Shopping for Buddhas

by Jeff Greenwald

  • Buddha’s feet are often marked with wheels. This symbolizes the sacred duty of a chakravartin, or Universal Monarch: to Turn the Wheel, and keep it turning. Prince Siddhartha himself, after his enlightenment, began to travel far and wide to spread his teachings, which he claimed were based on neither faith nor magic but on a foundation of sound logic: the inevitable chain of birth, existence and death. In doing this, it is said that the Buddha “turned the wheel of the law.”

  • Buddha’s palms, meanwhile, should bear the signs of the lotus blossom and the conch-shell trumpet.

  • His earlobes, always pierced, are long and pendulous, hanging down almost to his shoulders: a sign of noble birth (or, at least, weighty earrings).

  • Buddha’s hair is formed in kinky little curls, each of which turns clockwise. The curls look like snails; and some say that’s just what they are. One afternoon, as the shorn Siddhartha meditated in the broiling Indian heat, an entire tribe of the mollusks noticed that the unshaded saint was in grave danger of stroke. Rushing to the scene—as best as they could, being snails—they completely covered his bald scalp to protect him from the blazing sun.

  • A bump, called the ushnisha, is added to his cranium. This mysterious lump, never satisfactorily explained, might be a visual metaphor for the source of Buddha’s wisdom. Another, stranger interpretation is that the image is accurate; that Siddhartha’s head was actually a different shape from our own, containing an entirely new, enlarged and improved brain. Personally, I think that idea is subversive. One of Buddhism’s central concepts is that anyone can aspire to buddhahood, given purity of heart and discipline of mind. You don’t have to grow another head first. At least, not literally.

  • A mole-like urna appears between his eyebrows. Some say it represents the all-seeing Third Eye. For others, the urna itself is a source of light.

  • Buddha’s eyes are centered and slightly downcast; neither truly open nor truly closed; neither focused nor unfocused. It’s a look of both absolute detachment and perfect awareness. There is nothing in a Buddha’s expression more important than the cast of those eyes. They should draw you in, but without seduction; they should hold you, but not by capture. The perfect Buddha eyes are perfectly ambiguous. Sometimes they seem directed completely inward, opaque as moonstones; but sometimes, deep in meditation, you glance up and see them looking right at you: those penetrating open eyes, fully encouraging, slightly amused, eternally patient.

  • The Buddha image is designed according to strict canonical formulas, exactly proportioned so that each eye, each nipple, every finger, urna and ushnisha alike, all balance in precise and perfect relation and proportion to every other part.

  • The Buddha’s lower neck is encircled by three rings, like the “mouth” of a conch shell.

  • He has feet with level tread.

  • The Buddha has long, sensuous fingers and toes; he does not crack his knuckles or bite his nails.

  • It has been said that Buddha was seven feet tall, and that his proportions mirrored those of the banyan tree: that the height of his body should equal the length of his two arms when fully extended.

  • For those of you who have passed muster on all the signs and marks so far, here is another simple test: a Buddha can touch his knees with his hands while standing erect.

  • His skin is the color of gold.

  • His form is consistently rounded. One thinks of Picasso’s concept of the perfect human sculpture: water poured over the head should flow down to cover every other part of the body.

  • Buddha’s shoulders are as broad as a lion’s.

  • The Buddha is always clothed in the simple, traditional robes of a monk. This aspect of the Buddha image tends to change, across Asia, depending on the styles that have evolved in each particular land.

  One of the first things required of me in my search for a man-made deity was that I become conversant with all these distinguishing marks; the signs and symbols that help people recognize Buddha when he comes strolling up to their picnic. I soon discovered, puttering about in my research, that Buddha himself—the historical Buddha, portrayed in countless statues—doesn’t have a monopoly on divine deformities. Many of these same marks and signs, subtly (or not so subtly) varied, are shared by other Buddha-like beings known as bodhisattvas.

  The concept of bodhisattvas is one of the central ideas of Mahayana, or “Greater Vehicle,” Buddhism, which evolved around the beginning of the Christian era and took firm hold in countries such as Nepal, Tibet, Mongolia, China and Japan. Before Mahayana, enlightenment was more or less a selfish concept; you were in it for yourself. Buddha was worshiped, as were the arhats who had been his direct disciples, and that was about as far as it went.

