Buddha said: "All appearances are false", and also said that "color is not different from emptiness, emptiness is not different from color", and even said that "Bodhi has no tree, and the bright mirror is not a platform."
Although many of us are atheists nowadays and do not believe in Buddhism, we are very familiar with these Buddhist quotes.
Because Buddhism and Buddhism were once in a while, and even the whole country regarded it as the truth, many Buddhist quotations were widely circulated.
not only that, but many objects related to Buddha have been passed down to this day and are well known to people. Small ones such as rosary or Bodhi, many people play with them in their hands.
, and the larger ones include Buddha statues and Guanyin statues, such as Leshan , and Guanyin in Hainan for people to admire. Even if people do not believe in Buddhism, they still know one or two more and have experienced its style.
What we are going to talk about today is also a Buddha statue, but it is very different from what we see on weekdays. It is an Thousand-Armed Guanyin statue with a history of more than 800 years.
Buddhas and Buddha statues that have been passed down for thousands of years
Legend Buddhism was formed in the sixth century BC after Sakyamuni found the way to liberation from the sufferings of life, and created the sect to spread his own feelings.
initially began to spread outward from India, and gradually developed its own system, a complete introduction to schools, and also had scriptures like " Great Prajna Sutra " that expounded ideas.
During the spread little by little, it was introduced to my country during in the Han Dynasty , and in the Sui and Tang became popular in the Sui and Tang . In the "Journey to the West", the prototype of Tang Monk is the monk who seeks Buddhist scriptures in Tang Dynasty .
When Buddhism emerged in my country, it was not only the spread of Buddhist scriptures, but also many temples, pagodas, etc. related to Buddhism were built in various parts of my country.
enshrined many Buddha statues in the temple, and became the spiritual sustenance of many people .
However, in the early years, the image of Buddhism still had many exotic colors, and was influenced by Greek culture and Indian culture. However, as it was introduced to our country for a long time, it began to become more and more aligned with the customs.
The most obvious change is the appearance of Buddha in each temple. Most of the Buddha statues in the past showed people the image of high nose bridge, slender eyes and thin lips, which was undoubtedly the appearance of Westerners.
Even if people in the Central Plains believe in Buddhist remarks, when they see such a Buddha statue, they will also feel doubtful, thinking about whether such foreign gods and Buddhas can save themselves as an oriental?
So during the process of Buddhism spread, the Buddha statues are also changing little by little. Gradually, people also added a lot of oriental colors to the Buddha statue in the process of building it, integrating the appearance of Han .
is like the Great Earloda, just like the Tathagata Buddha in "Journey to the West" is the best restoration of the Buddha statue in the Central Plains at that time.
But for the construction of Buddha statues, each different craftsman has his own different definition of Buddha in his heart. So there are more or less differences in Buddha statues.
In caves like Dunhuang and Longmen , the Buddha statues we can see now are very different. Some people dressed like emperors, had luxurious golden bodies, some wore Han and Jin costumes, and some had plump cheeks and wide chins, with hands over knees.
But no matter what kind of Buddha statue it is, people believe in it, because everyone has different prayers in their hearts when worshiping Buddha statues, and some people seek spiritual sublimation and liberation.
And some people hope that the Buddha can bless them, not only money, status, offspring, but even the next life, are within the scope of their prayers.
The Buddhas worshipped by these people are not just Sakyamuni. Most of them will worship another kinder and more friendly Buddha, which is the Guanyin Bodhisattva that is always around Sakyamuni.
Most Guanyins have the same appearance, but the details are very different. They have different shapes and different things in handhelds, and the most special one is the prototype of Thousand-Handed Guanyin, who was once obliged to be on the stage of the Spring Festival Gala today.
There is really a "Thousand-Handed" Guanyin with nearly a thousand hands
Many people once thought that Thousand-Handed Guanyin was just a stage image, but it really existed in history.
A few years ago, I discovered a statue of Guanyin in Chongqing. It was not an ordinary Guanyin, but a Thousand-Hand Guanyin cast more than 800 years ago with nearly a thousand hands.
Thousand-Handed Guanyin This is not the first one that people have discovered. Although Thousand-Handed Guanyin before this had many hands, it was not carefully reflected during the construction, it was just a rough idea.
