Buddha Shakyamuni – The Historical Buddha
  See it in the Museum
Chapel
Orientation 1
Plinth 1

ABS 009

 Code: ABS 009

  Country: Tibet (central)

  Style:

  Date: 1250 - 1350

  Dimensions in cm WxHxD: 44.3 x 57.2 x 26.3

  Materials: Gilt copper

Buddha Shakyamuni – The Historical Buddha

The Buddha is seated legs crossed in meditation. His transparent religious garment, whose border is engraved and the extremities folded, leaves his right shoulder uncovered. With his right extended hand, he touches the ground before him while his left rests on his lap in contemplation. This posture refers to the episode of his victory over Mara, god of Death and illusion when, by touching the ground he took the Earth as a witness of his spiritual realisation.

He is endowed with all the distinctive marks and signs of a “Great being:” short curly hair, a cranial protuberance (ushnisha), a curl of hair between the eyebrows (urna), elongated earlobes, and three marks on the throat, and so on. Unusual feature, this statue has two small flowers placed above the Buddha’s ears. The urna is also inset with a turquoise.

A Buddha is an “Enlightened One”, awakened to the true nature of existence. He has transcended is human condition and is “no longer a man, nor a god”. He has reached nirvana – “the extinction” of desire and karma – and he is free from samsara, the endless cycle of existence and suffering. A Buddha generally appears as a renunciant, devoid of ornaments.