Tetsunori Koizumi, Director

Valentine’s Day, while started out as a liturgical celebration for a Christian saint, has become a universal day of celebration of love in countries all over the world, Christian as well as non-Christian. In most countries, it is recognized as a special day for lovers as they express and confirm their love for each other by exchanging cards, flowers, or sweets. In Japan, however, which is a non-Christian country with the number of Christians comprising two percent of the population at the most, Valentine’s Day has become the day when females can openly express their love for their male friends without fear of inviting social criticism for being too aggressive in expressing their personal feelings. To make things equal between the sexes, the Japanese have invented White Day, which falls on March 14, as the day when males can openly express their love for their female friends by sending chocolates—preferably white chocolates—to them from whom they had received the gift of love a month earlier on February 14.

The issue of who invented the custom of White Day in Japan and for what reason is not firmly settled and still being debated. It would be nice if it had been invented expressly for males as their Valentine’s Day, for it would give an opportunity for them, especially for those who are naturally shy and timid, to openly declare their love to their female friends. Some cynics say, however, that the idea of White Day actually came from some enterprising merchants who wanted to increase their sales of chocolates and other sweet products. If that had been the case, White Day would carry less significance as another special day for lovers to express and confirm their love for each other. It would instead become a day to confirm love of money on the part of chocolate makers. Be that as it may, the custom of White Day, now widely observed in Japan, offers an interesting example of the way a certain custom developed in one culture goes through transformation as it is adopted and absorbed by another culture.

Love of money, or the profit motive, although widely embraced as the motive behind economic transactions all over the world in the age of global capitalism, does not mean that money is the only object of love. Indeed, there are all kinds of things that become objects of love, things which people become passionate about, such as beauty, country, food, liberty, music, reading, sports, wine, work, and so on. And, of course, there is love of knowledge, which drives philosophers and scientists to seek knowledge of the world around us. If objects of love are many, so are adjectives used to describe love: blind love, eternal love, secret love, sweet love, true love, unrequited love, and so on. And there is unconditional love, an adjective usually reserved as a special reference to Jesus’ love for mankind.

Indeed, Christianity is one religion that has elevated love as a supreme goal for its practitioners, as is typified by Jesus’ message: “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you.” (Matthew 5:44) Love Jesus is talking about here is not love in the usual sense of that word as affection or passion between two individuals. It is love of mankind, the kind of love that is extended to all human beings, which Plato and Greek philosophers called agape, or “universal love”, to distinguish it from eros, or “bodily love” and phila, or “brotherly love”.

Love is also important for Buddhist practitioners. In Buddhism, however, love of all human beings is not enough: Love must be extended to all living beings, to all things endowed with the Buddha-nature. Moreover, this love, or metta, which is usually translated as “loving-kindness”, is one form of practice, one of the four meditations called brahmavihara, the other three being: karuna, or “compassion”, mudita, or “altruistic joy”, and upekkha, or “equanimity”.

The word brahmavihara literally means “Brahma’s abode”, which is also translated as “divine abodes”. Brahma’s name is employed by the Buddha to characterize the four meditations because, as is recorded in Subha Sutta, he is responding to a question put to him by the Brahman student Subha. The Buddha recommends the four meditations to Subha if he is to find the path to the divine abodes to be in the company of Brahma: “What, student, is the path to the company of Brahma? Here a monk dwells pervading one quarter with a mind imbued with loving-kindness, … one quarter with a mind imbued with compassion, … one quarter with a mind imbued with altruistic joy, … one quarter with a mind imbued with equanimity, …” (Majjhima Nikaya 99)

Whether we are declaring our first love, or confirming our old love, on Valentine’s Day, we are expressing our attachment to someone special as the object of our love as passion by sending cards, flowers, or sweets. Let us remind ourselves, however, that there is no such thing as eternal love, for love, like everything else in the world around us, is impermanent and subject to suffering. As the Buddha reminds us in his first discourse he delivered in the Deer Park at Isipatana, “separation from what is pleasing is suffering”. (Samyutta Nikaya 56) What we need to remind ourselves as Buddhist practitioners on Valentine’s Day is not just love as passion but love as practice, namely, the need to constantly practice meditations to cultivate metta, karuna, mudita and upekkha so that we, too, can reach brahmavihara. After all—to paraphrase the memorable, closing words of Scarlet O’Hara in Gone with the Wind—Valentine’s Day is another day … for Buddhist practitioners.

Tetsunori Koizumi, Director

Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890) is one of the most popular painters of the nineteenth century, known for his use of vivid colors and bold strokes. He is also known to have created many “repetitions” such as the two versions of “Le Moulin de la Galette” (1886) and two versions of “Pink Peach Trees” (1888). As for the postman Joseph Roulin and his family, van Gogh did six oil paintings and three drawings of Joseph Moulin (1888-1889), painted five portraits of Madame Augustine Roulin (1888-1889), two portraits of Camille Roulin (1888), their second son, and three portraits of Baby Marcelle Roulin (1888). An exhibition called Van Gogh Repetitions (at the Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C. October 12, 2013 - January 26, 2014, and at the Cleveland Museum of Art, March 2 - May 26, 2014) takes a look at this fascinating aspect of van Gogh’s work, bringing together these and other repetitions.

