Buddha statues

Donald Trump as a Buddha

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Donald Trump Buddha statue

So this is one of the weirdest things I’ve seen in a while.

I stumbled across a story from two years ago about a Trump Buddha statue that was on sale in China. A 5-foot tall ceramic statue of Trump as the Buddha was being sold on Chinese shopping platform Taobao for $153. There also seem to have been plans for a 14-foot tall version that would cost buyers $613, although I’m unclear whether that actually came to fruition.

The seller said that the idea of the Trump Buddha statue reminded him of Trump’s slogan of “Make American Great Again” and the former US president often claimed he knew things better than anyone. So the seller adapted the idea into something auspicious for Chinese companies: “make your company great again.”

Some Buddhist teachings say that all beings have the potential for enlightenment, and in my own struggles to find a spirit of kindness and compassion for Donald Trump (let’s just say he’s not one of my favorite people) I sometimes did imagine him as a Buddha. To be clear, I wasn’t visualizing him as he is now but appearing as a Buddha: I imagined him having connected with and developed his own potential for wisdom and compassion.

This wasn’t the only practice I did involving the former president. I hope to share another article with you at some point, but I’m hoping it’ll be published outside of this blog.

If $153 to $613 is a bit steep for you, you might be interested in another of Taobao’s top sellers: a Trump toilet brush. It’s more modestly priced, coming in a pack of three for just $2. 

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The Monologue of Ice, by Atta Kim

The Monologue of Ice: Four Days, Spring Picnic, by Atta Kim.

This is from 2011, but you may have missed it. The installation, in the Rubin Museum, NYC, was by Atta Kim, who is a South Korean photographer (born in 1956) who has been active since the mid-1980s.

As the work melted, visitors were encouraged to touch the ice and take away non-potable water from the pool on their way out of the museum, using small glass containers that were provided. It was the artist’s intention that the collected water be used to continue the cycle of renewal by watering a plant.

This installation was a beautiful illustration of impermanence, insubstantiality, and interconnectedness.

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Appearance/Emptiness, by Sukhi Barber

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Sukhi Barber was born in Hertfordshire, England. From an early age she was drawn to the classical and ancient traditions of art and philosophy, which led her to undertake a traditional sculptural training at The City and Guilds of London Art School. There she gained a firm grasp of figurative clay modeling and life drawing, graduating in 1995 with the prize for sculpture, and a scholarship from Madame Tussauds.

After graduation Sukhi traveled to India, captivated by the timeless quality of peace and balance that she found in Asian art. Settling in Kathmandu, Nepal, she spent the next twelve years studying Buddhist philosophy and producing sculptures based on the traditional techniques of stone carving and lost-wax bronze casting.

Sukhi’s sculptures are intended to bridge the cultures of East and West. Embodying the peace and compositional balance of ancient devotional art, they represent complex philosophical ideas with a simplicity and clarity that renders them accessible on an intuitive level. Exploring themes of hidden potentials, and the transcendence of our limiting view of a solid reality, her work often represents the negative space as being as important as the material itself, implying the dance of form and spirit, a constant state of transformation.

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Ancient Buddhas, modern peril

Andrew Lawler, New York Times: When the Taliban blasted the famous Bamiyan Buddhas with artillery and dynamite in March 2001, leaders of many faiths and countries denounced the destruction as an act of cultural terrorism. But today, with the encouragement of the American government, Chinese engineers are preparing a similar act of desecration in Afghanistan: the demolition of a vast complex of richly decorated ancient Buddhist monasteries.

The offense of this Afghan monument is not idolatry. Its sin is to sit atop one of the world’s largest copper deposits.

The copper at the Mes Aynak mine, just an hour’s drive south of Kabul, is …

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How should we think about Bamiyan?

Leanne Ogasawara, 3QuarksDaily: There was recently mention in the media of a religious extremist in Egypt calling for the destruction of the pyramids. I first heard talk of this last summer — around the time that the shrines in Timbuktu were destroyed.

Holy hoax or not, I could not help but think of Bamiyan.

I can remember exactly where I was and what I was doing the moment I learned that the Taliban had blown up the Buddhist statues of Bamiyan.

