illusion that would be produced by one flickering light source if affixed to a spinning wheel's rim. 24 Whether or not Picasso had heard of this ancient Indian metaphor I cannot say but this time-lapse portrait of him drawing a light-minotaur perfectly illustrates the point (Plate 17). Strictly speaking, at any given instant, the minotaur does not exist, but the illusion of one is produced by the perception of a series of instantaneous but momentary points of light as a continuously flowing line. Likewise, "a succession of thoughts does not a Thinker make," one might characterize the Buddhist tradition as saying, at least not an eternally unchanging One.
Finally, I close with a rare match between Buddhist text and visual image, one associated with the aniconic symbol of expanded lotus blossoms.
Plate 17. Picasso Drawing a Minotaur, as
photographed by Gjon Mili, 1949. see Gjon Mili,
Picasso's Third
Dimension. (New York)
Triton Press; (distributed by Tudor Pub. Co., 1970)
24. as I have cited elsewhere ["The Interaction
of Dance and Sculpture in South India," George Kliger, ed., Bharata Natyam in Cultural
Perspective (Delhi:
American Institute of Indian Studies and Manohar, 1993), pp.
110-143], the twirling fire-brand metaphor appears in the
Mandukyopanisad with
Gaudapada's Karika and Sankara's Commentary, trans. by Swami Nikilananda (Mysore,
1974), pp. 260, 261; and the 6th c. Buddhist Mahavairocana Sutra, trans. from Chinese by Minoru Kiyota, in
Tantric Concept of
Bodhicitta: A Buddhist Experiential
Philosophy (Madison: South
Asia Center, University of Wisconsin, 1982), p. 79.