Chakrasambhava（4）

Chakrasambhava（4）

Landeer has explained religious symbolism based on artistic symbolism:

“The works of painters, musicians and poets teach us how to use our eyes, ears, minds and emotions with more inspiring energy and refined skills. These works teach us how to more clearly recognised, in the world before our sophisticated sense, what this is and what it has the possibility to be. These works demonstrate to us how to observe the characteristics of some uncommon things we meet in this world, this world, with the cooperation of the human spirit, can make itself have these characteristics. Because art is a kind of career, in art, the world and humanity cooperate with utmost sincerity. At the same time, in art, the cooperation of natural materials and natural power, the cooperation of human skills and foresight, have obviously created many new characteristics and powers.

Is this not the same thing prophets and saints bring us? They can also do something for us, they can also cause change in ourselves and our world. They can also teach as certain things about this world we live in and about ourselves. They taught us how to discover what life in this world was like, and what life could be. They taught us how to detect what the human nature could create from its natural state and materials. They edified many latent strengths and possibilities we did not realize before. They allow us to accept some characteristics of the world we meet and at the same time, they open some characteristics to our souls, making this world have these new characteristics under the cooperation of the human spirit. They can let us better discover and feel the religious dimension of this world—‘the glorious order’ and the experience gained by people when they join and participate in this order.”

“The obvious characteristics of religious knowledge, which allow it not to be in competition with other kinds of knowledge, are: it is not some kind of unique experience or mysterious intuition, or knowledge about some higher realm, but an art, a skill, and a kind of ‘practical knowledge’. Its aim is to open the souls of people living in the conditions of the natural world to see the holy...” (re-cited from Study of Religious Philosophy, China People University Publisher)

This is true. Religious symbolism does indeed make Tibetan Buddhism have a kind of “glorious order”. It is pervaded by the unique wisdom of Tibetan Buddhism.