The All-Knowing Buddha: A Secret Guide

by Elena Pakhoutova and Christian Luczanits

The rare book is in excellent condition, no flaws except some yellowing at the edges. Never read.

Price: $120, shipping included, only for USA. No international shipping. Check and money orders accepted.

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This book is the culmination of a long story that began with the acquisition of fifty-four paintings from an elderly priest, who had served in a Belgian mission in Inner Mongolia in the 1920s, by the Ethnographic Museum of Antwerp in 1977.

The All-Knowing Buddha: A Secret Guide focuses on this extremely rare group of richly-detailed album leaves which illustrate the visualization practice of Sarvavid Vairocana, the All-Knowing Buddha. This beautifully illustrated step-by-step visual guide provides a unique glimpse into Tibetan Buddhist meditation and ritual, normally instruction restricted to oral transmission by a teacher to his initiated disciple. These practices are usually not meant to be depicted and this is one of the only albums known to exist in which the meditative visualization process is spelled out visually. While the ritual narrative of these unusual paintings is Tibetan Buddhist in content they are expressed in a vivid Chinese aesthetic, a unique product of cultural translation through its Mongolian patrons. The album exemplifies rich patterns of cross-cultural exchange that characterized the Qing Empire.

Three essays by the Rubin Museum curators explore different aspects of Vairocana and contextualize the album, illustrated with approximately twenty-five images, followed by the leaves themselves which are featured in fifty-four full-page plates with accompanying commentary on their ritual and artistic content.

For centuries, the esoteric, or hidden, tantric teachings of Vajrayana Buddhism, which involves complex visualizations and rituals, have been passed down in an unbroken lineage directly from teacher to student. Most of the time, the intricacies and deeper meaning of the practice being introduced were not written down or depicted in art. Everything was oral. A student had to receive his or her special instructions directly from the teacher. That is part of what makes this set of paintings unique.

Some of these images illustrate hand gestures, or mudras, which involve the body as an enhancement of the mind’s visualization of specific Buddhas. While specific hand gestures are common in Himalayan art, hundreds more are only performed during rituals and were never illustrated in art from Tibet. This set of paintings gives instructions and diagrams for some of these specific mudras.

Taken together, these images paint a compelling picture of what the state of enlightenment might actually look like, and how the activities of an enlightened being are performed.

Some of the paintings: