The Buddha is a Mountain

the Rocky Art Picture Show. And of course there's the statue of RoboCop, which I don't know if I knew about this one. No way, maybe that doesn't exist yet. Maybe that's only people want there to be a statue of RoboCop in Detroit, or does it exist. I'm not sure if that's been realized. In any case, RoboCop lives on in all our hearts forever, so they could never be a statue of him. But even these are fictional characters, even the Richard O'Brien. When is a picture of Richard

O'Brien as a fictional character? Yeah, there are a few cases where people build statues of people who are still alive. It doesn't happen that often, and it always strikes me as really just not smart and distasteful. I don't know if you get the same feeling, like if you just see a statue of a living person, It's like what, yeah, I mean, because there are a few different factors that

coming to pay. First of all, if I'm asking someone or commissioning a statue of myself, there there's something you know, you're just asking for charges of narcissism. And uh, you know you think you're a golden god or something because you're having this large golden version of you erected in town. No, I just think I'm a marble god. Or on the other side too, is we've seen enough. We've seen it.

We've seen enough examples of this throughout history, particularly in the fall of the Soviet Union, to know that if there is a statue of you, then that is something that someone can deface or knock down. Uh, it's you're just asking for it. Yeah. I would say. One large exception to what I'm talking about is in like dictatorships, where yeah, there will be statues of a living leader, but I mean, these are examples though, where they should feel bad, but they are removed from the guilt of

feeling bad because of the depravity of the system. Yeah. But so then you agree with my intuition there is is that the case you You just think, like when you see a statue of a person who's still alive,

it's like, what, why would you do that? Yeah? Because the other thing, too is maybe you're gonna have a perfect likeness of that individual, but it also may come off as a little creepy because you're gonna see it like right next to the person, or or it's it's easier to compare the flesh to the statue and realize that the statue is inaccurate. Yeah. So what does the answer there tell us about what purpose statues serve? I don't know. Maybe we can come back to that. I

got another weird question. Why are statues considered inherently positive or honorific? Another way of asking this is why do we generally only create statues of people we like? How come we don't generally create statues of people who we think we're evil and destructive or shifty or you know, just not honorable people? And it's one of those things that's so ingrained that it just seems obvious, Like, well, duh.

You know, you wouldn't put up a statute to honor a bad person, But why do you assume a statue carries honor with it? You don't assume that about other forms of media. You could make a movie about a bad person and people wouldn't assume that it was honoring that person. You could write a book about a bad person and people wouldn't assume that the book was honoring that person. But if you were to build a statue of that person, people would say, well, why do you

like this guy so much? Well, I think a lot of this. I think we can answer a couple of questions here by dealing with with the with the idea of what happens when you just direct a tombstone for someone. You were creating something that is not going to fade. I mean, yes, it's going to fade, but but within the context of a human lifetime, it seems fixed. It

seems uh uh, you know, unmovable and incorruptible. And so in to create a statue of an individual is to create an immortal version of them, uh like, impose that person's legacy on physical space right either after their death or you know, in the case of say a mythological figure or a figure of such deep history that they're you know, far removed, like you don't have photos of them, you just have tales of them. It makes them more real,

you know. I mean, I I just wonder why. I mean, it might it might be totally an accident of history. Maybe it's just a coincidence that Well, okay, so people used to make statues of of leaders who were to be honored, and statues of kings and all that, and

we just came to associate statuary with honor and honorific feelings. Well, now I have to say there are of course protective the idea of using horrifying but protect dive entities, say in a tomb or a temple, you can have essentially it's a monster, it's something horrifying, but it's there to

ward off evil spirits. Well, right, and that that comes into the religious function of statutory So you've got statues that where yeah, I was going to say that you can imagine religious areas where people have statues of demons and other unwelcome supernatural entities, either for instructive purposes, or for protective purposes, you know, apotropaic magic um, or just to be scary. Uh So, yeah, you can see religious reasons why people put up statues of things judged to

be evil. But but could you imagine a scenario where someone might say, look, we're not putting up a statue of Richard Nixon, but we'll put up multiple Richard Nixon statues to protect the sacred ground, you know, like like purely protective evils. Uh if you will write you what you bring up? Yet again, is this assumption if I made a statue of Richard Nixon, people would assume I liked him. People would assume I thought he was a

good guy. Right. Would not be the case if I wrote a book about him or made a movie about him, I mean, depending on what the contents were. Right, And again, this is assuming it's just a statue of him and he's not being say, crushed under the foot of a

