Page 31 - japanese and korean art Utterberg Collection Christie's March 22 2022

涅槃寂静 | THE COLLECTION OF DAVID AND NAYDA UTTERBERG (LOTs 1-20)

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.