Saturday, March 23, 2013

Drawing Buddha's Hand


Buddha Holding the World
Watercolor, stenciled halo, Sharpie Pen
I drew one of my Buddha statues and found the face
was easy but the hands and feet were a challenge, especially 
the left hand.  My son said he really liked the left hand because the heavy
lines in the figure joints meant that that hand could move, like the
cartoon figures he likes to look at online.  I kept on staring at that hand
and began to think that it was trying to tell me something.  Buddha's hand
can move?  I started to think that there was something IN Buddha's left
hand, although that wasn't what I thought I was drawing.  Hmmmm, looks
like a ball.  I decided to just let that cook and see what came up.

Later I realized that the ball is the World.  The World is in Buddha's hand.  I
decided to work on the drawing (the top drawing is the finished one) and
render what I had realized.  Somehow I feel like crying.  It makes me think
of something I visualize when I am feeling despair.  I imagine myself in Christ's
arms, like Mary holding the crucified Christ in the Pieta.  Of course I am not
dead but only crucified, usually by my own thoughts.  This image came to 
me from that story of the footprints in the sand--the story where Christ shows
a man his life and how he has always been with him.  The man sees the extra
pair of footprints, along his own in the sand, but then notices that there is a
time in his life when there is only one set of footprints.  The man accuses
Christ of abandoning him right when he needed him the most.  Christ smiles
and says "That's when I carried you".  

So now I have another healing image, that of Buddha holding the world.  The
reality that the Buddha represents is large, the world is small.  I also realize that
this is Buddha offering the world to us.  Offering the world to me.  Offering 
a world of compassion and peace.  It can only be offered.  I must receive.

2 comments:

  1. Thanks Sandra! I really like that little blue and yellow world spinning in Buddha's hand.

    ReplyDelete