Hindu deity or something like that. Exactly right. That's another great image because I think what we're talking about here, and most of these examples, it's it's not a statue of an individual of doing something as much as is a statue of the individual, just their identity, their presence,

their existence. Yeah, and so maybe for some inherent reasons we haven't figured out, or maybe for reasons of historical accident or whatever, statue or I think does have a religious connotation, and therefore it's no surprise that some of the grandest statues in the world, of course are religious. Yeah, if you look at it at a list of the largest statues currently in the world, most of them are

going to be religious in scope. You'll find a few historic individuals in there, but really, like the top the top ten list, are mostly Buddhists. And today we're gonna be talking about one of the grandest Buddhas that you have statutes that you'll find out there, and that is the uh Lissan Grant, a giant Buddha or the Grand Buddha located in southern Shishwan Province in southwest China. So I thought it was interesting that you wanted to do this episode, Robert, What what what? What was it that

drew you to the Leshan Buddha. Well, I'd seen images of it before, and weirdly and weirdly enough to just throw in an unintended plug for another podcast but I was in the car and uh, I was listening to the Wow in the World podcast, which is uh an NPR science education podcast for children, and they had like a kid throwing in a quick fact about something that they learned on a trip. Right, so it's like a you know, a kid on the street kind of situation.

And the kid mentioned the the leshaan giant Buddha, and uh and it kind of reminded me of its existence and and and one of the cool facts about it that we'll get to in a bit and uh yeah, And then I started looking into it a little more and said, hey, well there's a whole episode here we

should talk about the lean giant Buddha. So if you are at a computer right now and you are listening to this episode where you can google something, you should probably go ahead and google a picture of it right to try to have this in your mind if you've never seen it before. If you can't do that, that's okay. We'll try to describe it for you. Yeah, we'll definitely have some images of it on the landing page for this episode is Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.

But it looks like a giant Buddha has has carved out a niche in a mountain and is seated there within the mountain. So basically the the Buddha is a mountain. The mountain is the Buddha to to steal like a common slogan from the region, and the Buddha is literally made out of the mountain. Its carved out of the

side of the mountain. But in a way that you know when when you when you I think for a lot of Western it's just when you think of something carved out of mountain, you think of our more local examples. You think Amount Rushmore, maybe you think of Stone Mountain here in Georgia, or you think of Crazy Horse, right.

But this one, this is this one feels a lot different from any of those examples because it's it does feel it almost feels like there was a Buddha in the mountain and they just carved it out, like it was waiting there for for all of this. Uh, this sculpture work to free it. Absolutely, those other things you mentioned, like Mount Rushmore feel very much imposed on the landscape.

There were a thing laid over the landscape. And I feel like the Buddha in in Lashan is either it's like it emerged from the landscape or is being absorbed by the landscape. It almost feels like, yeah, you found it, Like it's the like like it's a fossil Buddha. Yeah, that's a great metaphor, dude, it is very much like that. One thing we should say, though, is Okay, so you imagine something that's carved out of a mountain or uh, or might be like a fossil, you're probably not thinking

very big. This thing is big. It's huge. Yeah. It is seventy one or two hundred and thirty three feet tall, and it's it's you know, it's in a seated position. It's not standing. I actually I don't think I ran across any estimates on how tall this Buddha would be if it were standing full heights. Somehow should have done the math on that missed opportunity. If the Ghostbusters were to, you know, charge it with enough ectoplasm and make it

walk around. Yeah that but that's somebody else's research project. Will leave them to it. Now. The other remarkable thing about it is that this is a this is a very old statue. Uh. This was this was a Tang dynasty construction. So that's twelve hundred years ago, and it is the largest stone Buddha in the world, and currently it's the tallest statue in the world. UH. Number one, by the way, is China's Spring Temple Buddha at a

towering one ty eight ms or four hundred and twenty feet. Now, how many of those top twenty or so are Richard Nixon's um, Not none of them actually, but several of them are Buddhas or some of Bodhisatva's And I think in one particular particular note is to fame Chinese emperors. But but also the vast majority of them are from are from recent times. UH. Of the taller statues in the world, all of them were completed in the century. The Grand Buddha, however, again was finished in eight three CE.

And this thing looks old. As we said, it's like a fossil. So it's a cliff coming straight out of the river, just shooting straight up out of the Dadu River and away from the it's like a red stone cliff. You can see this orange tinge in the white uh. And then back away from the cliff, there is this recession, UM. And within the recession is I don't know, you don't really see a throne or anything might be hidden back there behind all of the growth that's come out over

the years. But you you do see the figure of the Buddha seated with his knees spread apart, his back very straight, and his hands resting on his knees, and the entire statue, like we said, is carved into the side of the mountain. We're seeding away from the cliff face. And so the Buddha is looking out over the river as if he's sort of like lording over the waters, and the waters are rushing by just underneath his feet. How would you describe his face, Robert, I would say

