Buddha Statues, Buddha
Sculptures, Buddha Carvings, Buddha Arts and Buddha Woodcarvings by WoodRoyal® Studio
Buddha Statue: offering Buddha
sculptures, rare Chinese Buddha statues, Buddha images and Buddha
arts. WoodRoyal® is a premier site for Buddha. Our Statues
represent the “enlightened one”, the idol of the Buddhist religion.
They are a symbol of Buddhism’s founder, Siddhartha Gautama, who
preached that to attain Nirvana, a state without suffering, one must
eliminate all craving from their life. This can only be done by
pursuing the eightfold path.
The primary role of
Buddha statues is to convey the calm feelings that reflect ones
proper mental discipline as having the control over the negative
emotions of fear and greed. However, Buddha statues also serve an
important role in conveying teachings, particularly in traditional
societies with low literacy rates.
While Buddha Statues come in a wide variety of poses, the most
common is the Buddha in Lotus Position. This is a position of
meditation that symbolizes perfect balance of thought and
tranquility. In this statue, the hand positions, called mudra, have
the fingers of the right hand resting lightly on the fingers of the
left as they lay in the lap of Buddha. The legs are crossed in what
is called the Lotus Position. The left foot is placed on the right
thigh and the right foot is placed on the left thigh. Many Buddha
statues sit on a pedestal in the form of a lotus blossom. The lotus
represents the Buddha Mind because, though growing in mire, it puts
forth beautiful, immaculate flowers.
Other popular
positions include statues with the right hand raised in abhayamudra
- the gesture of dispelling fear. These statues symbolize protection
and peace in one’s home or garden. Statues Calling the Earth to
Witness are represented by Buddha’s right hand touching the ground
in a gesture that symbolizes unshakable faith and resolution. The
reclining Buddha representing the Buddha’s death and passage to
Nirvana symbolizes complete peace and detachment from the world.
Some Buddha statues are actually based on Bodhisattvas, people could
have passed to Nirvana, but instead chose to remain in this world
out of compassion for other human beings. The Avalokitesvara’s main
purpose is to listen to the cries for help from those in trouble and
provide them with aid. He is the protector from danger and his
sacrifice symbolizes infinite compassion, the sharing of mankind's
misery and a willingness to help those in distress. The eight arms
symbolize his reaching out with compassion to save the world. The
famous Chinese view of Avalokitesvara is a women known as Kuan Yin
(or Kwan Yin). We have a large selection of Kuan Yin Statues in our
Lanna Gallery.
The process of direct
carving imposes a characteristic order on the forms of sculpture.
The faces of the original block, slab, or cylinder of material can
usually still be sensed, existing around the finished work as a kind
of implied spatial envelope limiting the extension of the forms in
space and connecting their highest points across space. In a similar
way, throughout the whole carving, smaller forms and planes can be
seen as contained within implied larger ones. Thus, an ordered
sequence of containing forms and planes, from the largest to the
smallest, gives unity to the work.
Indirect carving: All
of the great sculptural traditions of the past used the direct
method of carving, but in Western civilization during the 19th and
early 20th centuries it became customary for stone and, to a lesser
extent, wood sculpture to be produced by the indirect method. This
required the production of a finished clay model that was
subsequently cast in plaster and then reproduced in stone or wood in
a more or less mechanical way by means of a pointing machine (see
Pointing below). Usually the carving was not done by the sculptor
himself. At its worst, this procedure results in a carved copy of a
design that was conceived in terms of clay modeling. Although
indirect carving does not achieve aesthetic qualities that are
typical of carved sculpture, it does not necessarily result in bad
sculpture. Rodin's marble sculptures, for example, are generally
considered great works of art even by those who object to the
indirect methods by which they were produced. The indirect method
has been steadily losing ground since the revival of direct carving
in the early 20th century, and today it is in general disrepute
among carvers. |
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© 2008 WoodCiti®
Group Thailand
