Site Visit: Dhamma Park in Lampoon Province Khun Venetia Walkey, proprietor and sculpture artist

January 2003

In January 2002, I attended the third annual Ariyavinaya Confernce at the ashram of Ajaan Sulak Sivaraksa, just south of Bangkok proper. While there, I met Khun Venetia Walkey, a British-born sculpture artist with a keen and unique idea for ways to integrate art, education and Buddhist social action. She gave me some information about her home in Lamphun Province, The Dhamma Park, and encouraged me to visit and/or send students from Warren Wilson who might like to serve as an intern with her for a summer. Married to a Thai wood carver, Insin, together they have transformed several acres of land about one hour south of Chiangmai into demonstration site for they dream they hope one day to be realized: a Buddhist theme park that is built around the cycle of Dependent Co-Origination. Our group traveled to Dhamma Park and spent two nights there, after we completed a four night home stay with villagers in the north of Thailand. We were tired, exhilarated and in need of just what Venetia had to offer us. A dose of generous hospitality, great food, the warm twinkle in her eye as she talked about her dreams, and understanding for the ways we needed to take time to process all the experiences we had been having up to that point. During our time with Venetia, we rested, ate wonderful vegetarian food that was catered for us by a strictly vegetarian sect of Chinese Buddhists, the Order of Kuan-Yin, celebrated the 56th birthday of our co-leader, Carolyn Wallace, spent time with Venetia contemplating the twelve links of dependent co-origination, and traveling (some of us) to a nearby conservatory for elephants. Here are some photos and a glimpse into the meaning of Paticca Samuppada or Dependent Co- Origination, a central principle of Buddhist philosophy.

"The Twelve Links of the Dependent Origination of Suffering (The Paticcasamuppada): An Allegorical Interpretation in Sculpture" by Venetia Walkey

When Venetia Walkey was challenged by a Buddhist monk to realize the Paticcasamuppada in sculpture, she felt a sense of great inadequacy at the thought of trying to tackle so vast a subject. Then she "caught fire" and felt an overwhelming sense of urgency to begin the task.

As the world situation became increasingly more unstable and confused, she wanted to share this profound and wonderful teaching with people of all races and beliefs in her own language, the language of sculpture.

To the best of her knowledge, the Paticcasamuppada has only been expressed by artists in the medium of the traditional Thangka painting of Tibetan Buddhism. The monk who gave her this task, had had a dream that it should be realized in the form of sculpture.

Many difficulties and obstacles arose before she could begin and when she did she did not attempt to impose her will on the sculpture but opened up to it and allowed the work to unfold in a natural and spontaneous way watching her mind as she worked when obstacles arose and trying always to maintain full awareness..

Her personal interpretation pf the teaching, as an artist, is contemporary and humorous, an allegory in the form of plaster models one quarter scale in size which should be constructed full scale in a sculpture park, monastery or suitable public place.

This is only a first attempt and the richness of the subject will result in many future variations on the theme. For those who may feel the subject is a gloomy one in world filled with gloom and doom, the realization that the Lord Buddha also taught the twelve links which lead to the cessation of suffering, should dispel this feeling. It will be a natural progression to attempt to realize those links in the upward spiral to enlightenment, in sculpture.

The work, she says, will probably take her the rest of her life and most of the next to complete; meanwhile, she hopes for positive results and dedicates the work to all the Buddhas, Bodhisattvas and suffering sentient beings.

A Guide to Each Piece in the Exhibition:

1. The Fountain of Ignorance:

Ignorance (of how things really are) is the most deeply rooted and difficult of the twelve links of the dependent origination of suffering to break. I have depicted the abstract and semi-abstract figures in the various groups in the exhibition with no eyes and heads, empty of wisdom.

A person who is wise may often be compared to a fountain of wisdom. In the Fountain of Ignorance, the central figure, Ignorance, is brain washing his two disciples: Greed and Hatred. In One Ear and Out of the Other is incapable of learning anything. The three small ignorants stand in awe of their master.

2. Volitional (Karma) formations:

Here the abstract figure symbolizes the volitional activity which conditions all our actions and reactions in body, speech and mind, past, present and future. The center of consciousness from which the formations arise is symbolized by the circular hollow from which a ladder leads up to the level of conscious being. On the reverse side, conception (physical and events, thoughts, ideas, etc.) is shown as a flash of lightning. The wire figures represent the Karma formations and are therefore empty of form but vibrate with every passing sense impression.

3-6 Doorway of the Six Senses (salayatana):

This comprises the next four links, namely Consciousness, Mind and Body, the Six Sense Bases and Contact.

There is a theatrical quality about this piece which might be likened to the theatre of the mind. It is symbolized by a doorway in which the five senses are depicted in low relief in the panels on each side.

The senses on the left hand side of the door are sleeping and are awakening as the right hand door opens. Consciousness which has a magical quality is knocking (contact) in the door. Wisdom and Ignorance wait behind it. Ignorance has a reverse spiral in the center of its body, symbolizing the vortex which leads up into the black hole of suffering.