it's very calm. It's calm, serene, almost disinterested in a way that he does remind me of a Y. M. C. A lifeguard, Like he's watching over the waters and and I'm not sure how interested he is in mean, not drowning. Yeah, this is not one of the laughing Buddhas. And we'll get into exactly what kind of Buddha he is in a minute, but certainly that just the scale of this

thing is amazing from the photos. I have not been to see this in person, and I would love to hear from any of our listeners out there who have because it is a huge tourist attraction. Uh, People traveling to the area, you know, go out of their way just to see this and the surrounding historic temple and even you know natural attractions in the area. But you just you look at this and you just see how small the individuals are and in comparison to the feet

to the toes of the statute. Right, there are people standing on the base where the Buddhist feet are and they're not even as tall as the Buddhas sandal. Right. Uh. You know, I think for Western audiences a specially, especially for American audiences, Like when we think of a giant statue, of course we think of the Statue of Liberty. But then how big would the statue of Liberty be compared to the Sun Buddha. Well, so there are multiple ways

you can measure the Statue of Liberty. Now, if you measure the full thing, like with the base up to the top of the torch, it's bigger than the Leshan Buddha. But if you just look at the copper part of the statue from her heel to the top of her head, Lady Liberty is just over a hundred and eleven feet, so if she put her arm down, you could stand one Lady Liberty on the shoulders of another one and

still not be as tall as the Lashan Buddha. Now it's it's always difficult to gauge these things though, just as a viewer, because you see Lady Liberty up there, you know, No, you don't see any humans really in reference to it, unless you're dealing with the Ghostbusters and Ghostbusters too. Otherwise it's easy to lose lose, you know, scope of what it's scale is, whereas with the Lassan Buddha you tend to see individuals at its base, so you have kind of a grounding and how big it

appears to be. So this is supposed to be a Buddha, Robert, tell me about the Buddha, all right, Well, yeah, we should break down exactly what a buddha is. So wait, I thought you should say something like, I can't tell you about the Buddha. Uh, yeah, I'm sure there's some class like like, you know, if someone goes to tell you about the Buddha, don't let them tell you about the Buddha sort of if you meet the Buddha kill the Buddha kind of a thing. But there are different Buddhists,

and that's an important thing to note. And it's easy to miss, to to not be aware of if you just kind of you see statues and you assume these are all statues of the same individual, historic or mythical, and it's just different artistic takes. And there are a

number of different artistic takes on these Buddhists. But for starters, you have what's known as the historical Buddha, Siddharta Gottama, who lived in the fifth century b c. Exact century kind of varies depending on you know, who's telling, but this would have been ancient India. And the story is that he was a prince, you know, lived a life of luxury, and then he began to behold the you know, the sorrow of the world, the suffering in the world,

and he abandoned his riches. He became a monk in order to seek enlightenment, and uh his teachings then spread throughout most of Asia and the centuries to follow. Now, interestingly enough, it actually declined in India self during the Middle Ages with the rise of Islam, but it flourished elsewhere, including in China, where it made its way in there around a hundred b C. And subsequently became an integral part of Chinese culture, and Buddhism today remains the fourth

largest religion in the world. Now, I think I have to understand that throughout history, at different times, the adoption of Buddhism in China has been a controversial thing, right, Like there were times when when Chinese ruling dynasties were trying to enforce other beliefs, like they might say that people need to be Taoist or people need to be Confucian. Right, yes, certainly, because when you when you look at the history of China, of course, you have essentially three key world views that

are you know, getting into the mix. There you have you have Buddhism, you have Taoism, and you have Confucianism and UH. And it's kind of like a continual you know, cocktail to what degree or these uh these mesh together in an in an individual time, in an individual region. Now to come back to the Shawan Buddha that what makes this interesting is that the first Chinese Buddhist temple was built in Sechuan Province on the summits of Mount Emmy, and this is the very area, the very region in

which the Grand Buddha was carved. Now, maybe we should take a quick break and when we come back we can get a little bit into the history of how this Grand Buddha was constructed more than years ago. Thank alright, we're back. So, uh, there's an origin story here, as

there always is. Yeah, and maybe we should say as as many origins if you go back far enough, there's a flood in the story somewhere, except in this case, it's more of a pattern of flooding, right, and this is a historical fact that's not just part of the mythology. The central and southwest region of China is prone to lots of flooding, right. Yeah. I mean we ended up

discussing some of this in our Great Flood episode. We talked about Chinese the Chinese variant of the grate flood myth and the importance of of water management and manipulation in Chinese history. Yeah. So it's like a it's a humid uh I think subtropical climate, but that they'll have monsoon seasons, the rains come in and there there will be heavy rains that cause flooding in these planes areas. Refresh me a little bit on the on the Chinese

flood myth Robert. Oh, well, you're talking about the story of You the Great, Yeah, where essentially you just have you have this this flood that occurs and uh and who is going to who's going to deal with it? How are we going to to solve this problem? Instead of the creation of an arc or you know, a great boat, you have You the Great who uses uh, you know, the knowledge of canal systems and drainage systems

as a way to to manage the flooding. Oh, that's a much better solution than a boat, right, Yeah, that like works for more than one group of people. Yeah, I think so. I think there's probably something culturally telling about about that as well. Like it's a it's a very it's a particularly Chinese uh take on the problem, but also ties in with very real world issues of the day, which would have been um, you know, seasonal flooding. Yeah.

