August 1, 2017 • 50 mins
One of the largest historical statues in the world, China’s Lèshān Grand Buddha has overlooked the Dàdù river for 1200 years. Carved from the side of a mountain, this serene titan is a testament to human artistry and the Anthropocene Epoch. Join Robert and Joe for a discussion of the Buddha’s history, meaning and the overarching theme of humanity’s remaking of the natural world.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuffworks
dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and
I want to start with a question that might sound
kind of simple. Why generally do we not build statues
(00:25):
of people who are still alive? I know sometimes we do.
You've got the Bronze Fonds. Yeah, and Henry Winkler is
still out there. And I believe in New Zealand there
is a statue of Richard O'Brien as riff Raff from
the Rocky Art Picture Show. And of course there's the
statue of RoboCop, which I don't know if I knew
(00:45):
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
(01:05):
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
(01:27):
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
(01:48):
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,
(02:09):
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
(02:31):
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
(02:56):
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.
(03:18):
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
(03:38):
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.
(03:58):
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
(04:22):
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
(04:43):
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
(05:04):
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
(05:25):
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
(05:45):
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
(06:06):
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
(06:27):
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,
(06:49):
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
(07:10):
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
(07:33):
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.
(07:54):
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
(08:14):
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
(08:36):
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
(08:57):
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
(09:19):
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
(09:41):
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
(10:03):
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,
(10:25):
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
(10:48):
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
(11:10):
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.
(11:33):
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.
(11:55):
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
(12:15):
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
(12:38):
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
(13:00):
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
(13:22):
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
(13:43):
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,
(14:04):
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
(14:25):
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,
(14:46):
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
(15:07):
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,
(15:27):
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
(15:49):
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
(16:12):
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
(16:34):
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
(16:56):
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
(17:17):
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
(17:39):
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
(18:00):
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
(18:22):
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
(18:44):
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
(19:06):
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
(19:26):
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
(19:47):
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
(20:07):
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
(20:27):
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
(20:49):
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,
(21:12):
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,
(21:35):
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.
(21:57):
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
(22:19):
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
(22:40):
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,
(23:02):
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
(23:23):
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
(23:43):
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
(24:04):
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
(24:24):
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
(24:48):
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
(25:09):
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
(25:31):
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
(25:52):
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
(26:15):
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
(26:39):
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
(27:02):
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
(27:25):
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
(27:47):
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
(28:07):
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
(28:29):
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
(28:50):
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,
(29:12):
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,
(29:35):
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
(29:59):
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
(30:19):
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
(30:41):
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
(31:04):
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
(31:24):
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
(31:45):
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
(32:07):
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
(32:30):
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,
(32:50):
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
(33:11):
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.
(33:33):
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
(33:53):
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
(34:14):
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
(34:37):
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
(34:59):
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,
(35:22):
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
(35:44):
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
(36:05):
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
(36:26):
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
(36:48):
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
(37:11):
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
(37:31):
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,
(37:52):
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
(38:15):
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,
(38:35):
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
(38:55):
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.
(39:20):
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
(39:43):
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
(40:05):
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
(40:25):
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
(40:49):
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
(41:10):
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
(41:31):
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,
(41:53):
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
(42:14):
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
(42:35):
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
(42:56):
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
(43:19):
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
(43:42):
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,
(44:05):
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
(44:26):
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
(44:47):
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
(45:09):
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
(45:32):
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
(45:53):
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
(46:13):
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
(46:34):
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
(46:54):
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.
(47:16):
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
(47:36):
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
(47:57):
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
(48:18):
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
(48:40):
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.
(49:01):
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
(49:21):
such as Twitter, Facebook, Tumbler, Instagram, you name it. Facebook
is a great place to check us out though, especially
since we have a new discussion module group that is
set up and that's just a place where you can
you can chime in with some longer form comments on
recent episodes, uh and stir up and discussion with other
listeners and even your your humble hosts here, uh, you know,
(49:43):
without it just being you know, instantly lost in that
Facebook timeline. Yeah. So, if you're interested, request to join,
and of course, if you want to get in touch
with us directly, as always, you can do it the
old fashioned way and email us at blow the mind
at how stepf works dot com for more illness and
(50:10):
thousands of other topics. Does it? How stuff works dot
Com the biggest
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuffworks
dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and
I want to start with a question that might sound
kind of simple. Why generally do we not build statues
(00:25):
of people who are still alive? I know sometimes we do.
