Quick Answer: What Are Chinese Buddhist Mudras?
In a Chinese Buddhist ritual text, a mudra (手印, shǒuyìn) is a formal gesture or hand seal. Some Buddhist rites use these seals together with recitation and visualization (观想, guānxiǎng). A sculpture can also depict a mudra as part of the image of a Buddha or bodhisattva.[1][2][3]
- Body: The hand seal gives the body a role in the rite.[1]
- Speech: A mantra (真言, zhēnyán), a ritual utterance, gives voice to another part of the practice.[2]
- Mind: Visualization or contemplative attention gives the mind a corresponding role.[1][2]
This is one model from esoteric Buddhist traditions. The gestures, words and objects vary by text and setting.
A hand seal cast in bronze can stay fixed for centuries. A set of drawings in a manual preserves something else: the way gestures are placed in relation to other gestures and passages.
What a Hand Seal Does in a Rite
The Three Mysteries (三密, sānmì) link body, speech and mind in Chinese esoteric Buddhism. In a Tang account discussed by Richard McBride, Amoghavajra explains the body’s role through forming seals, the voice through mantra and the mind through contemplation. The hand position belongs to a whole activity, so its place in the rite helps explain its function.[2]
What Survives From Dunhuang
Henrik Sørensen discusses three Dunhuang manuscripts with drawings of mudras. In the roll known as P. 3905, one set of drawings resembles the order of gestures in a manual devoted to a form of Avalokiteshvara. The similarities and omissions give scholars a way to compare how practices circulated. The sequence lets researchers compare the order of gestures across sources.[1]
What a Statue Can Tell You
An eleventh-century Liao gilt bronze at the Met shows Vairocana with two hands joined in a configuration the museum calls a wisdom fist. That gesture helps identify the figure. A manuscript can add evidence about sequence, words and contemplative focus. For other hand gestures in Chinese Buddhist art, start with the surviving pose and check the accompanying attributes.[3]
FAQs About Chinese Buddhist Mudras
Is a mudra the same as a mantra?
A mudra is a gesture or seal. A mantra is a ritual utterance. A text can pair them within the same practice.
Do all Chinese Buddhist rites use the Three Mysteries?
The framework is especially important in esoteric Buddhist traditions. Chinese Buddhist communities have many other kinds of liturgy and devotion.
Can a picture of a mudra tell you how the whole rite was performed?
A picture can preserve a pose. A manual or other record can add information about when the gesture appears, which words accompany it and what it means within a practice.
Источники
[1] Henrik H. Sørensen. On the Use of Mudras in Dunhuang’s Buddhist Rituals During the 9th to 10th Centuries
[2] Richard D. McBride II. The Mysteries of Body, Speech, and Mind: The Three Esoterica in Medieval Sinitic Buddhism
[3] The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Buddha Vairocana (Dari)