buddha lotus position with small dragon landscape

And his hair is gathered up into what seems to be a bun, but which is in fact a symbol of the Buddha's wisdom and enlightened state. He looks serenely into the distance, his eyelids lowered. This drapery hides most of his feet, except for a couple of the toes on the upturned right foot, which you can just see. On both shoulders he wears an over-robe, and the folds of the drapery form thick rounded ridges and terraces. The Buddha's hands and face are more-or-less life-size, but the body is smaller, and he sits cross-legged in the lotus position with his hands raised in front of him. But this one isn't gold - it's carved from grey schist, a rock that contains fragments of crystal which make the stone glint and gleam in the light. And here, in the British Museum, we have a Buddha sculpture that perfectly matches the pose of the one in Battersea Park. As the Buddhist message spread north, it passed into the region known as Gandhara, the area in what is now north-eastern Pakistan, around Peshawar, in the foothills of the Himalayas.įrom the 1850s onwards it was in Gandhara that vast numbers of Buddhist shrines and sculptures were discovered and investigated, in fact more Buddhist sculpture and architecture comes from Gandhara than from any other part of ancient India. He passed on his dharma (his way, his teaching) to monks and to missionaries who eventually travelled across the vast expanses of Asia. At this moment, he became the Buddha - the 'Enlightened' or the 'Awakened One'. After many experiences he finally sat under a pipal tree and meditated without moving for 49 days until, at last, he achieved enlightenment - freedom from greed, hate, and delusion. The historical Buddha was a prince of the Ganges region in North India in the fifth century BC, who abandoned his royal life to become a wandering ascetic, wanting to comprehend and therefore to overcome the roots of human suffering. Is it more than an extraordinary coincidence that at about the same moment Christianity, Hinduism and Buddhism all start showing Christ, Hindu gods and the Buddha in human form?Ĭoincidence or not, all three religions established then artistic conventions which are still very much alive today.Īround 1,800 years ago, Buddhism had already been in existence for centuries. In this week's programmes, I'll be looking at how, a little under two thousand years ago, great religions used the visual as a route to prayer. All religions have to confront the key question - how can the infinite, the boundless, be apprehended? How can we, humans, draw near to the other, God? Some aim to achieve it through chanting, some through words alone, but most faiths have found images useful to focus human attention on the divine. This week in our history we're with the gods or, in this case, as near to the gods as it's possible for humans to get. 'It's really the need for worshipping visually, for 'seeing' the gods, for having them visible, and not only thinking of the Buddha as a man who lived four, five hundred years before, and who has initiated a new way of looking at life.' (Claudine Bautze-Pictron) 'The presence of the image of the Buddha creates a very interesting and deep spiritual and calm ambiance, on the site where you have it.' (Thupten Jinpa) The story of how this changed, and how the Buddha came to be shown in human form, begins in Pakistan around 1,800 years ago. For centuries he was represented only through a set of symbols. The Buddha has not always been there for us to contemplate. Today you can find statues of the Buddha - seated and serene - all over the world, but it hasn't always been like this. I hardly need to describe the figure any further, because the seated Buddha is one of the most familiar and most enduring images in world religion. But then so, in a sense, do we all: here, looking out over the Thames, is the Buddha sitting cross-legged, his hands touching in front of his chest. His name is the Reverend Gyoro Nagase, and he knows these gilded Buddhas very well. Every day, watched by four gilded Buddha statues, a Japanese Buddhist monk drums his way over the grass. It's morning in Battersea Park in London, and I'm standing near the river, next to the Peace Pagoda. Seated Buddha (made between 100 and 300 AD).

Buddha lotus position with small dragon landscape