You've got the Bronze Fonds. Yeah, and Henry Winkler is
still out there. And I believe in New Zealand there
is a statue of Richard O'Brien as riff Raff from
the Rocky Art Picture Show. And of course there's the
statue of RoboCop, which I don't know if I knew
(00:45):
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
(01:05):
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
(01:27):
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
(01:48):
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,
(02:09):
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
(02:31):
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
(02:56):
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.
(03:18):
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
(03:38):
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.
(03:58):
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
(04:22):
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
(04:43):
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
(05:04):
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
(05:25):
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
(05:45):
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
(06:06):
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
(06:27):
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,
(06:49):
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
(07:10):
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
(07:33):
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.
(07:54):
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
(08:14):
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
(08:36):
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
(08:57):
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
(09:19):
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
(09:41):
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
(10:03):
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,
(10:25):
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
(10:48):
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
(11:10):
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.
(11:33):
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.
(11:55):
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
(12:15):
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
(12:38):
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
(13:00):
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
(13:22):
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
(13:43):
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,
(14:04):
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
(14:25):
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,
(14:46):
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
(15:07):
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,
(15:27):
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
(15:49):
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
(16:12):
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
(16:34):
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
(16:56):
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
(17:17):
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
(17:39):
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
(18:00):
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
(18:22):
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
(18:44):
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
(19:06):
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
(19:26):
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
(19:47):
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
(20:07):
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
(20:27):
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
(20:49):
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,
(21:12):
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,
(21:35):
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.
(21:57):
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
(22:19):
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
(22:40):
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,
(23:02):
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
(23:23):
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
(23:43):
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
(24:04):
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
(24:24):
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
(24:48):
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
(25:09):
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
(25:31):
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
(25:52):
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
(26:15):
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
(26:39):
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
(27:02):
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
(27:25):
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
(27:47):
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
(28:07):
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
(28:29):
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
(28:50):
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,
(29:12):
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,
(29:35):
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
(29:59):
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
(30:19):
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
(30:41):
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
(31:04):
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
(31:24):
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
(31:45):
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
(32:07):
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
(32:30):
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,
(32:50):
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
(33:11):
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.
(33:33):
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
(33:53):
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
(34:14):
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
(34:37):
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
(34:59):
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,
(35:22):
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
(35:44):
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
(36:05):
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
(36:26):
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
(36:48):
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
(37:11):
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
(37:31):
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,
(37:52):
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
(38:15):
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,
(38:35):
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
(38:55):
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.
(39:20):
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
(39:43):
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
(40:05):
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
(40:25):
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
(40:49):
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
(41:10):
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
(41:31):
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,
(41:53):
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
(42:14):
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
(42:35):
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
(42:56):
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
(43:19):
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
(43:42):
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,
(44:05):
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
(44:26):
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
(44:47):
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
(45:09):
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
(45:32):
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
(45:53):
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
(46:13):
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
(46:34):
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
(46:54):
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.
(47:16):
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
(47:36):
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
(47:57):
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
(48:18):
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
(48:40):
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.
(49:01):
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
(49:21):
such as Twitter, Facebook, Tumbler, Instagram, you name it. Facebook
is a great place to check us out though, especially
since we have a new discussion module group that is
set up and that's just a place where you can
you can chime in with some longer form comments on
recent episodes, uh and stir up and discussion with other
listeners and even your your humble hosts here, uh, you know,
(49:43):
without it just being you know, instantly lost in that
Facebook timeline. Yeah. So, if you're interested, request to join,
and of course, if you want to get in touch
with us directly, as always, you can do it the
old fashioned way and email us at blow the mind
at how stepf works dot com for more illness and
(50:10):
thousands of other topics. Does it? How stuff works dot
Com the biggest
Stuff To Blow Your Mind News
Hosts And Creators
Robert Lamb
Joe McCormick
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.