So there is seasonal flooding in this area that sometimes the rivers will swell and this can be a danger to the people who work in the in or around the river. Um. And this this ties into where the Buddha came from. That's right, So that the origin story, the basic version goes as follows. You have a Buddhist monk named Hi Tongue and he conceives this this project around seven thirteen CE. So his idea is, look, we have we have really turbulent waters out here on the

Dadu River. Uh, it's really rough on on boatman navigation. People are drowning. Uh, it's it's it's influenced by by these seasonal floods. If we're we're to build a Buddha here, then that would bring like fortune to the area, Like that would bring a calming influence on on these turvy went waters where you ultimately have the confluence of of three different rivers, the Nanjang, the dad and the Queen

Ye rivers. Yeah, And in reading about this, I came across what appears to be some kind of popular legend about Hi Tong's quest to get the Buddha build This was good, so I had to repeat it, but I want to, but I want to stress this is the best I can synthesize from scattered and discrepant telling. So this is probably probably legendary, might not even be an old legend. Who knows if this was created recently, but

here's what people are saying. So Hi Tong in this story knew that it would cost a lot of money to get the Buddha built, and he traveled far and wide soliciting alms for the construction, and slowly, over time he built up a fund. He managed to get together

enough money for the stone works and the carving. But at some point in the project, Hi Tong was called to an audience with a corrupt government official with a Richard Nixon, you know who told him Hi Tong, it's time to hand over the funds, and Hi Tong said, I'd rather give up my eyes than give up the

Great Buddha. And when the corrupt official pressed him to give him the money, Hi Tong gouged out his own eyes, or one of his own eyes and threw them at the officials feet, and supposedly this got the guy to leave him alone. Now again with my morning. I've seen various versions of this story told and retold across sources, but I can't locate an authoritative original source from this.

So I'm going to file this under probably legendary, whether it's an old legend, or a recent creation is unclear, and I think that even if it is, even if it is a recent addition to the legend, uh, this will be something that ties into our further discussions of the Buddha here in a bit. Okay, now, earlier I talked to what we mentioned sud hard to got him as the historic Buddha, and I alluded to the existence of other Buddhas that are that are important as well.

So let's go ahead and get that out of the way. Uh, this is not a statue the grand Buddha here is not a statue of Gottama. So it's not trying to be a depiction of that historical guy. Correct. So while Gottama is the historic Buddha, Buddhism recognized as many different Buddhists. For instance, in uh their Veda Buddhism, there twenty seven Buddhist who preceded Gotama. Then you also have other important

Buddhis like the medicine Buddha is tremendously important. If you've ever been to the the met in New York, in their Asian section, they have an enormous mural on the wall and it depicts the medicine Buddha and then we have the Buddha that is actually depicted here, and that is my Trea, the Buddha of the future. Oh boy, yeah,

this is a really exciting Buddha. And some of you might remember some mention of my Trea from the self Embalming Buddhist Monks episode we did a while back, and that that has to do with a Japanese practice, but it also involved my Trea. So according to some traditions, my Trea is going to come to Earth five point six billion years in the future. And until then, whoa whoa five point six billions. Yes, is there's still gonna be an Earth in five point six billion years, there's

gonna be something that my Treya can visit. So I don't know, you can go kind of sci fi crazy with this in a minute, like maybe we're all living on a on a spaceship a colony ship at that point, but my trayer will find us. That's that's my read on it, well the future exactly. So until he's needed, he's gonna reside in the in in a in a in a heaven, a sort of a a Buddhist heaven that's set aside from my reality and h and you

can sort of think of him as a Buddha messiah. Yeah, I suppose, and that he'll he'll eventually bring Dharma back to a far future world that is mostly forgotten it. So it's pretty exciting. My trey of factors into a number of different artistic depictions. So if you go to a museum of am zem of of Buddhist art or or or Asian art, there's a very good chance you will encounter my trea at least a few times. What is the most commonly depicted Buddha? Do you know? You

know it's gonna it's gonna depend. I think, like I've I have to admit that when I was when I was younger, I definitely fall into the category of thinking there was just a Buddha, and you would see of sometimes Buddha is is, you know, fat and happy, and sometimes Buddha is starved and and kind of a solemn looking. Uh. But they're gonna be They're gonna be different emphasis and