  The Mahayanists felt that this approach had grown a little bit stale. Their conviction was deeply underscored by the sobering fact that Hinduism was beginning to make a major comeback in areas that had previously been converted to Buddhism. So they went to work, developing a whole new Buddhist literature and style. Their manifesto included the concept that compassion, as an end in itself, was a key qualification for buddhahood—right up there with personal wisdom, so highly valued by the newly (and pointedly) coined Hinayana (“Lesser Vehicle”) Buddhists. As a result of this more liberal view, the Mahayana iconography mushroomed to embrace not just the usual run of disciples and saints, but other perfectly evolved, perfectly compassionate and—more to the point—non-mythical human beings as well.

  To explain the marvelous, almost superhuman state of wisdom and compassion apparent in certain lamas, teachers and legendary mystics, the Mahayanists developed the concept of bodhisattvas. A bodhisattva is a being who has, in a previous lifetime, attained the enlightened level of buddhahood, but who has mindfully refused the delightful rewards of nirvana (literally, extinction)—choosing, instead, to be reborn on the Earth and to lend a hand until all other sentient beings are liberated as well.

  A bodhisattva is a person who has dedicated an entire lifetime to perfecting the ultimate cheesecake—delicious, creamy, melt-in-your-mouth cheesecake—until finally God on high is compelled to take notice. And God says, “You have pleased me with your efforts. Try this cheesecake; I baked it Myself.” And the bodhisattva bows deeply, takes God’s very own cheesecake, and carries it to the park as an offering to the homeless and the insects.

  The realization that certain beings could keep coming back, again and again and again, set me off on a bizarre tangent. . . .

  I’ve heard it said that the age of heroes is over. Certainly, there doesn’t seem to be a heroic disposition in most people’s minds. No wonder, when you take a look at our fearless leaders.

  Still, I sometimes suspect that the problem isn’t a lack of heroes so much as a flaw with the word itself. Hero. It seems obsolete, metallic and unapologetically macho, conjuring up images of warriors, quarterbacks, astronauts, firemen and the whole musty pantheon of Greek and Roman mythology. The so-called heroes touted in the media are usually politicians, captains of industry, or garden-variety humans who have performed a single act of great courage, perhaps accidentally, before fading out of the airwaves and back into the urban sprawl.

  Joseph Campbell, the great mythologist who wrote The Hero with a Thousand Faces, tried to breathe new life into the term. He acknowledged the classic idea that a hero is someone who performs an amazing deed, but also defined heroes as adventurers: individuals who “learn to experience the supernormal range of human spiritual life,” and then return to share their message with humanity. Campbell’s was a valiant effort, but it couldn’t really undo all the itchy connotations that the word has picked up on its own journey across the centuries. I’m inclined to believe that many Americans who hear the word still think primarily of John Wayne, Billie Jean King or Magic Johnson.

  Forget about heroes. The ones we want to watch for now are the bodhisattvas. These are the mindful and mysterious men, women and children who seem to recognize, almost from Day One, their peculiar function
on this planet. These people aren’t flashes in some heroic pan; they’ve signed on for the whole menu. They are indeed adventurers; and the terrain they navigate reaches across all levels of human experience, from the cancer ward to the recording studio.

  Recognizing them isn’t always easy. Their urnas and ushnishas have been corrected with skillful surgery, the rings around the neck concealed with scarves or collars, the eyes raised level, the wardrobes expanded. And they may not even know it themselves! Because who says that a bodhisattvas are reborn with an understanding of who they are, or what they’ve signed on for? But there are always clues, giveaways, by which these great compassionate beings reveal themselves to us.

  And there are so many of them! We all know a few, public and private. From the schoolyard to the spa, we’ve all met examples of these undercover deities, conspiring, through whatever means necessary and using the very tools of Western civilization, to lift our cerebral butts out of the gutter.

  Who qualifies? How long does it take one of your garden-variety bodhisattvas to recognize what she or he is? Am I one? Are you? Would we know it if we were?

