Today I put away the Buddha,
The statuette seemed too much to me. It bothered me.
I missed its absence.
For the inexperienced practitioner, the plaster, stone or marble Buddha is a buoy.
It keeps their head above water, prevents them from drowning under the waves of experience. And it can be brutal.
Anyone who has sat beyond spaces of appearance and curiosity has experienced the onslaught of offshore waves.
They smash in the face and roll us against the sand of the seabed, wrap us with dust and threaten to crush us.
The buoy of the Buddha knows how to hold us back, call us back to the surface.
Like a buoy, however, it keeps the exploring diver in surface waters:
he must know how to cut the rope that binds him to the statues, –outward representations hoist it out of his deepest waters.
He must know how to get rid of them.
If you see the stone Buddha, pray him and he will save you a thousand times.
If you see the Buddha, leave him, because, each time, he will bring you to perdition.
©FJ September 2022
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Notes & Silence 
One of the oddities of my background in protestant Christianity is a lack of reliance on iconography. Perhaps, for this reason, I have little understanding of the statue as a « buoy ». It is a more or less artistic piece of sculpture. It may be an aesthetically pleasing addition to a shelf. But that is all.
I have a shelf with a bust of Athena in plaster. I have another with bronze representations of the Minoan Snake Goddess, Labrys and a bull’s head. I even have a little wooden Buddha on yet another shelf – which he shares with a plastic Dougal (the dog of the children’s programme, « The Magic Roundabout ») and a resin representation of Cthulhu. None of these represent anything more than interesting statuettes. Perhaps it’s just as well, given the clash of imagery.
Therefore, I make no prayers to any statue. They are just statues. Nor would I seek to rely on any being for more than advice, far less follow any road other than my own. Perhaps, on that, we agree.
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On that and much more, Simon.
Dougal and the Buddha …how dare you ?
Thanks for showing me around the various shelves…and teaching a bit of Mythology in the process.
Our minds are so wired that Aesthetic / artistic representations naturally tend towards creating support for attachment.
sticking to the first level (aesthetic) can be quite a challenge.
I have a statue of the Buddha, in the living room, which makes me uncomfortable.
I’d like to place him in a cupboard somewhere, but have concerns as to how he might feel rejected.
I’m kidding.
There is a very blunt way of interpreting the Bible as it says : « this, too, shall pass »..
In an abrupt, zen-like approach, it could be a reference not only to the non lasting reality of things, but to the non reality of things.
= The aggregating urge we feel to bundle every kinds of mind-terial into concepts and representation, will pass, has to pass.
These statues are a wonderful opportunity to observe projection in real life conditions.
Be it Dougal or the Buddha, what are they really, but an ‘ aggregate’ of plaster or resin ?
So they eventually exist anywhere else but in our own minds ?
Who else but ourselves is ‘giving them life’ ?
Realizing the breadth of mental constructions is– literally — mind blowing.
There is hardly a single aspect (work, family, friends, nation, hobbies, history, money, …) which may withstand, in the end.
This is both ‘abyssally’ saddening
And liberating.
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