Before and Beyond the Image

Book excerpt: "Published a quarter-century ago, Dietrich Seckel's essay remains a vital contribution to a much-debated feature of Buddhist art, its aniconism, its aversion to depicting spiritual entities of the very highest order. Unlike Judaism, early Christianity, and Islam, he explains, the Buddhist faith has not condemned the representation of holy beings or living creatures. Nonetheless it believes that its most crucial spiritual insights lie beyond the power of human imagination to describe or depict; the visual arts can allude to them only obliquely, through omission on the use of non-iconic figures. This discrepancy between the practical, ritual functions of the work of art and concepts of ultimate sanctity, Seckel suggests, has affected Buddhist arts throughout Asia, particularly those of the Meditation School (Chan, or Zen) in China and Japan. " - From the Introduction