  Alas: there is no test. There is no model. There are no answers. But please consider, merely for the sake of argument, the following cases:

  • Vincent van Gogh, preacher in the coal mines, lover of street whores, epileptic Dutch mahatma, reeling drunk on the sweet, wheat-scented oxygen of this mad, spinning planet he raged and painted. . . .

  • Anne Frank (and the family who hid her!), for the tragic metaphor of her life—and for her poignant, classic sutra on suffering. . . .

  • Pablo Picasso, earnest clown and animal lover, yet perhaps the only bodhisattva capable of sitting through a bullfight; reborn on this Earth in order to keep artists from taking themselves too seriously. . . .

  • Julia Butterfly-Hill, compelled at 23 to spend 738 days and nights living high in the unprotected branches of a thousand-year-old redwood, finally winning the protection of an entire forest. . . .

  • Martin Luther King, Jr, last best hope of an era that now seems distant indeed; a man blessed with wisdom, compassion and the courage to carry these ideas into America’s savaged streets. . . .

  • Josephine Baker, the “Bronze Venus,” who began her career as an abused domestic, transformed into Europe’s most celebrated exotic dancer, and evolved into a hero of the French Resistance and powerful voice for American civil rights. . . .

  • Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the Federation Starship Enterprise, and Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry—for helping us believe in a future that brings humanity not to ruin and despair, but to justice, genius and nobility. . . .

  • Helen Keller, bodhisattva of humanity’s blind trapped soul, smiling with pure inner light in every photograph. And wasn’t Anne Sullivan, Miracle Worker, a bodhisattva as well?

  • Woody Allen, jazz clarinetist and deeply flawed Fool, provoking our laughter in the face of samsara—that big, busy running-wheel of life and death upon which we are all hapless hamsters. “I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work; I want to achieve it through not dying.”

  • Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina, mothers and members of the punk band Pussy Riot, inspired by their 22 months in jail to launch Zona Prava, a prisoners’ rights movement—and who remind us that when artists are warriors, they can change the world.

  • Tenzig Gyatso, the Fourteenth Dalai Lama of Tibet, who is believed to be a direct reincarnation of Chenrezig, the bodhisattva of compassion. Throughout his long exile, and in the face of countless atrocities committed against the Tibetan people, he has remained our best example of Buddha-nature at its inventive best.

  • Olga Murray, retired New York attorney and activist, whose Nepal Youth Foundation—launched when Murray was nearly 60—has helped lift thousands Nepali boys and girls out of poverty and bonded servitude. . . .

  • Arthur C. Clarke, writer and futurist, who conceived the greatest tool of our century—the communications satellite—and “forgot” to put a patent on it. . . .

  • Satchmo Armstrong, bodhisattva, humble and lusty monk with trumpet-bell begging bowl: “Early in life I set myself out to be a happy man, and made it.”

  Wolfgang Mozart, Joanna Macy and Mahatma Gandhi; drummer Zakir Hussain, John Lennon and sex therapist Esther Perel; Florence Nightingale, Leonard Cohen and “Heroes of Compassion” founder Dick Grace; Nelson Mandela, Zambian AIDS activist Carol Nawina Nyirenda and Dr. Seuss . . . How can we list them all? How can we possibly recognize the whole lot of them? The ones who have risen to fame; the ones lost in obscurity; the moms and dads and water carriers, translators and teachers and hermits, those exalted into the pages of People magazine or buried, fully content, in simple lives of service. . . .

  Bodhisattvas known and unknown walk among us, large and small, young and old, knowing or naive, but all brought to us through the same, ultimate sacrifice. For all have somehow agreed—in the face of temptations we can barely comprehend and could never resist—to roll the genetic dice again, and be reborn as humans on this insane planet—humans vexed by their egos, afflictions and addictions, by inflamed tonsils and itching hemorrhoids, to bring a tiny offering of wisdom or compassion to the plaintive, bewildered inhabitants of Planet Earth.

  6

  Now that I knew precisely what I was after, at least as far as Buddha statues were concerned, the next step was finding it. This proved to be just a shade more difficult than I had imagined; despite the fact that in Kathmandu—as well as in the neighboring village of Patan, famed for its ancient tradition of metal casting—whole districts of “curio” shops offer on-sale deities. Tara and Ganesh and Manjushri, Durga and Shiva and Padmasambhava—an all-star cast of wrathful, compassionate, voluptuous gods and goddesses gleam behind warping panes of cheap Indian glass.

