The Buddha as Icon
HUFFINGTON POST
March 21, 2011
CHINA - The Buddha image is as familiar as portraits of Jesus on the cross. Unlike Islam, which opposes depictions of Allah or Mohammed, the Buddha is widely used and accepted. Unlike other famed mystics, he had no preconceived religious beliefs or doctrine to which he could revert for supernatural explanations. Nor any inclination therefore to concoct a doctrine to attach readily comprehensible meaning to his experiences, i.e. become a prophet. To put it somewhat differently, he was disposed not to -- since he was surrounded by the rich, symbol laden and inquiring spirituality that pervaded early Hindu India that could have inclined him in that direction. So the tangible Buddha image bears the heavy weight of coming as close as possible to hinting at the ultimate intangible. The great, unmatched achievement of the finest Buddhist sculptures is to do exactly that. These supreme masterpieces literally raise the aesthetic to the plane of the most distant spirituality -- all with no or the very slightest symbolism as an assist. [link]
March 21, 2011
CHINA - The Buddha image is as familiar as portraits of Jesus on the cross. Unlike Islam, which opposes depictions of Allah or Mohammed, the Buddha is widely used and accepted. Unlike other famed mystics, he had no preconceived religious beliefs or doctrine to which he could revert for supernatural explanations. Nor any inclination therefore to concoct a doctrine to attach readily comprehensible meaning to his experiences, i.e. become a prophet. To put it somewhat differently, he was disposed not to -- since he was surrounded by the rich, symbol laden and inquiring spirituality that pervaded early Hindu India that could have inclined him in that direction. So the tangible Buddha image bears the heavy weight of coming as close as possible to hinting at the ultimate intangible. The great, unmatched achievement of the finest Buddhist sculptures is to do exactly that. These supreme masterpieces literally raise the aesthetic to the plane of the most distant spirituality -- all with no or the very slightest symbolism as an assist. [link]
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