A: Is for Art that allows you to be!

Following a hugely popular run in Japan and before embarking on a world tour the work of Shinjo Ito, is enjoying a stay at Milk Gallery located at 450 West 15th. Ito's 100 sculptures and engravings are here to enjoy and to bring enlightenment until March 20th. Buddhists believe that the experience of being in the presence of an image of the Buddha can be a reminder of one's potential for compassion, inherent in all humans. At Milk you are surrounded by the spirals of Buddha's. Shinjo Ito, a renowned Buddhist artist and the founder of the Shinnyo-en order of Buddhism created the images of Buddha to inspire quiet contemplation, but they have also become the objects of artistic value. In Japan, 300,000 people went to see the exhibition during its 54-day run. Ito is known to his followers, an estimated 900,000 worldwide. The show celebrates the centennial of Ito's birth in 1906 and is the first time this work has been presented to the general public outside of a religious context, in an artistic setting. Ito, whose first name, Shinjo, means "True Vehicle," and his wife, Tomoji, founded the Shinnyo-en ("borderless garden of truth") school, based on the Nirvana Sutra, the final teaching of the Buddha delivered on his deathbed, 2,500 years ago. A passage in the sutra was the inspiration for Ito's first major sculpture, the "Great Parinirvana," depicting the reclining Buddha, who had raised himself on one arm to address his followers in the moment before his death and entry into final nirvana. Completed in 1957 in only three months, the 5-meter-long, or 16-foot, resin Buddha is Ito's largest work and Shinnyo-en's central devotional image. "The Buddha is a man, not a god, who found enlightenment". In addition to the spiritual images, sculptures of family members most notably his two sons, who both died one at 2 and the other when he was 15. My favorite piece was a wood carving of Achalanatha. A part of the Vidyarajas he is a king of mystic or magical knowledge symbolizing the power and the victory of the five Jinas over the passions and desires. His appearance is fierce and angry, face menacing, his brows knit together. His symbol, the vertically held sword aids him to combat the 'three poisons': greed, anger and ignorance. In the left hand he holds a lasso to catch and bind the evil forces and to prevent them from doing harm. Achalanatha, having taken a vow to prolong the life of the faithful by six months and to give them an unshakable resolution to conquer the forces of evil, is sometimes invoked in this respect as the 'prolonger of life'. Behind him is a wall of fire with a phoenix, thus dying to himself he is reborn again. Every religion has something to teach us and art to enjoy and that is an enlightening F.A.C.T.