are not a symbol. The ears are because of his wealth and being extended before his renunciation. by having very heavy jewels, and then he gives, he, as part of the renunciation of his princely life, he gets rid of the jewels. So, you'll see, not only the Buddha, but other Bodhisattvas, who are supposedly come from princely families, will have the extended earlobes. Look at all the little Buddhas on this obverse. It's just amazing how many there are.

[06:26]

There's one book just on the Chinese ones here and then there's several on the rock and some of them I put over here but there's still more in among the other books. This is Mai Chi San, and I don't know how we did this. We have a very good book that we don't know that I checked out of the Berkeley Public Library. The library does know it, and I don't know it, but it's here. And this is probably a terrible, whoops. I guess I just did two of them because I wasn't sure. Some of these figures at Mai Chi San are huge, and they're made of clay. And they're not fired clay. They must have used some kind of binder, and no one has been able to duplicate quite what goes on.

[07:26]

Some of them are rough stone hewn, and then have clay on top, and then sort of gesso on top. But if you get a chance, I think they're among some of the most beautiful Buddhist art to look at that book because it won't be around here. And here is my Atreya at Dunhuang. And of course that was, when it was first painted, those colors were real vivid, right? Yeah, but you also, this may have been heavily restored. I think we have some, in the bathroom here, there are some postcard-sized things that are from Dunhuang. And this is this Maitreya's Rosalie 5th century. Whoops. This is very hard to see. And maybe I can do a little better.

[08:26]

There's a lot going on there. But this is an illustration from the Lotus Supra that was found at Dunhuang. And you can see about a third of the way up The trip. People going away from home and coming home from home. The story. And what country is this? This is from China. And it is also supposedly about the 5th century. For some reason my masking... has a little luminous quality to it, but these are two of our favorite people. And it's very hard to find images of Samantabhadra, but that's Samantabhadra there on his elephant. And that's Manjusri across from him. And it is not unlikely that there was a Buddha figure underneath, perhaps even sculpted, because

[09:37]

They often come in that kind of arrangement, or at least that's what the book says. But I haven't been able to find that many images anyplace of Samantabhadra. But as our representation of shining practice and evolves, we're still in Dunhuang.

[10:02]

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