Sitting in the backseat of a car in Los Angeles in 2001, we were stopped at a traffic light. The radio news mentioned it …

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Ancient site needs saving not destroying

Brent Huffman, CNN: Please bear with me as I ask you to briefly use your imagination. Close your eyes. Imagine Machu Picchu at dawn cloaked in fog. Now imagine the fog slowly lifting to reveal an enormous ancient city perched on the edge of a mountain.

Picture a sense of mystery being immersed in thousands of years of history as you walk between antiquated hewn stone structures. There is tranquility in the wind-blown stillness of the primeval site. You feel a renewed sense of kinship with the past and with your ancestors and feel a deep reverence for their lives and accomplishments …

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His Holiness the Karmapa: The technology of the heart

The name “Karmapa” means “the one who carries out Buddha-activity,” and for seventeen lifetimes, a karmapa has embodied the teachings of Buddha in tibet. The 17th Gyalwang Karmapa, Ogyen Trinley Dorje, was born a nomad in Tibet in 1985 and recognized by the Dalai Lama in 1992 as the 17th Karmapa. The young boy was brought to the Tsurphu monastery to live and study for his life as a spiritual teacher and activist.

At age 14, he made a daring flight from Tibet, and now works from a temporary camp in Dharamsala, near his friend the Dalai Lama. (After the Dalai Lama, he’s seen as Tibetan Buddhism’s second-highest-ranking spiritual leader, though the two men lead different schools within the faith.) In 2008, he made a long visit to the United States, where he spoke and taught at Buddhist centers around the country. And in 2009 he toured Europe, speaking about faith — but also about protecting the environment.

Translator: The way I feel right now is that all of the other speakers have said exactly what I wanted to say. (Laughter) And it seems that the only thing left for me to say is to thank you all for your kindness.

Translator: But maybe in the spirit of appreciating the kindness of you all, I could share with you a little story about myself.

Translator: From the time I was very young, onward, I was given a lot of different responsibilities, and it always seemed to me, when I was young, that everything was laid out before me. All of the plans for me were already made. I was given the clothes that I needed to wear and told where I needed to be, given these very precious and holy looking robes to wear, with the understanding that it was something sacred or important.

Translator: But before that kind of formal lifestyle happened for me, I was living in eastern Tibet with my family. And when I was seven years old, all of a sudden, a search party arrived at my home. They were looking the next Karmapa, and I noticed they were talking to my mom and dad, and the news came to me that they were telling me that I was the Karmapa. And these days, people ask me a lot, how did that feel. How did that feel when they came and whisked you away, and your lifestyle completely changed? And what I mostly say is that, at that time, it was a pretty interesting idea to me. I thought that things would be pretty fun and there would be more things to play with.

(Laughter)

Translator: But it didn’t turn out to be so fun and entertaining, as I thought it would have been. I was placed in a pretty strictly controlled environment. And immediately, a lot of different responsibilities, in terms of my education and so forth, were heaped upon me. I was separated, largely, from my family, including my mother and father. I didn’t have have many personal friends to spend time with, but I was expected to perform these prescribed duties. So it turned out that my fantasy about an entertaining life of being the Karmapa wasn’t going to come true. It more felt to be the case to me that I was being treated like a statue, and I was to sit in one place like a statue would.

Translator: Nevertheless, I felt that, even though I’ve been separated from my loved ones — and, of course, now I’m even further away. When I was 14, I escaped from Tibet and became even further removed from my mother and father, my relatives, my friends and my homeland. But nevertheless, there’s no real sense of separation from me in my heart, in terms of the love that I feel for these people. I feel, still, a very strong connection of love for all of these people and for the land.

Translator: And I still do get to keep in touch with my mother and father, albeit infrequently. I talk to my mother once in a blue moon on the telephone. And my experience is that, when I’m talking to her, with every second that passes during our conversation, the feeling of love that binds us is bringing us closer and closer together.

