Mapping the Trikaya @ AVA Gallery 3
Julie Püttgen, Mapping the Trikaya
May 1-28, 2024
Gallery 3 at AVA
3rd Floor
11 Bank Street
Lebanon, NH 03766
In the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, the Trikaya is a threefold way of considering our embodiment as living beings. This teaching is the inspiration for the large body-tracing drawings in this exhibition.
On one level, we show up in and as the nirmanakāya, sometimes translated as metamorphic body or manifestation body. This is the body of “I was once a newborn, and now I am 52, on the way to who knows what point, before this body dies and returns to the elements.” This is the body of race, class, and gender; of genetics and physical systems. Next comes the sambhogakāya, or enjoyment body. Sometimes this is called the subtle body. This level of incarnation encompasses emotion, energy, aesthetic sense, intuition, inspiration, and much more that animates our presence in this life. The third body is the dharmakāya, or body of emptiness. It’s the body of our nondual participation in the ground of being. Show me your original face from before your parents were born, says the Zen koan. Sometimes we gaze into the eyes of another being and we know we are seeing What Is gazing back at us. Finally, there’s the svabhavikakāya, the indissoluble union of these three. This integration body arises when the manifestation body, the enjoyment body, and the body of emptiness dance seamlessly with one another. It gives me shivers!
The thangkas or scroll-paintings in this exhibition are responses to the traditional instruction in Himalayan Buddhist painting that I received during a two-month study residency at Thangde Gatsal in Dharamsala, India. The form, with wider hips and shoulders and a narrower waist, intentionally evokes the body of an unseen being. Many of the fabrics used here are upcycled from thrift store clothing, household remnants, and friends’ sewing scraps. Domestic past lives, the body, and its absence, weave together into a sacred-ordinary whole.
***
For more information about artist and expressive arts therapist Julie Püttgen, please visit 108namesofnow.com and everyday-regalia.com.
All are welcome to join the artist for a closing reception
in the gallery on May 24 from 5:30-7pm.
May 1-28, 2024
Gallery 3 at AVA
3rd Floor
11 Bank Street
Lebanon, NH 03766
In the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, the Trikaya is a threefold way of considering our embodiment as living beings. This teaching is the inspiration for the large body-tracing drawings in this exhibition.
On one level, we show up in and as the nirmanakāya, sometimes translated as metamorphic body or manifestation body. This is the body of “I was once a newborn, and now I am 52, on the way to who knows what point, before this body dies and returns to the elements.” This is the body of race, class, and gender; of genetics and physical systems. Next comes the sambhogakāya, or enjoyment body. Sometimes this is called the subtle body. This level of incarnation encompasses emotion, energy, aesthetic sense, intuition, inspiration, and much more that animates our presence in this life. The third body is the dharmakāya, or body of emptiness. It’s the body of our nondual participation in the ground of being. Show me your original face from before your parents were born, says the Zen koan. Sometimes we gaze into the eyes of another being and we know we are seeing What Is gazing back at us. Finally, there’s the svabhavikakāya, the indissoluble union of these three. This integration body arises when the manifestation body, the enjoyment body, and the body of emptiness dance seamlessly with one another. It gives me shivers!
The thangkas or scroll-paintings in this exhibition are responses to the traditional instruction in Himalayan Buddhist painting that I received during a two-month study residency at Thangde Gatsal in Dharamsala, India. The form, with wider hips and shoulders and a narrower waist, intentionally evokes the body of an unseen being. Many of the fabrics used here are upcycled from thrift store clothing, household remnants, and friends’ sewing scraps. Domestic past lives, the body, and its absence, weave together into a sacred-ordinary whole.
***
For more information about artist and expressive arts therapist Julie Püttgen, please visit 108namesofnow.com and everyday-regalia.com.
All are welcome to join the artist for a closing reception
in the gallery on May 24 from 5:30-7pm.
Mapping the Trikaya @ Barre Center for Buddhist Studies
Once Upon a Time...
In June 2017, I co-taught Practicing Art/Practicing Dharma at the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies in Barre, MA with Stephen Batchelor. I was living in a lovely little house on the edge of the woods, not far from a litter of fox kits and their mother. Each day, I made one three by seven foot drawing on tarpaper, using oil pastels, exploring one of the aspects of the Trikaya, or triple-body of the Awakening Ones (basically everyone giving themselves half a chance).
These are, roughly:
Each day, someone from the retreat community would trace the outline of my body onto the tarpaper. Each day, working outdoors on the edge of the woods, I would make my drawing. Community of all beings in the beginning - my body traced by a friend in the morning. Community of all beings in the middle - caterpillars, ticks, and shadows walking on my drawing in the afternoon. Community of all beings in the end - a procession brings the drawing into group practice at the close of day.
These drawings also connect with early Buddhist representations of the Buddha's footprints: not the body directly, but a trace of the space around, in, and of it.
These are, roughly:
- the Nirmanakaya, or body of ancestors and descendants, aka physical body, manifestation body, metamorphic body. this is our race / class / gender body - the body of this particular moment in biology / history / society
- the Sambhogakaya, or enjoyment body of subtle energy - this is the parts of ourselves that cannot be explained by the above - what we feel drawn to / repelled by, the felt sense of ourselves and our emotions
- the Dharmakaya, or body of unobstructed spacious awareness - show me your face from before your parents were born - this is our participation in the ground of being - the unborn & undying
- there's a fourth body: the unalienable union, fulfillment, and integration of the first three. what would it be like to own our historical selves / our energetic selves / our emptiness-vastness selves, and live from all these layers simultaneously? that's called the Svabhavikakaya
Each day, someone from the retreat community would trace the outline of my body onto the tarpaper. Each day, working outdoors on the edge of the woods, I would make my drawing. Community of all beings in the beginning - my body traced by a friend in the morning. Community of all beings in the middle - caterpillars, ticks, and shadows walking on my drawing in the afternoon. Community of all beings in the end - a procession brings the drawing into group practice at the close of day.
These drawings also connect with early Buddhist representations of the Buddha's footprints: not the body directly, but a trace of the space around, in, and of it.