Website of interest: About building Stupas

Saturday, January 26, 2008

I found this blog recently about the construction of a stupa in Thailand. Particularly I found the article of a visiting Rinpoche (religious leader) and his talks about the importance of a stupa. According to him the purposes of building a stupa are, mainly, to better the people (eliminate "defilements" or attachments) and to receive blessings from it. Also that the pursuit of building such a structure has to be done carefully and with the right intentions.

But I guess that the main thing that struck me was the idea that the stupa didn't belong to anyone, that it was built so that everyone could be benefited. It doesn't belong to the builders, the sponsors, to the religious, it belongs to everyone who comes in contact with the stupa. I find it interesting because as an artist, I can become attached to my artwork... I mean if I work three months on a video, its mine! or at least that's how I feel. But here the idea is not to build something and say: "We made it" or "Look! this represents us!". The purpose is to help the viewer become better.

I'm so used to seeing monuments or memorials, things that in a way belong to either a country, a group of people, or an individual not because they physically own it but because they own it emotionally. It's as thought the object in a way either represents them or relates to them. I don't think that anyone would say that a veteran's memorial wouldn't in a way belong to the veteran's themselves. However, with the stupa the idea of ownership is different, they want the effect that the structure has on people to not be limited to a select group but for it to be universal. This may all sound odd, maybe even too spiritual to handle, but I think it's relevant to the arts. As an artist I may feel that my artwork belongs to me, because of my effort put into it, but we also have to acknowledge the partial ownership that the viewer has on the work. They also have a connection to the work due to them being in contact with it and I as an artist have to be conscious of the fact they are affected by it and that the message that I put in it belongs to them as well.