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BUDDHAHOOD move him-not literally bring him from his place, but only provoke the least stir of a will to enjoy, which would amount to a step back into the thralldoin of life. But both temptations fail. The powers work in vain to discover in his nature some flaw, some last remainder of fear and desire. The menacing and the enticing gestures equally fail to touch him; for he has vanished from the sphere of the currents and cross-currents of delight and despair, which constitute the warp and woof of life. In the works of sculpture in question, this unassailable state of the "one who cannot be reached any more” is expressed by omitting the Buddha-image from the composition. Amid the turmoil of the hosts and the captivating attitudes of the daughters of the tempter, the holy seat bencath the Bo Tree is empty; the Buddha is not to be seen (Plate IX).
The De-spirated One 7 is never depicted through visible or tangible features in the early Buddhist monuments; for anything tangible or visible would amount to a description of him --cither as a man or as a god. He would be endowed then with such features as befit beings shaped by the influences of former lives, beings brought by the law of karma into human or celestial forms. Any shape would by its nature communicate a wrong rotion of his essence, which is on a non-depictable plane. A shape would show him to be tied by the subtle bonds of karma to the sphere of some set of limiting and transitory qualifications, whereas the whole sense of his being is that he is released from such symptoms of ignorance and desire. In viewing these carly works of Buddhist sculpture one is to think of the Buddha as truly there, on the throne of Enlightenment, but as though he were a bubble of emptiness. Footprints on the ground and a slight hollowing of the cushion betray his presence, but no visible trait could possibly render the essence of his nature. Visible traits (beauty and grandeur, for example, or the dazzling
? This is a term contrived by Dr. Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, a literal rendering of nir.(de-)vāna (spirated), or "blown out."
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