-8- Stone Carvings Depicting the Story of the Buddha
~ By Buddhadāsa Bhikkhu ~
These carvings are installed on the outside wall of the Spiritual Theater. It’s a shame and rather disappointing that we invested much but have gained little. This is because people are not interested in them, and the guides are not quite knowledgeable about them. What they know about the Buddha story is normal, because the story is well-known. But what is extremely unusual is why there isn’t a picture of the Buddha – why these carvings do not explicitly show the Buddha, Prince Siddhattha, or even the child who would become the Buddha. This was how they told the Buddha story in the pre-Buddha image era. They used a vacant space or some other symbols to represent the Buddha. The Buddha story told without his picture is marvelous, but it’s regrettable that people don’t know about it.
In those days, they had a general principle that the real Buddha could not be shown by a picture. Neither could the real Dhamma, nor the real Sangha. So, in the beginning of the Sanchi Era or the Bharhut Era, neither were there pictures of the Buddha nor of the monks. They both were considered unrepresentable by pictures. Looking beyond the physical realm, we should see that the body of the Buddha is not the real Buddha. The Buddha said that those who saw his physical body or were holding on to his robe were not really seeing him, but those who see Dhamma really see him. That’s why the real Buddha cannot be shown by a picture. In the early Sanchi pictures, they didn’t even show the pañcavaggiyā (the Five Bhikkhus ) in human form. In later eras, human pictures were used to represent the Sangha and then the Buddha, gradually at first and without restraint eventually.
In India, two or three thousand years before the Buddha’s time, people strongly held on to images of very many gods. In the Sindhu (Indus) River basin, where the ancient culture had been heavily laden with god worship, archeologists dug up a lot – tens or hundreds of thousands – of god images. They now keep such images as the Sun god, the Moon god, and many others, in a museum where a visitor to India can take a look. In later times, people got smarter and smarter so as to give up worshipping the images. Finally, in the Buddha’s time, they came to realize that a real god could not be represented by an image, and all of the religions in India discontinued image worship. So, not very long before the Buddha’s time and in the Buddha’s time, there were no images for worship in any religion.
Later on, the notion of worshipping no images became obscure; people became foolish and returned to image adulation once again. Some claim that the Greek brought images of gods into India. In reality, foolishness had returned to people, who then made images of gods again. This kind of activity has since escalated, and the most intense is in none other than Thailand.
The real Dhamma and Buddha cannot be represented by pictures or images. So why in the world should we step back two or three thousand years before the Buddha’s time filling every corner with images for adulation? The Buddha’s time was when the guiding light was brightest, and there were no such images. Do you know that we are on again off again about our foolishness in image adulation? If we regard an image as a Buddha, then we are no better than a child. But if we see Dhamma, or in other words, see the real Buddha, then things will improve. I want the stone carvings on the Spiritual Theater wall to tell you this fact, but so far, I have not successfully got what I want. It’s difficult to find guides who can clearly explain this fact. I myself hardly have time to observe them explaining to the visitors, so I don’t know what they say. The meaning that the real Buddha cannot be represented by an image has not got across to people.
This is the usefulness of the stone carvings, which tell us that people in the enlightened Buddha’s time did not take material objects as representations for the Buddha, Dhamma, and Sangha. What they took as the real Dhamma are the meanings of cessation of kilesa (defilements), quenching of dukkha (suffering), knowledge of the cause of dukkha, and knowledge for the quenching of dukkha.
Nowadays, people step back to foolishness, taking a Buddha image for the real Buddha, the scriptures for the real Dhamma, and common ordained men for the real Sangha. They really do so. I was strongly determined to teach people the real meaning of Buddha through the stone carvings as described, but so far, I have not been successful, and things have become complicated. I have lost some physical strength, and hardly have time to describe the carvings by myself. I used to do it a few times, then I had to stop.
Actually, you can also study the carvings in other aspects, such as the artistic and historical ones. For example, the way Prince Siddhattha stays on his mount, with angels supporting its hoofs to eliminate noise, was derived from the Amaravati arts line. In the Bharhut line, the angels did not bear the horse but they scattered flowers on the road so thickly that the horse could gallop noiselessly. A close look at the curved design patterns on Thai art objects shows that we adopted the Amaravati style. This is a study in history and arts, which is also useful if we are knowledgeable enough.
(From "Benefits You Should Get from Coming to Suan Mokkh," a talk given by Tan Ajahn in December 1988 at the request of Tan Dusadee Bhikkhu, as translated from the Thai by Aj. Mongkol Dejnakarintra.)
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“24 Benefits of Suan Mokkh,” is a series of weekly posts published to commemorate the 88th anniversary of the foundation of Suan Mokkh in May 1932 in Chaiya, southern Thailand.
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For other Dhamma teachings by Buddhadāsa Bhikkhu (audios, free ebooks, interviews, poems), please visit Suan Mokkh – The Garden of Liberation.
Buddhadāsa Indapañño Archives collection (Ref. W-129)