ISBN: Paper 1-887276-21-1
US: $ 12.95, CAN: $ 16.95
illustrated -168 pages
Fall 2000

DISCIPLES OF THE BUDDHA
Living Images of Meditation
With an introduction by Chogyam Trungpa
by Robert Newman

The book Disciples of the Buddha brings together the imagery of the eight surviving "Lohan" statues, from arguably the most renowned of all surviving ceramic works of Eastern art. The complete original work probably consisted of 16 or 18 statues and was a consummate achievement of human ability. They reveal stages and states of meditation. This book gives us a vivid sense of art traditions crucial to the understanding of human skill, the realization of art and a glimpse into a period of history in which those traditions appeared and largely disappeared.

"I think that these statues are expressions of nonverbal experience that the artist had in the state of arhathood. The statues are powerful because they are filled with a state of experience....We could say that these images present the particular realization of Buddha's sanity in his disciples...The images are done with a sense of awe and reverence, in a very sacred application. And so the images are very human at the same time kind of superhuman".
- Chogyam Trungpa (from the introduction)

"Robert Newman's Disciples of the Buddha results from many years of study from both inside and outside the Buddhist community. This thoughtful study of the remarkably life-like ceramic sculptures of the Tang Dynasty casts a searching light on a tradition long lost. Are these images more than their physical substance? Can one define their spirituality? This work teases us into an urgent sense of reality. "
-Ronald M. Bernier, Professor of Art History, University of Colorado