Translator: So those were just a few remarks about my personal background. And in terms of other things that I wanted to share with you, in terms of ideas, I think it’s wonderful to have a situation like this, where so many people from different backgrounds and places can come together, exchange their ideas and form relationships of friendship with each other. And I think that’s symbolic of what we’re seeing in the world in general, that the world is becoming smaller and smaller, and that all of the peoples in the world are enjoying more opportunities for connection. That’s wonderful, but we should also remember that we should have a similar process happening on the inside. Along with outward development and increase of opportunity, there should be inward development and deepening of our heart connections as well as our outward connections. So we spoke and we heard some about design this week. I think that it’s important for us to remember that we need to keep pushing forward on the endeavor of the design of the heart. We heard a lot about technology this week, and it’s important for us to remember to invest a lot of our energy in improving the technology of the heart.

Translator: So, even though I’m somewhat happy about the wonderful developments that are happening in the world, still, I feel a sense of impediment, when it comes to the ability that we have to connect with each other on a heart-to-heart, or a mind-to-mind, level. I feel that there are some things that are getting in the way.

Translator: My relationship to this concept of heart-to-heart connection, or mind-to-mind connection, is an interesting one, because, as a spiritual leader, I’m always attempting to open my heart to others and offer myself up for heart-to-heart and mind-to-mind connections in a genuine way with other people, but at the same time, I’ve always been advised that I need to emphasize intelligence over the heart-to-heart connections, because, being someone in a position like mine, if I don’t rely primarily on intelligence, then something dangerous may happen to me. So it’s an interesting paradox at play there. But I had a really striking experience once, when a group from Afghanistan came to visit me, and we had a really interesting conversation.

Translator: So we ended up talking about the Bamiyan Buddhas, which, as you know, were destroyed some years ago in Afghanistan. But the basis of our conversation was the different approach to spirituality on the part of the Muslim and Buddhist traditions. Of course, in Muslim, because of the teachings around the concept of idolatry, you don’t find as many physical representations of divinity or of spiritual liberation as you do in the Buddhist tradition, where, of course, there are many statues of the Buddha that are highly revered. So, we were talking about the differences between the traditions and what many people perceived as the tragedy of the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas, but I offered the suggestion that perhaps we could look at this in a positive way. What we saw in the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas was the depletion of matter, some solid substance falling down and disintegrating. Maybe we could look at that to be more similar to the falling of the Berlin Wall, where a divide that had kept two types of people apart had collapsed and opened up a door for further communication. So I think that, in this way, it’s always possible for us to derive something positive that can help us understand one another better.

Translator: So, with regard to the development that we’ve been talking about here at this conference, I really feel that the development that we make shouldn’t create a further burden for us as human beings, but should be used to improve our fundamental lifestyle of how we live in the world.

Translator: Of course, I rejoice in the development and the growth and the rise of the noble land of India, the great country of India, but at the same time, I think, as some of us have acknowledged, we need to be aware that some aspects of this rise are coming at the cost of the very ground on which we stand. So, as we are climbing the tree, some of the things that we’re doing in order to climb the tree are actually undermining the tree’s very root. And so, what I think it comes down to is a question of, not only having information of what’s going on, but paying attention to that and letting that shift our motivation to become more sincere and genuinely positive. We have hear, this week, about the horrible sufferings, for example, that so many women of the world are enduring day-to-day. We have that information, but what often happens to us is that we don’t really choose to pay attention to it. We don’t really choose to allow that to cause there to be a shift in our hearts. So I think the way forward for the world — one that will bring the path of outer development in harmony with the real root of happiness — is that we allow the information that we have to really make a change in our heart.

Translator: So I think that sincere motivation is very important for our future well-being, or deep sense of well-being as humans, and I think that means sinking in to whatever it is you’re doing now. Whatever work you’re trying to do now to benefit the world, sink into that, get a full taste of that.

Translator: So, since we’ve been here this week, we’ve taken millions of breaths, collectively, and perhaps we haven’t witnessed any course changes happening in our lives, but we often miss the very subtle changes. And I think that sometimes we develop grand concepts of what happiness might look like for us, but that, if we pay attention, we can see that there are little symbols of happiness in every breath that we take.