  I embarked upon these adventures in shopping in the company of Nancy, the friend with whom I had recently traveled in Tibet. Known for her infectiously buoyant personality, Nancy had recently joined the ranks of the walking wounded. She had fallen in love (or “merged,” to use her favored phrase) with an exquisite statue of the goddess Tara. The Tara had been one-of-a-kind, breathtakingly beautiful, but a bit beyond her means. Nancy had deliberated and, all but convinced, decided to sleep on it. Unfortunately, a somewhat more experienced buyer entered the shop a few moments after she left. Nancy rushed back first thing the next morning, bristling with those natural amphetamines that permeate the bloodstream just before a large and important purchase—only to discover that her Tara had just been given a one-way ticket to Düsseldorf.

  This crushing disappointment colored, to an alarming extent, the way that Nancy and I went about our rounds. There was a need for non-attachment, to be sure; but also a prerequisite of knife-like resolve. It was as if here, in this distant, exotic land, we were compelled to raise the art of shopping to an experience that was, on the one hand, detached and almost Zen—our ultimate goal was, after all, enlightenment—and on the other hand, tinged with desperation, like shopping at Macy’s or Bloomingdale’s during a one-day-only White Sale: viciously predatory, and laced with the fear that the choicest Buddhas would be gone, snatched up if we hesitated too long or neglected to visit each and every shop the very day that new work was due to arrive. Because, in spite of the deceptively vast quantity of statues displayed in the windows and on tattered blankets covering the sidewalks outside of the major hotels, most are chintzy rubbish; the ill-conceived abominations of a tourist-trap industry.

  Some archetypes! If these were real humanoids, they’d be barred from military service: club-footed, triple-jointed, bug-eyed, eleven-toed, elephant-eared freaks with monkey-long limbs ending in paw-like appendages, with bronze or copper flashing festering like mold under the armpits—the kind of thing you wouldn’t even want to use as a doorstop. Some were so ill proportioned, they flew so hard in the face of anatomy, that I had to wonder if the artists had ever seen a human being before. The statues reminded me of those old Europea
n drawings of elephants and rhinoceroses, based on distant sightings or wild rumor.

  And then there were the copies. Back in 1984, when I was shopping for my first Ganesh, I found a very handsome one copied from a statue in the National Museum. By now, though, all those first-generation duplicates had been sold. The copies made from the copies were also gone; as were the copies made from the copies made from the copies. And with each consecutive recasting, you can be very sure that something had been lost in the translation.

  For example: imagine taking an original Rembrandt drawing, and photocopying it on a primitive machine. You now put the flawed copy back on the glass, copy that, and repeat the whole process another three or four times. Come the fifth generation, you’re holding something that looks more like a Franz Kline than a Dutch Master. Likewise, by the time Nancy and I encountered them, the 1987-model Buddhas were little more than crude lumps of bronze heaped into vaguely recognizable postures. Their feet and fingers exhibited the terminal stage of leprosy, while the faces—those all-important, so-serene Buddha faces—looked like they’d just gone twelve rounds with Jake LaMotta.

  But I’m making it all sound like a hopeless quest, and that’s nowhere near the truth. Because every so often, in one of maybe three or four very exclusive shops—and not in the front foyer, but concealed in musty back rooms—we would discover a Buddha that made me sigh with a feline growl of primal longing. These were statues that crossed the Pygmalion line and seemed fully infused with life.

  Half-closed eyes, perfectly centered, and just a hair downcast; the corners of the mouth curving up, so, so subtly, into what might be a smile. That smile is more than an invitation; it’s the whole party.

  Those statues are few and far between, hidden in drawers and cupboards, wrapped in rice paper and string, but always outlandishly expensive, and reserved for some Japanese or German buyer. We were lucky enough to even see them; the mere knowledge that these statues existed, that the Nepalis still created objects with this much grace and power, was a truth reserved only for the most persistent, impulsive collectors: people who would kill for a really good Buddha.