different cultures. And then sometimes things we meant casually think of as being Buddhas are actually bodhisattvas, which is kind of you know, a notch lower or and then sometimes their their depictions of important you know, monk figures. But I know that you do encounter my Trea, the medicine Buddha, and and uh, the historic Buddha got him a quite a bit, so the Grand Buddha. Here this depiction of my Trea. It it is eventually completed ninety years after

it started. By that point, Hi Tong has has died. And uh, and the story about the blinding, even if that didn't happen exactly as as the story indicates, it does seem that there were there were points where funding stalled out, where work ceased, and thus this uh, this long process of actually finishing the statue. But of course, now that it's finished, we really do have kind of uh would you call it a sort of wonder of

the world on our hands. Yeah. I mean that's important thing to keep in mind of when you because we often think of what that the Seven Wonders of the world um ancient or the ancient world. And of course they were based on knowledge of the ancient world by by individuals at the time, which tended to exclude anything that was happening in Asia. It was it was confined to a different region of the world and in a

number of those things aren't even around anymore. They're even questions about whether some of them existed to begin in with UM, I have long thought we should just we should do an episode or a series of episodes on each of the seven Wonders of the Ancient World and discuss like what they what they were, slash are, what happened to them and UH and and why people were so invested in them at at the time. But but

that's for another episode. Yeah, but if you were to to actually take in the Wonders of the world and UH and do a complete you know, overview and take in all regions of the Earth, I feel like the Lea Shawn Budda would would would have to be on there because it's a tremendous work of sculpture and the body content actually contains a drainage system to prevent weathering to a certain extent, So there are spiral coils and cross drainage systems like built into its surface that helped

to drain water away from it. And again this is because this is an area that is UM is frequented by seasonal flooding, tremendous rainfall is a very temporary climate. Okay, well, if high Tong Skull was to calm the angry river gods and put a Buddha in there to pacify the hateful waters of the river in the rain season, did it work. Well? That's one of the really fascinating aspects of this story is that, according to too many, it did work. Now, how did it work? Well, That's that's

where it gets interesting. That if it actually worked in calming the waters beneath its gaze, the likely reason for this is probably because you had over the decades, you have all of this excavation, and this is dumping so much surplus rock into the river hollows below that it actually has an effect on the flow of the river. Like you're you're remaking the mountain, your remake, You're remaking the environment surrounding the mountain, and in doing so, you're

remaking the river. You're sort of inadvertently um altering the flow of the river. Huh. Now, I have some skepticism there because the river is huge. I mean, it's if you see pictures of it as a gigantic waterway. So I would think it would take a great amount of deposits to change the river fundamentally. I can believe more

that it would change like local areas of the river. Yeah. Um, And I think that when I think the individuals that are making that that argument are are definitely focusing like on the filling in of the hollows within the river and and affecting the very localized nature of it. I think if you get into anything beyond that, then you're getting into kind of magical mythic thinking. You know, we built a statue so big that the surplus rock, you know,

change the earth. All right. So when we first started out this episode, we asked the question why would you build a statue? And the best answer I think we would come up with is you want you want this idea or this person to u to last forever, to to live forever. And so in building the Grand Buddha, the ideas, yeah, this is gonna be around for a long time. Maybe it's even gonna be long enough, uh that the actual Maitrea can visit it and say, hey,

that's me up there. But as it turns as the I don't think the statute is gonna make it five billion years. I don't. I don't think it is either, because because that's the thing about any kind of stone work, any kind of sculpture, is that, yes, they do tend to last longer than living human beings. But in is when you when you start having this thing live within

geologic time. Uh, you know, don't expect a whole lot because you have all of these eroding effects in the natural world, and they're not going to leave your statue alone just because it's not technically a mountain anymore. Right, I mean, there used to be continents in places where

there now are not continents, and vice versa. Uh. The earth, the face of the Earth is constantly changing, and so while a stone statue might last a very long time, probably much longer than many other creations of humankind, it's not gonna last forever. Right. You're gonna have you gonna have wind, You're gonna have rain, You're gonna have also an issue with the the sculptures are gonna have you know, plant life growing in and on it, in it around it, which I would now say is one of the coolest

features of the Grand Buddha. You see pictures of it. It's not only receding into the mountains, so in this hollow in the cliff face, but it's also got all this green coming out around it, So it's being absorbed by the landscape in more way than one. It's sinking into the mountain or emerging from a recess in the mountain, but it's also emerging from the biosphere almost or sinking into the biosphere. Oh yeah, I mean it adds the natural,

natural wonder of it. But at the same level, it's kind of like having a bunch of the English ivy grow up the side of your house. On one level it looks really nice, but on the other you have plants like growing on and into your your stonework. Um. Now another important factor here, as we mentioned how many a lot of people go to it as a popular

tourist destination. Uh I was reading in a Lonely Planet guide for China that if you're gonna visit the Grand Buddha, it's best not to even try to go on a weekend or a holiday because the stairs around it becomes so packed with tourists that you can't even move. It just comes to a standstill. Now, of course, anytime you've got lots of people visiting something, that's going to be a risk to the preservation of the people touching things. People.

