Sukhavati «Happy land».
Date of creation: 2017.
The film tells about the Buddhist paradise of Sukhavati, based on a model kept in the Museum of the History of Religion.
In Mahayana Buddhism, there is a concept of a multitude of Buddhas, which are grouped into «Five families of Buddhas» located in five different directions. In each of them there is a Pure Land, where one or another Buddha is the lord. In the western direction, the Buddha of Infinite Light Buddha Amitabha’s Pure Land, Sukhavati (translated from Sanskrit as «sphere of bliss» or «happy land»), stretches without a material dimension. Mahayana followers believe that this is a spiritual realm and, at the same time, a state of supreme spiritual joy, achieved by people approaching nirvana. A beautiful garden with fantastic trees, ponds and blooming lotuses, a «sphere of bliss», remote from the earth to myriad other worlds.
For centuries, masters of Central Asia and the Far East have been creating sculptural compositions depicting the ideal world of Sukhavati. In Buddhist monasteries, such compositions were exhibited in small temples specially built for them, open to believers only on certain days.
Today, in Russia, the owners of Sukhavati are the only Russian museum «The State Museum of the History of Religion» and only one Buddhist monastery, the Ivolginsky datsan in the Republic of Buryatia.