The exhibition focuses on the ritual use of artworks and highlights some of the most important ceremonies in East Asian culture. In the Buddhist calendar, certain holidays play a significant role. These holidays celebrate, for example, the birth or death of the founder of the religion, the historical Buddha Shākyamuni. Fasting festivals, the founding of temples, and seasonal rituals also play a significant role. At the centre are cult images of various Buddhas, Bodhisattvas (enlightened deities who help all sentient beings in this world), important monks or patriarchs. Ritual cult objects such as powerful sceptres (S. vajra), bells, or incense burners are used in the ceremonies.
On view in the exhibition is the small, gilded Sino-Tibetan sculpture of the child Buddha, which refers to the celebrations of Buddha’s birthday on the 8th day of the 4th lunar month, while a Japanese hanging scroll depicting Buddha´s entry into complete nirvana is an object of veneration during the annual commemoration of his death anniversary on the 15th of the 2nd lunar month. Rituals performed before the altars of individual deities took place daily in temple halls, separate or private prayer rooms. The exhibition showcases one of the museum´s most important Japanese Buddhist sculptures, a Buddha Vairocana from the early 12th century as well as a selection of ritual implements such as a vajra bell and a vajra sceptre, both of which were used in the secret rituals of this Buddha´s esoteric Buddhist schools.
The worship methods in the “Pure Land schools” related to Buddha Amitabha were aimed at lay followers mostly and promoted a simple invocation of the name of this Buddha. The exhibition offers visual imagery, such as a scaled-down copy of the monumental Taima Mandala and Japanese sculptures of Buddha Amitabha and his two attendants gliding down towards the worshipper.
The Bodhisattva Kshitigarbha, who had the ability to rescue the deceased from hell, had his own halls dedicated to him in East Asian temples, where he resided with ten Kings of Hell. A Korean hanging scroll depicting the eighth of one of these kings illustrates how the offering rituals might be imagined in this context.
Everyday purification and meditation rituals, intended to pave the way to enlightenment, have been preserved in texts and image scrolls. Other rituals performed in the temple, but also in public or private contexts, served to obtain wishes (money, success, long life), or ward off evil (illness, crop failure, crime). Buddhist lay followers usually donated money for incense, flowers or food. The donation and consecration of sculptures, steles and the copying of Buddhist texts as well as the ritual circumambulation of a stupa can be highlighted through the exhibited objects, such as the Chinese rubbing of one of the four entrance reliefs of the famous Great Wild Goose Pagoda in Xi'an, China.
The last exhibition room is dedicated to the reconstruction of a Korean consecration of a Buddhist image, the Bulbokjang ceremony (lit.: “hiding within the Buddha”), which was demonstrated at the museum of East Asian Art of Cologne. Every Buddhist object has to be transformed into a powerful cult image through such an eye-opening ceremony. However only in Korea, since the 18th century, have texts and other sacred paraphernalia been attached to the back of Buddhist images in a pouch or package, or glued to the back of the hanging scrolls.
