If you are tired of the state of the world, go feast your eyes on some really big buddhas (scroll down for photo index).
The Mahablog
Politics. Society. Group Therapy.
If you are tired of the state of the world, go feast your eyes on some really big buddhas (scroll down for photo index).
Wow. Thanks for the images.
I believe the biggest Jesus statue in the world in the one in Rio de Janeiro, and it’s only 30 meters tall. It’s like a shrimp compared to some of these big boys.
Cosmic. I hope to visit them personally.
Dig the toenails on the reclining Buddha of Burma!!..talk about a major pedicure!!!!! I wonder if she got them done at an Asian shop? HA!!!!!
All joking aside,,, they really are something to behold just looking at the photos …I have to echo Moonbat…I also would love to visit each of them…Great photos!!!!
Beautiful! One of my favorite college courses was on the art of Asia, because for the first time I learned about religious iconography other than Judeo-Christian. I was amazed at the vast sweep of Buddhism, the variety of cultures that embraced it and adapted it, which is reflected in the diverse styles of these statutes.
And yeah, any one of these Buddhas could pat little Brazilian Jesus on the head, and say, “There, there, kid.”
Kamakura Daibutsu nan desuka?
The Kamakura Daibutsu is a big buddha, but it is smaller than the ones I included in the gallery. I believe it’s also smaller than the Nara Daibutsu, which also was left out. The Nihonji Daibutsu is the biggest seated buddha in Japan, and it’s a lot smaller than the Tian Tan and Leshan seated buddhas in China and the standing Ushiku Amida Buddha of Japan. I plan to expand the gallery eventually and include more buddhas, though.
I don’t quite get the connection between wisdom and compassion and size of effigy. (Nor, of course, do I ‘get’ old St. Simeon who after spending an entire summer as “a rooted vegetable” in a garden, built his 60 foot tower on which he sat for the next 30 years.)
Maybe the giant effigies and Simeon’s 30-year sojourn atop a tower are based on the belief that the further one gets from earth, or the closer one gets to the universe, the holier one becomes and/or the more one grows in wisdom and compassion?
felicity — some of the really old big buddhas were built for protection. The 8th century Leshan buddha was built to protect people from river demons, for example. There’s a famous big old buddha in Nara, Japan (not in the gallery) that was erected to protect Japan from something or other. Some of the other buddhas were built as expressions of devotion, I think.
The new ones are mostly being built to be tourist attractions.