7. Feelings:

Feelings, pleasant and their opposite are playfully depicted in the six low relief panels which form a screen. Looking glass is on the reverse side so that we can mirror our own in passing.

8. Craving

Is symbolized in this abstract piece whose hollow places can never be filled.

9. Attachment:

Here sensual attachment is depicted. A security guard stands on duty to protect wealth and pleasure. On the opposite side are the gamblers They gamble with their own and others fortunes, with lives, health, the environment and time. Ultimately they will all be losers. Attachment to rules, rituals, and personality belief (20 kinds of ego views) also lead to suffering.

10. Becoming:

Here is a family of TV heads, living in the TV set. They enjoy many delightful programs but may also witness the destruction of life on this planet as we know it, the greatest horror movie, the ultimate experience!

11. Birth:

In this group, the hell of rebirth is symbolized by a revolving door. Ignorance stands cradling a baby. The majority of us are bon in ignorance, not understanding the true nature of reality.

The Buddha said to his disciple Ananda: "Profound, Ananda, is this Dependent Origination. It is through not understanding and penetrating this law that this world resembles a tangled ball of thread, a bird's nest, a thicket of sedge or reed and that man does not escape from the lower states of existence, from the causes of woe, perdition and suffering from the round of rebirth." And further, "Whoso understands the Dependent Origination, understands the Law and who understands the Law understands the Dependent Origination."

12: Old Age and Death

The mourners carry a coffin through the portal of death. They cycle of rebirth continues. The Buddha taught us about suffering, impermanence and impersonality. Whoseover has not penetrated this impersonality of all existence and does not comprehend that in reality there exists only this continually self consuming process of arising and passing bodily and mental phenomena and that there is no separate ego identity within or without this process, will not be able to understand Buddhism i.e. (the teaching of the Four Noble Turths--Suffering, its cause, the way to end it and its cessation), in the right life. They will think that it is their Ego, their personality, which experiences suffering, performs good and evil actions, and that will be reborn according to those actions. They imagine their personality will enter into Nirvana via the eight fold path.

It is said in Vis XVI:

Mere suffering exists, no sufferer is found
The deeds are but no doer of the deeds is there,
Nirvana is, but not the man who enters it;
The path is, but no traveler on it is seen.


"Whoseover is not clear with regard to the conditionally arisen phenomena, and does not understand that all actions are conditioned through ignorance and the twelve links, things that is an EGO which understands or does not understand, acts or causes to act, that comes to existence at rebirth, has sense impressions, feels, desires, becomes attached, continues and at rebirth again enters a new existence. (Vix XVII)

20. The Fountain of Wisdom 8 metres high:

The journey from Ignorance to Enlightenment, from the ocean of suffering via the nine Jhanas, the four Brahma Viharas culminating on the roof above in a Weather Vane with the Arrow of the Dhamma piercing the defilements: Greed, Ignorance, Hatred and Delusion. This is crowned by the flame of wisdom

"The Paticcasamppada may be properly compared to the heart or essence of Buddhism" (Buddhadas Bhikkhu). It is the Buddha's detailed analysis of the Four Noble Truths: suffering, its cause, its cessation, and the way to end it. It is divided into twenty four elements of links. Twelve of which lead sentient beings into suffering and twelve of which lead us out of suffering through the development of wisdom.

The message is that Ignorance of how things really are, (or the true nature of reality) is the primary root of all unwholesome states of mind within which greed, anger and ill will are rooted (Lobha, Dosa and Moha). Of the fetters which bind beings to the cycle of rebirth and suffering, it is the hardest to break.

The teaching is as contemporary today as it was when first given to us by the Buddha. Now that our greed, ignorance, hatred and ill will has done such enormous damage to our environment and has made our planet earth, whose resources we have plundered so ruthlessly, a less comfortable place in which to exist, we have at last realized the interdependence of all living forms.

It is only through the practice of the Paramitas (the ten virtues: 1. Perfection in almsgiving and generosity 2. Morality 3. Renunciation 4. Wisom 5. Energy, 6. Forebearance (tolerance) 7. Truthfulness 8. Determination (resolution) 9. compassion 10. equanimity that we have any hope of redeeming the situation. Modern technology can help us to clean up the mess but the practice explained in the Paticcasamuppada an help us clean up our minds which create it.

The meaning of democracy was been much misunderstood. Those who have suffered under repressive political systems often think that democracy brings the freedom to do as you please but pleasure also brings us suffering as can be seen clearly in many democratic societies. Craving is never satisfied and although the twelve links of suffering can be severed at any point, it has been suggested that at a basic level, "Feeling" the ring leader, should be analyzed in discipline before it leads us on to "craving," "attachment," and the whole heap of suffering which ensues. The message is "do not grasp or cling to anything." Freedom from attachment is true freedom, the freedom from suffering at every level of existence from personal to international. We have not time to waste.