The general Thousand-Handed Guanyin truly reflects 32 or 48 hands, and they will hold Guanyin's iconic objects, such as vases, swords, etc. But this time the Thousand-Armed Guanyin is the closest Thousand-Armed Guanyin.
When I discovered this Buddha statue, I was actually very dilapidated. A large part of the Buddha statue's head, body and hands had been damaged, but the size of this Buddha statue is so large, and its image is rare with other Buddha statues. Even though the renovation project was very large and difficult, it was finally decided to restore the Buddha statue as before.
The relevant departments of the national cultural relics sent an expert team to Chongqing and formulated a brief plan to study and analyze the Buddha statue. An attempt to tailor the fix for it.
The most difficult and complicated part of restoring this Buddha statue is the nearly 1,000 hands. At that time, it took a lot of effort to count how many hands the Buddha statue had.
Experts used advanced equipment such as projection instruments to scan and map the Buddha statues. Let the panoramic view of the Buddha statue be presented on the computer.
then uses the decomposition method to divide the Buddha statue into dozens of parts. After carefully sorting out each part, we finally measured that there were 830 hands in this Thousand-Handed Guanyin statue.
It sounds like the mapping process is not difficult, but you should know that Guanyin's hand holds a magic weapon, and many of these hundreds of hands hold a magic weapon.
Under the cover of the magic weapon, a hand will be missed by accident. In addition, many Buddha hands are already incomplete because of the passage of time over the past century. If you want to count the number, you have to restore the general appearance of the hand first. The difficulty can be imagined.
initially, after the first round of counting, the experts concluded that there were 829 hands. When the second round of review was reviewed, they found another half of the ignored Buddha hand, and then they came to a final conclusion.
The road to repairing for many years
When scanning this Thousand-Handed Guanyin, everyone in the production sighed that it is still a big project to repair this Thousand-Handed Guanyin after we have many high-end equipment.
How could such advanced tools be found more than 800 years ago? It was hard to measure the manpower, material resources, time and money that were spent at that time were even more difficult to measure. It can be seen how people loved Thousand-Handed Guanyin at that time.
In the early years, people said that Thousand-Handed Guanyin had boundless magic power and could save sentient beings. Thousand-Handed Guanyin went to Emei and down to Baoding, so that the temples enshrined Thousand-Handed Guanyin were incense for many years, which shows people's trust in Thousand-Handed Guanyin.
Now that I have the chance to be discovered, I naturally cannot bury such masterpieces. Bi Ran should try to restore them as much as possible.
Some experts have analyzed that if you want to repair this Thousand-Armed Guanyin, you must be as consistent as possible from the inside out, then the gold foil on the surface cannot be made of ordinary materials. In order to thoroughly study, even experts in stone cultural relics have invited them.
After some analysis and inspection, the original body of the Buddha statue was actually mixed with pig blood and mercury sulfate . I don’t know how people did it back then.
The gold foil on this surface is also very knowledgeable. Although the gold foil is seriously off, it is not difficult to see that Guanyin is covered in gold clothes.
However, some parts of the gold foil on Guanyin's body turned blue. I thought it was the color that people put on Guanyin at that time, but the test result turned out to be "copper". The gold on the body was secretly mixed with copper, and it changed color after years of age. Maybe it was considered to save costs. After all, such a large-scale sculpture has been built with a lot of cost. Maybe I wanted to save a little on this surface.
Then after magnifying the gold foil by 5000 times, I found that there were small holes in the gold foil. According to experts, this hole was polished in order to pursue thinness when it was first built.
In order to restore the effect of that year, the experts removed the gold foil from the original body and cleaned it. Then, in order to put on the golden robe for the Thousand-Handed Guanyin again, the experts used traditional lacquer technology to paste the gold foil. This seemingly simple "surface kung fu" alone took a long time.
initially thought that the repair project could be completed in about three to four years, but these three years have passed and it is still far from completion. The most time-consuming one should be the repair of hand.
Regarding the residual limb reconstruction project, in fact, when the number of hands was relaxed, experts already knew that more than half of the Buddha's hands were not complete. Not to mention the incomplete surface color, but the incompleteness and damage of the hands.