Hopefully they're not gonna be able to touch too much of it here because you can't get out there and climb on his nose. Um. But yeah, I mean somehow exposure to people, I think it's gonna start wearing at

you and human erosion takes place. Another thing I just have to mention now that you you talked about tourists surviving is I watched a homemade video on YouTube that I found of a family visiting the Buddha at a time when there was intense flooding in the river just under it, so like the waters were rushing by and they were rising up to just below the platform where the Buddhist feet are, and this family paid somebody to get them out to the statue even though it was

dangerous weather and it was flooding, And there's this video on YouTube of them just walking around with almost nobody there. Yeah. Yeah, that is apparently not the usual scene on a on a weekend at the Grand Buddha. Now, on top of natural erosion human erosion, there's also the added threat of pollution, which will we'll get into a little bit more in a bit. But yeah, you have with the with the with the the rise and continued rise of industrialized human civilization.

You're gonna have both natural and man made the features of the earth that are going to be affected by by by all the resulting pollution. Yeah, in particular, there's a there's like a blackening that occurs on some of

these statues. So you'll have your you know, your your your statue of of of a Buddha, and then over time, like there's like a blackening of the nose as if you know, as if the nose is rotting away or something, and you know, at the very least it's it's not maybe not the artist's intention or the for the sculpture. I hate to see that happen to this great old

work of art. But that's also kind of cool. So I was, I was reading about preservation UH for this UH for this Buddha and other like sacred sites, various UH sculptures in China. There was an article titled Conservation of Ancient Sites on the Silk Road, Proceedings of an International Conference on Conservation of Grotto Sites, and this was

These were symposium proceedings by one Neville Agnew. This was published in nineteen seven, so it's a it's a slightly older overview, but it still has a lot of important details. So in particular concerning the Grand Buddha, he mentions that that this sculpture benefited from multiple restorations over the years, so we're not really seeing the original version of it, right,

That's something to keep in mind. So just going back to the earliest traces that that he reverences in his article, So if you go back to the Queen dynasty, that's the sixty six through nineteen twelve documents indicated the sculpture was heavily damaged at the time, so it had cavities in the face, kind of like the Sphinx or something. Yeah, it was just it had it had you know, the upkeep had not prevented the face from kind of crumbling

apart in places. And then by the time you come to the Republic of China era that's nineteen twelve and ninety nine, photos show that it had been inaccurately restored. So they fixed this is a problem where their holes in the face. Then you fix the face and well, now the face looks a little different than it did before. Then by the nineteen sixties you have significant maintenance that's

taking place. It's altering the nose, the eyes of the mouth and the lower jaw of the Buddha, and Agnew argues that in light of all of this, it might perhaps be better not to restore the Buddha at all. Like if you were if you're essentially each time you're restoring it, you're kind of making it a little different, You're making it new each time. Like are you actually preserving an ancient statue or you are you, you know, keeping up a modern statue that's sort of based on

the base of something old. Yeah, I think that's a common question in restoration. Actually, I mean you're always going to have deterioration, and is it better to allow things to deteriorate and let people see them in that state or two falsely alter them to restore them. Well, you know, I mean which is more authentic? Yeah, Like, for instance, in the West, Uh, the Parthenon is an example of this. So the Parthenon is severely damaged, but there's there's a

history to that damage. You can and I mean it's a fascinating history in terms of who has who has ownership at a given time, the very the violence that's been that that has occurred there, etcetera. We could get into the whole history and another another podcast. But but there is, you know, an ongoing discussion. Well, do you do you completely restore the Parthenon and then create create this kind of new thing that is based on the old model and certainly an attempt to to rebuild the

old Parthenon? Or do you maintain what's currently there and tell the story of how we got there. My my answer would be anybody out there listening, if I can make the decision, you believe it how it is, but then you build a copy of it somewhere else. So like with the parthen On, we've got the Parthenon in Nashville tells yes. And I think that's not a bad approach.