Why did van Gogh create these repetitions? Before answering this question, we need first to clarify the meaning of “repetitions”. Patricia Mainardi, an art historian and a specialist on nineteenth-century art, defines “repetitions” as “additional versions of a work made by the same artist after his own work.”¹ According to this definition, van Gogh certainly created many repetitions. Why did he create them, then? Why was it necessary for him to create more than one landscape painting of a scene and more than one portrait of a person?

According to art historians who have looked into this question, van Gogh usually did the first version on site, which he called “etudes d’apres nature” (studies from nature), and created the second and other versions later in the studio after the first model. In the case of portraits, the first version was made with a person sitting as a model before creating the second and other versions in the studio. What distinguishes the later versions done in the studio from the initial version done on site or with a model is that they are more elaborate and more refined, as William H. Robinson points out in his essay included in Van Gogh Repetitions.² In the second version of “Pink Peach Trees”, for example, van Gogh added more trees and painted with finer and more uniform strokes. Thus, van Gogh did repetitions not only to reproduce copies of the initial version in the studio to exchange them with other artists or to give them as gifts to his model sitters but also to refine it with variations in the colors and compositions and with more careful and elaborate use of brushstrokes. In short, repetitions are, in the case of van Gogh, for reproduction and refinement.

Creating repetitions, to the extent that it is motivated by the desire to improve on and refine the initial version of one’s work, can be considered an act of constant practice, an act of making oneself a better artist. Aside from artistic creation, we all know that “repetitions” play an important role in the context of education as an effective method of instruction, whether in schools or monasteries. In fact, we may recall how the Buddha appealed to the frequent use of repetitions in his discourses to his monks. For example, in his discourses on the Five Aggregates, the Buddha repeats what he says about “form” with respect to the other four factors of “feeling”, “perception”, “volitional formations”, and “consciousness”, using the same expression: “Monks, form is nonself. For if, monks, form were self, this form would not lead to affliction, and it would be possible to determine form: ‘Let my form be thus; let my form not be thus.’ But because form is nonself, form leads to affliction, and it is not possible to determine form: ‘Let my form be thus; let my form not be thus.’ Feeling is nonself. … Perception is nonself. …Volitional formations are nonself. …Consciusness is nonself. …”³, where “…” indicates repetitions, except that form is replaced by feeling in the second repetition, by perception in the third, volitional formations in the fourth, and consciousness in the fifth. Of course, the Buddha could have said: “Monks, what I said about form also applies to feeling, to perception, to volitional formations, and to consciousness.” Apparently, he did not say so, judging from the way his discourses are recorded in the Nikayas. Why not, then? Why did the Buddha have to repeat the same message five times?

Considering that his teaching was done only in the form of oral transmission, it is not difficult to see why the Buddha appealed to repetitions in his discourses: as a teacher, the Buddha wanted to make sure that his students, or monks, were getting the message he wanted to convey to them by repeating it over and over again to emphasize the important points that need to be understood and learned. Indeed, we may recall how the Buddha often prefaced his discourses with these words: “Listen and attend closely to what I shall say.” For the Buddha, repetitions thus served as an effective teaching device. In short, repetitions are, in the case of the Buddha, are for reinforcement and retention.

While there are differences between van Gogh and the Buddha as to how and why repetitions were employed, there is little doubt that repetitions have an important role to play in art as well as in education. Given the fact that both van Gogh and the Buddha employed repetitions effectively, we may wonder if there is any possible link, or commonality, between them. Although his father was a minister and he himself wanted to become one at one stage in his early life, there is little information as to whether van Gogh was interested in Buddhism. Unlike Odilon Redon (1840-1916) whose portrait of the Buddha is well known among art lovers, van Gogh is not known to have created a portrait of the Buddha. If there were any possible link between them, it would have to be among his portraits of other individuals. One candidate is the second version of “Pere Tanguy”, which William Robinson describes as follows: “The owner of an art supply store and meeting place for assorted Impressionists and Post-Impressionists, Tanguy appears in both paintings sitting calmly and stoically with folded hands, as if assuming the meditative pose of a Buddha.”⁴ As one whose life was filled with pain and suffering, could van Gogh be depicting his image of serenity that comes from meditative practice in this portrait?

1.  Minardi, Patricia, “The 19^th-Cnetury Art Trade: Copies, Variations, Replicas”, Van Gogh Museum Journal, 2000, p.68.
2. William H. Robinson, “On the Origin and Evolution of Van Gogh’s Repetitions”, Rathbone, Eliza E., Robinson, William H., Steele, Elizabeth, and Steele, Marcia, Van Gogh Repetitions, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2013, pp.16-39.
3. Samyutta Nikaya 22:59, as translated by Bhikkhu Bodhi.
4. Van Gogh Repetitions, op.cit., p.24.