Statues
With regard to Emptiness, the massive size and brilliance of Vairocana statues serve as a reminder that all conditioned existence is empty and without a permanent identity.
The Vairocana statue in Nara's Tōdai-ji in Japan was the largest bronze image of Vairocana Buddha in the world. The larger of the monumental statues that were destroyed at Bamyan in Afghanistan was also a depiction of Vairocana. In Java, Indonesia, the 9th-century Mendut temple near Borobudur in Magelang was dedicated to Dhyani Buddha Vairocana. Built by the Sailendra dynasty, the temple featured a three-meter tall stone statue of Dhyani Buddha Vairocana, seated and performing the Dharmachakra mudra. The statue is flanked with statues of Boddhisatva Avalokitesvara and Boddhisatva Vajrapani.
The Spring Temple Buddha of Lushan County, Henan, China, with a height of 126 meters, is now the tallest Vairocana Buddha statue, as well as the tallest statue in the world (see List of statues by height).
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Famous quotes containing the word statues:
“Art is the need to create; but in its essence, immense and universal, it is impatient of working with lame or tied hands, and of making cripples and monsters, such as all pictures and statues are. Nothing less than the creation of man and nature is its end.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“And are not men than they more blind,
Who having eyes yet never find
The bliss in which they move:
Like statues dead
They up and down are carried,
Yet neither see nor love.”
—Thomas Traherne (1636–1674)
“But have you wine and music still,
And statues and a bright-eyed love,
And foolish thoughts of good and ill,
And prayers to them who sit above?”
—James Elroy Flecker (1884–1919)