You know, you you you let it be as it is, and let time take it and let's see what time has done do it, but then you do your best to create a model of what it would have been

like in another place. Now, I will point out that with the Grand Buddha in the late ninety nineties, you did see an increased focus on the best ways to restore the Buddha, but do so in ways that we're both scientifically and historically sound, So essentially reaching the point where you realize, Okay, what can we do that will you know, maintain what we have, help protect it, restore areas that are damaged, but also be true to the

history of the sculpture. So in uh intwo thousand one, according to to Reuter's News, there was actually a two fifty million one or the thirty three point six million

restoration project that took place at the Buddha. But by two thousand seven, the nose it actually blackened again due to pollution, and concerns over pollution actually prompted local government, the local government to shut down factories and power plants close to the statue to help maintain it, which I think is a positive movement, like people realizing, look, if we we have to we have to actually cut down on the we have to tackle the pollution problem if

we we want these these artifacts to to remain presentable. I feel like that is not usually the solution you hear is shutting down heavy industry to protect uh, you know, heritage monuments or or the environment. Well, uh, the Reuter's article, you know, touches on the fact that this, you know, this was not an isolated problem. Was the state was encountering this with with numerous you know, sacred and important historical sites, various shrines, etcetera. But hey, it's still there.

It's uh, it's still open, and it is a popular touristist destination. And based on what I was reading, you know, you can spend a good half day there looking at an additional sites, temples, and the natural environment is is supposedly a really pleasant as well. Yeah, if you see pictures of it, one of the things you'll notice is this tiny narrow staircase carved into the cliff side beside the Buddha going up the side of it, So I guess people can get up higher to be near its face. Um,

and it. I mean, one thing that's clear is how many people want to come see this, this beautiful work of art. But also they're so tiny and they look so precarious when you see these long shots of the giant Buddha. Not that the Buddha would do this, but you can imagine it would just sort of like swing its hand up and like knock hundreds of people in the river. Well, you know, you can't help but think of that when you see a colossal stone tighten uh in the lightness of a man. All Right, We're gonna

take one more break and we come back. I just have a few additional thoughts about, to a certain extent, the Grand Buddha, but also just this idea of of remaking the earth and then what happens when we do so. I think one of the most compelling aspects of the gram Buddha is that we see the mountain transformed into a human lightness, and in doing so there are all

these ramifications to the natural environment. So there's the the alleged alteration of the river, the alteration of drainage on the mountain, and of course you know, these are just small and specific examples of what human beings have done just across the UH, the anthropathy and epoch. The idea that since the rise of of of agricultural really but certainly in the industrial age as well, we have just reshaped the earth and in doing so we have changed

the natural environment. That makes me wonder, I mean, how do how the boot plays into that metaphor what do you think is the general UH? And you might not know the answer, but what what do you think is the general environmental outlook of Buddhism? Is there a coherent one? Well? I know, for a fact. I think I might have mentioned this on a previous episode, but there was there was a wonderful New York Times article that came out in recent weeks about the resurgence of religious interest in

China specifically. So it's people turning not not just to Buddhism, but also Daoism and Confucism and in sort of reclaiming uh, culturally important Chinese religious models, they're also taking on environmental causes. So they are they are finding and an environmental message in Buddhism, in Taoism, in Confucianism, and then becoming active with that within uh, with within you know, within China and UH and and arguing for uh, you know, environmental

protective measures. It's hard not to see the Buddha as somehow more harmonious with nature in this in this depiction than something say like Mount Rushmore, because as we mentioned of the way the greenery tends to surround it, like green, maybe just moss and stuff like that is creeping into

some of the surfaces on the statue. But you can also just see these tree branches and the forest beyond trying to creep in and surround the Buddha like a I don't know, Like when you see the cartoon where snow White is surrounded by chirping birds and things, it's like the the very life of the forest itself is coming in to hug and honor the Buddha. Yeah. Well, it reminds me of something we I guess it was the episode of Biophilia where we talked about some of this.

You know, I think you can my read on on it is that if you if you look to any major religion, I think you can find environmental trends within it, environmental messages within it. But as with any religion, it depends on who's handling it right, who's who's who's manipulating it in some cases, or who is delivering the message of it. And and therefore any faith can take a you know, a less environmental form. Yeah, the the dominion over the earth mentality versus the harmony with the earth

mentality or the preservation of the earth mentality. Yeah, I mean, it's it's very possible someone out there is making Buddhist arguments for for the removal of environmental regulations. But but I have not personally run across it. If you have run across the listener send it in because I would

love to have that that that added perspective. But in terms of just reshaping the earth, and it's worth pointing out that, yeah, all major powers have done it and continue to do it, so you know, we can look to examples of reshaped mountains and damned rivers here in the United States. But I but I also can't help but think of the Zai Pin Poo damn, which is actually located in Sichuan Province as well. And this was this is a large scale damn that some scientists have.

