Buddhist symbols

About buddhist symbols

Many Buddhist symbols stand for the Buddha, his teaching (the dharma) or the community that follows it (the sangha): the three jewels in which Buddhists take refuge. The oldest began as a way of showing the Buddha without showing him.

The best known today are the eight auspicious symbols of the Buddhism of East Asia and the Himalayan region: the Parasol, the two fish, the vase, the Lotus, the conch, the endless knot, the victory banner and the wheel. Zen Buddhism in Japan has its own, the ensō: a circle typically made with a single brushstroke, which the Japan Society calls “an important Zen symbol of nonduality and wholeness”, and which the Japanese dictionary Digital Daijisen defines as the round shape Zen draws as an image of enlightenment.

Signs instead of the Buddha

The earliest Indian sculptors did not show the Buddha at all. Albert Grünwedel, in Buddhist Art in India (1901), found no picture of him on the older reliefs: only signs of his activity, such as his footprints, the tree under which he reached enlightenment, and a Stupa raised in his memory. Alfred Foucher (1917) explains the wheel the same way. His teaching at Benares, in the Gazelle-park, was described as putting the wheel of the law in motion, and sculptors showed it as a wheel, usually with two gazelles.

The eight in use

The eight signs are also part of practice. The Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahayana Tradition, publishing Lama Zopa Rinpoche's translation of them, notes that it is common for them to be painted on the ground when lamas come to visit. Their order varies: in the image it shows, the banner comes first and the umbrella seventh.