Sacred Geography 11

A multi-storied chapel in the Thikse Monastery in Ladakh, India houses a fifteen-meter likeness of Maitreya — the future Buddha. The largest such feature in the region, the statue is made of clay, gold, and copper, and is adorned with a jeweled headdress containing semi-precious stones. The Maitreya Buddha denotes loving-kindness and embodies the compassionate dharma that will be taught by a Buddha in the near future. The message of the Maitreya is universal — one of spiritual understanding, dissolution, and the inevitability of change. The statue’s serene gaze takes in the snow-bound peaks of the Zanzkar Range and overlooks the Indus Valley, where Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism all intermingle amid the rich history of the Silk Road trade route.

The natural forces shaping the Himalaya — tectonic upheavals, climate, and erosion — act at a micro scale upon a carved stone countenance of Buddha set alongside a trail leading through the high mountains of central Nepal. Its missing head might have been lost to seasonal expansions and contractions in the rock caused by temperature changes and moisture. Or perhaps it was knocked off and whisked away by a thief for the lucrative antiquities market. I’ll never know. A newly placed ceremonial scarf, or kata, adorned the statue when I passed by, indicating that despite its obvious flaw, the relic still is a revered object among local people. I thought the statue evoked a kind of mysterious synchronicity between geological cycles at work on the planet, Buddhist ideas about impermanence, and the confusing interplay of hope and resignation that marks so much of modern society.