You know, they've connected the dots here between it's massive reshaping of the earth and some deadly earthquakes that have occurred in the region. Really, I'm always curious about the extent to which people can actually uh trace human behavior to the causation of earthquakes. I'm not saying I never believe it happens, but I'm always curious, like, how, how, how with how much confidence can we really say that something we did caused an earthquake? Do you think scientists

are pretty certain here? Well, it's something we could definitely discuss in a in a later episode, like really break it apart. I mean, the scientists who are who are who are arguing that this is taking place. Uh. But so what we're talking about here is I'm sure they know better than I do. I don't mean to cast out on that. Well, it's it's not a it's not a fringe science by any sense, any sense, but it is. Uh.

It's known as reservoir induced size mesticity. Okay. So the the idea is that you have rapid changes in water pressure or caused by flood, seasonal flood, changes in reservoir levels, and this can activate already shaky ground and trigger an earthquake. So, for instance, the most famous example of this is that the three gorgeous damn in China, the huge thing. Yeah, so this is a massive So you end up with a of course, the way Damn's work, I think everybody's

familiar with this. You dam or river and you end up with water on one side, reservoir of water, and that's you control the flow. Yeah, and that's that's a massive amount of water. It's a massive change. I mean it's a change in mass and uh. And so the idea with the three gorges here is that this this reservoir ends up setting on two major fault lines and uh,

and that that can actually affect seismic activity. So it's not it's not a situation where it you can't really say it alone is causing the earthquake, but it is influencing the factors that that are at play in the causation of earthquakes. That's the argument. And well, tentatively I believe it. I was speaking out of ignorance. No, no no, no, I mean, it's the kind of thing we could take

apart in a later episode, for sure. But in the case of the Zaiping Poo damn, this is a three hundred and fifteen million ton water reservoir, and it lies about five fifty yards from a fault line uh and three miles from the epicenter of the Sichuan earthquake that killed at least reported eighty thousand people in two thousand eight. And that those stats are according to the Telegraph food

for for thought. Nobody's blaming this in the Buddha, don't get me wrong, But and and I naturally, I don't want I don't want to argue that there's a one to one comparison to be made between uh, you know, carving a sculpture out of a mountain and creating a you know, a massive reservoir via the construction of a damn.

But I think they both demonstrate this human ability and desire to to remake the world and then how we end up rediscovering the fragility of the world in the process and realizing that, Yeah, when you when you change the shape of a mountain, that's gonna have an impact.

When you create this massive reservoir, it's going to have an impact because in the case of of of a massive reservoir created via dam you also have to count in pollution because you have water flowing into areas that we're not uh previously submerged, and that might mean you are introducing uh, existing pollutants into the water. You have can have landslides, mud slides, weather changes, you have this uh what's called is the lake effect, so decreasing rainfall

in the area around the reservoir. Uh, there's a decrease there while there's an increase in rainfall in the surrounding mountain regions. On top of that, you can have drought, you can have a species loss, and you can have the loss of historical relics as you know, in an area that was you know, previously above water is now below water on you know, for the life of the dam. Yeah, that's something I've rarely even considered as a consequence of

damming rivers. We actually have a how Stuff Works dot Com article on the topic, so have to link to that as well on the landing page for this episode. It's stuff to blow your mind dot Com. All right, So there you have it, a little you know, introduction into I think one of the more remarkable UH statues in the world, one that I have not seen in person, but one day I would. I would very much like to. Maybe I can convince UH work to send me there.

I'm glad you brought this up, Robert. I I've I didn't really know anything about the statue going in, and I think it's a fascinating work of art, and I too would like to see it one day. So how about you out there again? We'd love to hear from anyone who has UH, who has actually ventured out and

and seen the Grand Buddha in person. What were your impressions, What do you think of the surrounding area, What do you think about other massive works of sculpture, you know, bet a freestanding sculpture or something carved out of the side of a mountain. What kind of effect did it have on you? I'm wondering what great works of art are going to be, you know, great great sculptures that exist today or will exist soon, are going to be visited by tourists in another years. Like, what's the Grand

Buddha that was built recently? Huh? I guess the Grand Buddha of the future. But not the Buddha of the future, not the Ma Trea. Okay, sorry, I'm being confusing. What what what's the sculpture out there today that people are going to be coming to with this much intensity more than a thousand years from now. Well, there are some very large statues in the United States that I don't think get a lot of press because they're just such recent constructions. I want to say, there's a it's a

in Florida. There is a pegasus battling a dragon. And it's why I want to say, it's like the second or third largest statue in the United States. But it's not historic. It's it's a very recent creation and it's just a dragon in a pegasus. So I don't know, maybe people will grow more attached to it and and it will. It will become like a something we're truly proud of, and we'll start putting it on money or something.

But for the time being, I guess you know, the Statue of Liberty, amount rushmore of these are still going to be the big attractions here in the United States until we build that five thousand foot Nixon we've been talking about. So head on over to Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. That's the mothership. That's where we will find all the podcast episodes. You will find blog post videos, and links out to our social media accounts

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