Was Leonardo da Vinci a Buddhist?

by Gregory Allen Butler

Was Leonardo da Vinci a Buddhist? He strikes me that way--sort of like a Zen Buddhist. Consider the following quote: "In rivers, the water that you touch is the last of what has passed and the first of that which comes; so with present time." Is that Zen or what?

Or how about this: "Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence." Or, "Where the spirit does not work with the hand, there is no art."

How can anyone explain these words of Leonardo without attributing a Buddhist influence in his thinking? Maybe he was a Buddhist in his previous life. (In the realm of Buddhist possibilities I suppose.)

The most obvious characteristic of Leonardo that seems of Eastern or Buddhist influence was the fact that even though he wined and dined with Kings, he was a total vegetarian. Can you imagine living in Italy for 67 years and not having one meatball? That was unheard of in the society that he lived in. This was connected to his reverence for all life. How the decision to become a vegetarian came about I don't know, but it started, he said, from a young age. He viewed the slaughter of animals for their meat as being no different from the murder of a human being. That too, a reverence for all life, is very Buddhist.

He also developed a non-attachment to all material things. He saw, like the Buddha saw, that clinging was a source of suffering.

One biographer of Leonardo, Serge Bramly, compared the ambiguity in his writings to Zen koans and that the Mona Lisa was his supreme statement of the principle of yin and yang. Bramly also pointed out that Leonardo was the first Western painter to feature a landscape as the central focus of a work of art, something that was done regularly in the East

Also, in keeping with the Buddhist philosophy, he loved the concept of Nothingness. Here are some of his statements on it: "Among the great things which are found among us the existence of Nothing is the greatest…its essence dwells as regards time between the past and the future, and possesses nothing of the present. This nothingness has the part equal to the whole and the whole to the part, the divisible to the indivisible, and it comes to the same amount whether we divide it or multiply it or add to it or subtract from it…"

Like Buddha, Leonardo stressed the importance of direct experience rather than relying on priests or theology. In fact, the principle of direct experience (Dimostrazione) was listed as the second of the Seven Da Vincian Principles, as listed by da Vinci scholar Michael J. Gelb in his book How to Think like Leonardo da Vinci. Leonardo said, "Although nature commences with reason and ends in experience it is necessary for us to do the opposite, that is to commence with experience and from this to proceed to investigate the reason."

Other principles listed by Gelb that have Buddhist overtones include a recognition of and appreciation for the interconnectedness of all things (which has extended into modern day physics, as demonstrated by David Bohm and the Holographic Universe).

For instance, Leonardo wrote, "Everybody placed in the luminous air spreads out in circles and fills the surrounding space with infinite likenesses of itself and appears all in all and all in every part." That sounds like something you would expect to read in The Tao of Physics. He also said, "This is the real miracle, that all shapes, all colors, all images of every part of the universe are concentrated in a single point." That is the oneness that David Bohm was pointing to with his viewpoint of the Holographic Universe, which was also very Buddhist in its concept of oneness and illusion.

Other characteristics of Leonardo include the cultivation of poise (very Zen like principle which allows living life in the present moment); a willingness to embrace ambiguity, paradox, and uncertainty (Zen koans); and the continual refinement of the senses (I remember the story of Buddha holding up a flower for his disciples to just look at and after an extended period of time one disciple simply smiled - indicating his enlightenment.) Leonardo once said about perception: "There are three classes of people: those who see. Those who see when they are shown. Those who do not see." He also said "All our knowledge has its origin in our perceptions."

Leonard also practiced quieting the mind. Sometimes his patrons would complain that he wasn't working around the clock to complete an assignment. But Leonardo knew that his creative genius worked best when his mind was relaxed and not thinking about the work.

What does this mean for you and me as we strive for advances in our holistic personal development?

Was Leonardo da Vinci a Buddhist?

Only if you look upon Buddhism as a way of perceiving life--because like a Buddhist, he perceived the oneness and the interconnectedness of everything. More importantly, his life was an example for us to see that our creative possibilities are infinite if we can free our mind from conditioned thinking. He saw beyond the fragmentation of the world and embraced its oneness, which he saw in all of nature.
Paraphrasing David Bohm, his approach to reality was whole and the response of reality to him was whole-in all of its infinite ways.