Symbols of Reverence — Ritual & Devotion : Artwork 3

A Buddha portrait reduced to the minimum number of lines required to communicate the Dhyana mudra state — meditative absorption deep enough that all physical feature becomes secondary to the quality of inner attention. The ushnisha is a single flattened form, the ears are the canonical long lobes, the eyes are closed. This is the Zen school's approach: not less as poverty but less as precision. In the Chan and Zen portrait traditions, the teacher's face was rendered in the fewest possible brushstrokes because the painting was understood as an act of the same concentration it depicted.