SPEAKER 1: For me, the special thing about a Buddha image
is often the smile, that beautiful transcendent smile.
And behind the smile is the story
of how the Buddha got to the smile.
SPEAKER 2: He was seeking transcendence
from human suffering.
And all part of this journey from growing up
in a life of luxury and then leaving
the walls of his palace.
And encountering four things that
changed the course of his life forever, a corpse, a sick man,
the holy man, and an old man.
And through that, he realized that life is full of suffering.
SPEAKER 1: He realized that the beautiful body of a prince
was really a receptacle for pus and urine and excrement.
A body would be diseased, it would grow old.
And these things were in permanent.
Where was release?
Where was happiness?
Where was salvation?
And what we see in this statue is the moment of realization.
Suffering comes from desire.
Desire can be transcended by right acts and right thought.
We see the smile of liberation on his lips.
We see the hand pointed to the earth,
calling on the earth to witness his enlightenment.
It's useful to remember that the worshipper would look up.
The Buddha is sacred.
The statue is placed high, in relation to us,
and smiles down on us.
And gives us a sense that we, too,
can overcome pain and suffering of the world
and get into a transcendent place.
SPEAKER 2: We can see that he grew up in a life of luxury.
The elongated ears, which reveals
that he would have worn really heavy earrings.
SPEAKER 1: But the ears being something else, besides.
Yes, the lobes are distended.
Yes, the lobes held jewelry.
But he also has ears that mark his
as a particularly special person.
SPEAKER 2: We can see various Lakshanas, which
represent Buddha's enlightenment.
The urna, between his eyes, represent
the moment of spiritual awareness.
And the ushnisha, on the top of the head,
the moment of enlightenment.
And also, often we see the Buddha
sitting on a lotus flower, a symbol of getting beyond pain
and overcoming obstacles to achieve goodness.
Because the lotus flower lives in the mud and eventually
cleanses itself to become beautiful.
SPEAKER 1: He is often portrayed in the robes
of a monk, somebody who has left the world, gone
to live-- in the Buddha's story-- in the forest,
throughout Asia.
Monks often live in mountain monasteries.
They have withdrawn from the stress and strain
of normal every day social life and the pain
that it engenders among us.
And this is a Thai statue.
And if you look, you see the life body
of a beautiful southeast Asian prince.
You see the grace of the hands that might even
make you think of the way dancers dance in Thailand.
SPEAKER 2: So even though it's a classic Buddha,
it's fairly recent and not from India.
SPEAKER 1: Buddhism is a traveling religion.
Buddhism went north and Buddhism went south.
Northern Buddhism, sometimes known as Mahayana Buddhism,
the Buddhism of the Greater Vehicle.
Theravada Buddhism-- well, Theravadans
claim the original form.
For Theravadans, enlightenment is an individual project.
Buddhism also went north, and there enlightenment
is a more collective project.
Buddhism is a more collective project.
One of my old professors used to say,
Theravadan Buddhism, that is like getting
to nirvana by private car.
Mahayana is getting to nirvana by public bus.
SPEAKER 2: [LAUGHING] I think I'd prefer public bus.
SPEAKER 1: We'll see how different statues reflect
the tastes and the characteristics of people
living in all of the different places where Buddhism traveled.
SPEAKER 2: Another Buddha, totally different,
also recognizable as a Buddha.
But look at those elaborate robes
and the hair and the facial features.
SPEAKER 1: Yes, there's a good reason
why this statute looks the way it does.
And it's a great example of how Buddhism traveled.
This is a statue from Gandhara.
Gandhara in Pakistan, on the AfPak border,
that area that's so fraught today.
And if you look at the statute, you see the facial hair,
the features suggest something of people
who live in that part of the world.
But look at those flowing robes.
Those might recall a Greek statue.
The reason for that, people think,
is because this was the eastern-most extent
of Alexander's empire.
This was a part of Asia that had very close ties
to the Greco-Roman world, and a place
where styles of sculpting probably
were influenced by those traditions.
SPEAKER 2: This Buddha is not calling on the earth
to witness his enlightenment.
It's a whole different mudra, a whole different posture.
SPEAKER 1: And yet he's still in the lotus pose,
he has the long ears, and he has that meditative expression
on his face.
SPEAKER 2: So now moving to Japan,
this is an entirely different representation of the Buddha.
To me, it's a bit austere, almost a bit intimidating.
The black robes and the staff in his hand.
Although recognizable because of the lotus flower that
he's standing on.
SPEAKER 1: And the long ears.
This is a Japanese figure, a very elegant, very austere one
as you've said.
But this Jizo, the Bodhisattva.
And he's actually a very benign figure.
It's again, this idea of enlightenment via the big bus.
Bodhisattvas help us.
We're down here in the world of pain
and there are beings who put off their own transcendence
to be there for us.
The most popular figure of this is
Guanyin, a female Bodhisattva who, in many respects,
resembles a mother.
Now Jizo is sometimes identified with Guanyin.
He again, swing back to the masculine side.
But Jizo, Jizo is there in the world
of the dead to help people get through.
He's not an underworld judge.
He's not a punishing figure.
Jizo says, come huddle under my cloak and I'll help you.
SPEAKER 2: But he is associated with death and the underworld.
SPEAKER 1: In a positive sense.
Because we've all got to go there,
and we need somebody on our team.
In Japan, he is often associated with children,
a protector of children.
You see shrines to Jizo in neighborhoods.
And those are usually folksy figures.
They're a little bit more approachable
than this very austere statue.
And he is a protector of dead children.
There will be Jizo shrines in Japanese temples,
and there'll be a lot of little Jizo figures
that represent the children, themselves.
And people will leave candy and toys for them.
They're very, very poignant places.
SPEAKER 2: My goodness, what a radical change.
The fat, happy, laughing Buddha that we
see all around New York City, all around the world in shops,
in the back of taxicabs.
SPEAKER 1: And there's a good reason
for that, because this is a Buddha associated
with good fortune, with fertility, and by extension,
wealth.
This is the Buddha that helps you
when you're dealing with this quirky market,
maybe makes things turn out in your favor.
This is the Buddha of the future.
There are many Buddhas, many enlightened beings.
Prince Siddhartha, the Buddha we think of as the Buddha,
was actually only one.
This particular Buddha, Maitreya,
the Buddha of the future, is a being
who is an apocalyptic figure.
He signifies changing times.
And as a consequence, he seems very magical.
SPEAKER 2: He's also inspired by a legend of a monk that
lived 1,000 years ago, Hotei, who
traveled around carrying a sack.
This Buddha would have also carried a sack quite often,
delivering goods to people.
Candy to children, as the legend holds,
rice to adults for their fields.
Almost a Santa Claus-type of figure.
SPEAKER 1: And in the historic existence of the monk, Budai,
people probably thought, ah ha, the Buddha of the future
is among us.
And so the legend of the monk gets
equated with the idea of the Buddha of the future.
SPEAKER 2: You find people rubbing the Buddha's belly
for prosperity, for wealth, for happiness.
SPEAKER 1: And this is a wonderful example
of how religion becomes responsive to people's needs.
How people take ideas from different places
and transform them and make them their own,
cause them to speak to themselves, to their own needs,
to their moment.