The bust of the Shakyamuni Buddha, steeped in contemplation. Son of King Shuddhodhana and Queen Mayadevi, He is the renunciate supreme. It was shortly after attaining to adulthood that He chose to leave the luxuries of His princely life behind - wife and son and wealth alike - for a life of self-seeking and wandering. Mendicancy, mortification, austerity, within a few years Gautama Buddha had been through it all. When He stopped for shade beneath the Bodhi tree at Gaya, He was already preparing for the higher recesses of samadhi.Seedless and asamprajnata, the sculpture that you see on this page depicts a higher-order yogic state of mind. Half-shut eyes beneath a wide-set brow. A long, sharp nose. A gorgeously sculpted mouth. Hints of the third golaka (organ) of vision upon the midbrow. The lengthened lobes of a pair of shapely ears that frame His handsome face. A thick mass of curls gathered atop His head, making for a strikingly familiar silhouette at the zenith.Note the aureole that frames the Buddha bust that you see on this page. It is a compact, intricately engraved number. Each panel along its elongated, gently curving frame has been carved in perfect symmetry with the other. Curvaceous coils like the mouths of numerous lotuses, freshwater foam from which they grow, and the tendrils of unassuming vines along the base. Such a Buddha bust would add to the aesthetics of the space of any devotee.
