Welcome back! Today we're going to chat about statues, but first, lets watch some people in Burma make some Buddhist statues.
Incidentally, those captions appear to be in Dutch, any readers here know Dutch? (Or know German and can fake knowledge of Dutch convincingly?) Can anybody offer us translations better than the mess that Google comes up with?
More statues (and less Dutch) under the fold.
Background
I was thinking that we've been having some pretty heavy moments here the past several weeks, how about a lighter one. Statues came quickly to mind.
Buddhist statues are very recognizable, and found many places, even the homes of non-Buddhists. It seems worthwhile to chat about why we have so many statues, how we use them, and touch on a little bit of the meaning found in the details of the statue.
Let's start by looking at a statue of Buddha, this is the Tian Tan (Temple of Heaven) statue, sometimes simply called "Big Buddha". It was built on Lantau Island in Hong Kong, in the last millennium, which must make it quite ancient; some records date it back as far as 1993. Incidentally, it's not the largest statue of Buddha (in spite of the tourist brochures), but it's still pretty big.
Buddha Statues and Iconographic Attributes
Most Buddha statues are designed to symbolically depict some aspect of the enlightenment of Siddhartha Gautama, the Historical Buddha. As in many cultures steeped in iconography, an informed viewer doesn't need a name tag to identify what the statue is representing. Let me break down some of what we're looking at in this picture.
He is sitting on what (to me, even though I know better) looks like a giant pie. This is a stylized lotus blossom, and it tells us we're looking at a representation of an enlightened being. There's a bump on the top of his head, that's the quickest sign that we're looking at a representation of a Buddha (more about the bump on his head below).
There are many Buddhas in Buddhism, but according to tradition, they all look very similar, and had many parallels in their life story. When in doubt, it's generally not wrong to assume a Buddha statue is representing the Historical Buddha, other Buddhas would be identified by additional attributes.
His position is padmāsana, literally the lotus throne, commonly called "lotus position" in English, seated with his feet crossed so they rest on top of his legs. From this position he is making offerings to visitors in the form of mudras, hand signs. His right hand is held up in the Abhāya mudra, offering removal of fear and suffering. His left hand is held down in the Varana mudra, offering an opportunity to gain merit through charity (to be more blunt, it's saying "Donate here").
Other common mudras for seated Buddhas are the teaching mudra (palm up the right hand of the Big Buddha, but with the index finger touching the thumb), touching the earth (symbolizing overcoming the poisons of the world), and the meditation mudra, pictured to the right.
Incidentally, the Buddha statue on what passes for my altar right now offers the meditation mudra.
Thirty-two signs
It is said in the sutras that there are thirty-two attributes of a great man, of a Buddha, and many of these attributes make it into the statues. Some of these attributes would be unremarkable in a statue (40 teeth, evenly spaced, while quite remarkable in a living adult, especially of his era, not so much in a statue), some invisible (great voice like a lion), and others inappropriate (sheathed, some say retractable, penis).
Others have become frequent and traditional attributes of statues of Buddha: golden skin (that's why they're playing with gold foil in the video), a smooth and round neck (often with three lines to represent his voice), a mark or wisp of hair in the middle of his brow, and a turban-shaped fleshy protrusion on top of his head.
This isn't to say that Siddhartha, the historical Buddha, was wandering around the Ganges valley with golden skin and a bump on his head, plenty of other sutras make it clear that his appearance wasn't especially remarkable. The attributes are clearly metaphorical, and as such are each conveniently associated with an ideal for Buddhists to strive for. For example, the golden skin represents lack of anger, the bump on the head represents enlightenment. [Occasionally I try to read the sutras from a point of view parallel to the Biblical Literalists that make such noise in the US these days, it often makes me giggle to try to imagine these stories literally]
Why a statue?
Some might be wondering why have a statue at all? Some readers here surely come from traditions that go out of their way to avoid iconography or even forbid it, Judaism, Islam and Humanism come quickly to mind. Buddhism doesn't involve worship of a god, or even of Buddha (though some schools dance on a fuzzy line between veneration and worship), so one might think it would be easy to dispense entirely with all such trappings (and some modern Buddhists do just that).
Buddhism teaches that thoughts aren't enough, that we follow the eightfold path through practices and practice involves all of us, not just a thought in our head or a word in our mouth. For example, to express gratitude we don't just think "that was nice", or say "thanks", we practice Añjali (Gassho in Japanese, if you're wondering about my signature line). In addition to thoughts of gratitude, we include a posture of gratitude (typically standing or kneeling, while facing what you are expressing gratitude for), the mudra of gratitude (palms together and fingers up, much like the Christian prayer mudra), the action of gratitude (bowing), and the expression of gratitude (a gentle breath, or appropriate words, Namasté is a good all-purpose one, but I tend to use English words like "thank you" or "welcome" or "farewell", in context).
So, in Buddhist practice we often find that we would express gratitude towards that which has helped us reach where we are now, express veneration towards the potential we seek to realize, generally make offerings to help us realize that potential.
Performing a holistic practice of making offerings to a non-localized abstraction, like "Buddha nature", is pretty difficult. So, instead, we take an object and use it to represent the abstraction. Even better if that object can offer us reminders of what we're doing and why we're doing it. Better still if the object looks nice.
Thus, a statue, or sometimes a picture.
(As for why a statue over 30m tall on top of a mountain, that gets into issues surrounding the ancient practice of spiritual tourism, which I hope to get to another day)
Pu-tai and Maitreya
Some of you might, at this point, be thinking "But I thought that happy fat guy was Buddha?" The happy fat guy is an image of a tenth century Ch'an (Zen) Buddhist Monk named Ch'i-t'zu.
I have heard that Ch'i-t'zu was a very friendly and generous monk, who many considered to be an emanation of Maitreya Bodhisattva. After his death, Ch'i-t'zu became known as Pu-tai (Bùdài in Pinyin, Hotei in Japanese), which means hempen sack, referring to the sack of gifts to share he is often shown carrying. Many Taoist and Shinto practitioners use his image as a symbol of prosperity and luck. Many modern Buddhists use his image as a symbol of Maitreya.
Which means that, in some ways, it is an image of Buddha, because according to tradition, Maitreya is the "Future Buddha", considered by many to be the next one in line to achieve unsurpassed, complete and perfect enlightenment, to fully realize Buddha nature. Of course, by that measure, a picture of Dominique Strauss-Kahn is a picture of someone who might someday achieve unsurpassed, complete and perfect enlightenment, and thus a representation of Buddha, he's just farther from that goal. To help keep the images straight more easily: bump on head, already achieved enlightenment, that's Buddha; happy fat guy, carrying a sack or a coin, he's a cool dude but not a representation of Buddha.
So what does that mean? To offer any meaningful explanation would bring us to talking about Bodhisattvas, which will have to wait for another day.
Incidentally, anything I say involving Maitreya or Bodhisattvas only applies to Mahayana Buddhism. Theravada Buddhism has a very different take on Bodhisattvas, and the concept plays a much less prominent role in their practice.
Photo Finish
To finish off, let me offer some pretty pictures of Buddhist statues that I don't have a chance to go into details on here in the diary, but we can chat about them in comments if people want.
Any questions, comments, concerns, pretty pictures? Anybody want to take a stab at translating the captions in the video?