MEDITATE ON IT BUDDHIST PRACTICE A BIG PART OF LACMA'S.

Byline: Steve Rosen Correspondent

`The Circle of Bliss: Buddhist Meditational Art'' aims for perfection. That's because the exhibition, at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art through Jan. 4, is about the search for perfection - transcendence, enlightenment - in this temporal world. It is specifically about the role art plays for Buddhists in such a quest.

But while the art was created for a religious purpose, you don't need to be a Buddhist - or even religious - to appreciate its beauty. For just by its very existence, magnificent art is transcendent. And this show has many examples.

``Bliss'' brings together 157 objects of Himalayan Buddhist art from the last 1,500 years. There are intricate decorative sculptures and statues of metal, stone, wood and terra cotta, as well as paintings, manuscript pages, textiles and ritual implements from international private and public collections. About one-fourth of the objects belong to LACMA. And of special importance are the 12 pieces loaned by the government of Nepal - only the second time that nation has allowed its treasures to leave the country.

According to exhibition co-curator Dina Bangdel, Nepal has previously been very guarded about revealing the secret rituals and meditation practices used by adherents of the Vajrayana branch of Buddhism.

But as co-curator John C. Huntington explains, most of those secrets are now known, especially those involving yoga tantrics. In fact, the importance of this show is to educate outsiders about Buddhist practices and beliefs. In particular, there is notable artwork associated with Chakrasamvara meditation, in which the practitioner, through yoga, attempts to attain the qualities of the primordial Buddhas Chakrasamvara and Vajravarahi, whose union into a single entity generates a radiant light of bliss.

``For the first time in my awareness, it is a show that's certainly about the art but also about the religion,'' Huntington said. ``If you follow the didactics, you get a very good sense of where the Buddhist religion goes. It never addresses a capital-G God - an individual is to achieve enlightenment for himself.''

``The Circle of Bliss'' has been in the planning for five years and is a cooperative effort among LACMA, the Columbus Museum of Art and Ohio State University, where both Huntington and Bangdel teach.

It has been a painstaking show to curate and install, because of the mandate that it be as much about the religion as the art. To achieve that, it uses extensive wall text, diagrams and graphics, and also computer kiosks, to explain Buddhism. Yet, even though many Buddhist terms have passed into American popular culture - Jack Kerouac named a novel ``The Dharma Bums,'' Steely Dan a song ``Bodhisattva'' - the religion's complexities aren't always as easy to comprehend as the curators believe. Or wish.

Many viewers - this one included - are liable to be more confused than enlightened by trying to read and understand the text on the wall panels. The information is important and valuable - and learning about the concept of an abstract ``subtle body'' within the physical body is intriguing. But there are better ways to do it than while standing in a museum gallery - and it forces the art to fight for your attention.

Otherwise, the show's overall installation is soothingly effective. At the show's entrance inside the Hammer Building, an appropriate Buddhist saying has been printed on a wall: ``You are about to enter your own heart-mind.'' Galleries are painted in demure, contemplative colors, and there is even a special meditation room.

The starting point, appropriately, is also the religion's starting point - a stone tablet depicting ``The Birth of Siddharta,'' a small child dwarfed by the joyful, dancing figure of his mother. This piece, from Nepal's National Museum in Kathmanda, dates to the fifth or sixth century. Born a prince, he forsook his background to seek spiritual enlightenment and eventually became the first Buddha, an ``enlightened one'' who teaches transcendence, in the sixth century B.C.

One of the most impressive sculptures is the small ``Green Tara Attended by White Tara and Bhrikuti,'' made of a copper alloy with copper and silver inlays. It comes from LACMA's own collection. It shows a female Buddha on a cushioned throne holding a custard apple, attendants beside her. You don't need to understand the iconography to appreciate its rich decorative work and sense of lively, ripe roundness to the bodies.

The exhibition has brought together, from collections at LACMA and in Nepal as well as a private source, four carved statues that comprise the wonderful ``Amoghapasha Lokeshvara Group.'' There are only traces of pigment left on these 15th-century (or earlier) wooden sculptures, but in no way is their expressiveness diminished by the loss of paint.

The tallest figure represents one of the 108 forms of the Bodhisattva of Compassion, with his gentle hand extending. The shortest is a squat, gnomelike wrathful protector named ``Hayagriva.'' (The other two are female attendants.) Together, they form a fascinating welcoming committee in their room.

One of the most spectacular paintings is the 15th-century ``Chakrasamvara and Vajravarahi.'' A large watercolor on cotton cloth from LACMA's collection, it shows the male Chakrasamvara as blue with four faces and 12 arms. On his heads are crowns of human skulls.

Straddling him is the female Vajravarahi, semi-naked with her legs around his waist. According to the exhibition catalog, these figures ``are visualized as generating from within the heart of the practitioner (of yoga tantric meditation) in a brilliant red aura of fire that signifies the flame of transcendent insight.''

Even if you don't feel all that, the figures are vividly exciting - full of Hieronymus Bosch-like images, just as ``The Circle of Bliss'' is an exciting show if you relax and experience it rather than try too hard to comprehend it all.

Also related to the exhibition is ``The Circle of Bliss Sand Mandala,'' which was created by monks from the Ganden Shartse Monastery in India and is on display in the Ahmanson Building. It is the first time the specific Chakrasamvara style of sand mandala has been created in the United States.

THE CIRCLE OF BLISS: BUDDHIST MEDITATIONAL ART

Where: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 5905 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles.

When: Through Jan. 4.

Tickets: $5 to $9. Call [phone] or www.lacma.org for hours.

CAPTION(S):

4 photos

Photo:

(1) Chakrasamvara

Mongolia, circa 1700

(2) Dancing Vajravarahi/Vajrayogini

Central Tibet, circa 15th century

(3 -- color) Chakrasamvara Mandala 

Nepal, 1490

(4 -- color) Victory Over Mara

Tibet, circa 11th century