You should know that your hands can be posed in various ways, and your fingers are flexible. Of course, these more than 800 hands also have different shapes. Since you are determined to repair them, it is impossible to repair them at will.
In order to restore the old appearance, experts also specially invited portraitists who are more good at painting to refine their appearance through the remaining part of the Buddha's hand.
Fortunately, this Buddha's hand has symmetrical movements, which makes the repair more difficult.
But there are still many things that cannot be started. The experts have checked a lot of information before trying their best to complete it.
After repairing the Buddha statue's hands, you have to repair the golden clothes on your hands. This is different from supplementing the body. It is a large-scale project. There are many details on the hands. The work must be meticulous and fine, and there must be no mistakes.
Wait until the whole body of the gold foil is repaired, and finally the Guanyin base must be painted and improved. From the discovery of this Guanyin statue in 2009, until June 2015, this long-term road to restoration finally saw the dawn.
Not long after, this Buddha statue was officially opened to tourists. A lot of details about the restoration of Buddha statues have been disclosed to the media, which has also given people a more detailed understanding of Buddha statues.
Among all the details, the most surprising and touching thing is the mechanism of the abdomen of the Buddha statue.
Hidden mechanism record history
When repairing Buddha statues, experts will naturally study every part of the Buddha statue thoroughly, and it is impossible to let go of every corner.
When the Buddha statue is about to be repaired, they conduct routine inspections on the parts that have been repaired. The original intention is to see if there are any errors or if there are any wrongs or if there are no correct parts that are not in line with the original body.
But an expert unexpectedly discovered a mechanism. At that time, the expert was checking the abdomen of the Buddha statue and accidentally bumped into the mechanism. With a sound, everyone's eyes looked at the Buddha statue.
No one knows what happened, but they are afraid that there will be any damage to the Buddha statue or that something unexpected happens in the repair process of this Buddha statue.
Everyone stared at the Buddha statue with good eyes. At this moment, everyone actually saw a stone brick popping out of the abdomen of the Buddha statue. Everyone immediately surrounded and went to find out.
Experts carefully took down the stone brick and first investigated the abdomen of the Buddha statue together, but found nothing except the spring mechanism.
I thought it would be like in movies and TV dramas, such a secret door, which would open a new world, and would there be any treasure or Buddhist scriptures hidden inside, but the only one is this brick.
Although this is not a secret door, it is not an ordinary brick. It is the carrier of a passage, and this brick records the origin of the Thousand-Handed Guanyin Buddha statue.
Although the text is not very clear, it can clearly see what the writer wants to express. It is said that the builder of this Buddha statue is also a Buddhist.
Because of his extreme admiration for Buddhism, he wanted more people to see the Buddha statues, and he spent a lot of money to hire craftsmen. It took a long time to build this Thousand-Handed Guanyin. I just hope that when people see this Thousand-Armed Guanyin, they will unconsciously feel awe.
In fact, it is not uncommon to find written records during archaeology, but general written records are recorded on stone tablets or walls. It is indeed uncommon to hide such exquisite mechanisms on the abdomen of Buddha statues.
I don’t know if the person who built the Guanyin statue was to be so low-key that it was unknown, but he didn’t want to break off contact with this Buddha statue a hundred years later.
The difficulty of building such a Buddha statue back then was beyond our imagination. Although this exquisite little mechanism was small, the principles were very complicated, which shows how superb the craftsmen were at that time.
This Buddha statue has been deeply shocked by everyone who sees it from its discovery to its restoration. Its appearance really makes people who see it feel deeply awe.
What we respect is not only Thousand-Handed Guanyin himself, but also the beliefs of the people who built Buddha statues back then, as well as the infinite wisdom of people.
For thousands of years, archaeology has discovered not only Buddha statues, but also tombs, objects, and ruins. These are all Chinese civilizations that have been passed down for thousands of years. Whether it is Buddhism, Taoism, , each of them is a witness to history.
And all archaeologists have spent three years and five years researching and restoring, in order not to let down the efforts of their predecessors, but also to let us, as future generations, understand history differently only stay in words without any warmth, and can actually feel the traces of history with our own eyes.
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