Translator: So, every one of you who has come here is so talented, and you have so much to offer to the world, I think it would be a good note to conclude on then to just take a moment to appreciate how fortunate we are to have come together in this way and exchanged ideas and really form a strong aspiration and energy within ourselves that we will take the good that has come from this conference, the momentum, the positivity, and we will spread that and plant it in all of the corners of the world.

His Holiness the Karmapa: Tomorrow is my Talk.

Translator: Lakshmi has worked incredibly hard, even in inviting me, let alone everything else that she has done to make this happen, and I was somewhat resistant at times, and I was also very nervous throughout this week. I was feeling under the weather and dizzy and so forth, and people would ask me, why. I would tell them, “It’s because I have to talk tomorrow.” And so Lakshmi had to put up with me through all of that, but I very much appreciate the opportunity she’s given me to be here. And to you, everyone, thank you very much.

(Applause)

HH: Thank you very much.

(Applause)

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Buddhist statue with Nazi connections discovered to be made from a meteorite

It sounds like an artifact from an Indiana Jones film; a 1000 year-old ancient Buddhist statue which was first recovered by a Nazi expedition in 1938 has been analysed by scientists and has been found to be carved from a meteorite. The findings, published in Meteoritics and Planetary Science, reveal the priceless statue to be a rare ataxite class of meteorite.

The statue, known as the Iron Man, weighs 10kg and is believed to represent a stylistic hybrid between the Buddhist and pre-Buddhist Bon culture that portrays the deity Vaiśravana, the Buddhist King of the North, also known as Kuberu, and as Jambhala in Tibet.

The statue was discovered in 1938 by an expedition of German scientists led by renowned zoologist Ernst Schäfer. It is unknown how the statue was discovered, but it is believed that the large swastika carved into the centre of the figure may have encouraged the team to take it back to Germany. Once it arrived in Munich it became part of a private collection and only became available for study following an auction in 2009.

The first team to study the origins of the statue was led by Dr Elmar Buchner from Stuttgart University. The team was able to classify it as an ataxite, a rare class of iron meteorite with high contents of nickel.

“The statue was chiseled from an iron meteorite, from a fragment of the Chinga meteorite which crashed into the border areas between Mongolia and Siberia about 15.000 years ago. “While the first debris was officially discovered in 1913 by gold prospectors, we believe that this individual meteorite fragment was collected many centuries before”, said Dr Buchner.

Meteorites inspired worship from many ancient cultures ranging from the Inuit’s of Greenland to the aborigines of Australia. Even today one of the most famous worship sites in the world, Mecca in Saudi Arabia, is based upon the Black Stone, believed to be a stony meteorite. Dr Buchner’s team believe the Iron Man originated from the Bon culture of the 11th Century. “The Iron Man statue is the only known illustration of a human figure to be carved into a meteorite, which means we have nothing to compare it to when assessing value,” said Dr Buchner. “Its origins alone may value it at $20,000; however, if our estimation of its age is correct and it is nearly a thousand years old it could be invaluable”

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French tourists guilty in Sri Lanka over Buddha photos

Charles Haviland, BBC: A Sri Lankan court has given suspended jail terms to three French tourists for wounding the religious feelings of Buddhists by taking pictures deemed insulting.

Two women and one man were detained in the southern town of Galle after a photographic laboratory alerted police.

The pictures show the travellers posing with Buddha statues and pretending to kiss one of them.

Most of Sri Lanka’s majority ethnic Sinhalese are Theravada Buddhist.

Mistreatment of Buddhist images and artefacts is strictly taboo in the country. The incident is alleged to have taken place at a temple in central Sri Lanka.

Website posting
Police spokesman …

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Bamiyan Buddhas: Should they be rebuilt?

Stephanie Hegarty, BBC: The destruction of Afghanistan’s Bamiyan Buddhas in 2001 led to global condemnation of the Taliban regime. But the decision by Unesco not to rebuild them has not put an end to the debate about their future.

When the Taliban were at the height of their power in Afghanistan, leader Mullah Omar waged a war against idolatry.

His biggest victims, in size as well as symbolism, were two standing stone Buddhist statues. Once the largest in the world – one measured 55 metres in height – they were carved into the sandstone cliff face of the Bamiyan valley in central Afghanistan during the 6th Century …

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