The NY MET is Wrong About Buddha
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 6 ต.ค. 2024
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The Mets are wrong about Buddha but what about the Yankees?
😂
Ba-Da-Tiss 🥁
Hi Brad -- art historian and curator here. They're simply called wall labels (or, more generally, didactics, if they also include the wall text at the entrance to an exhibition or a room).
I myself learned the story the way you tell it, and have always assumed that that type of statue depicts the ascetic, pre-enlightenment period. (Note, though: I'm not a specialist in Asian art.) However, I also worked at the Met for a couple of years during grad school, and those guys usually really know what they're talking about, so I'm surprised they could be so wrong.
I just googled it, and apparently the notion that the Buddha fasted for 49 days *after* Enlightenment is pretty widespread online. I have no idea if this refers to some alternate tradition or simply to a misunderstanding going viral. I suspect it's the latter, but that the Met of all places would just take a piece of unvetted info from the web and stick it on a wall label is profoundly shocking. I'll look a bit more into my own Buddhist studies books, but if I don’t find any such alternative tradition, I'm of a mind to write to the curator and send them a link to your video -- unless someone else does it first. In any case, you're absolutely right that they should have indicated that what they wrote doesn't agree with the mainstream story.
Not sure if it is related but I've heard from Indian friends multiple times stories that are almost like urban legends about 'holy people' who have spent years, even decades eating little or no food. I wonder if this is a type of folklore that attaches itself to larger religions...such as stories about people who pray to saints and receive minor miracles in Catholicism.
I wonder if perhaps this type of belief was common in ancient Pakistan at the time so the emaciated looking Buddha could have been post enlightenment to them?
My bet is they simply got the story wrong since the whole point of the story about him getting emaciated before enlightenment was that he realized the extreme fasting was a dead end and he would have to renounce it by accepting food again and doing something else.
The thing about this 'folk lore' belief I've heard from Indian friends is that the holy men (it always seems to be men) who do this allegedly do not need food. So while they are not going to be fat and round, they also are not supposed to look like they are on the edge of death.
That's the wall label that they you've used for decades. I remember seeing it in the 90s.
Even in contemporary India, stories from the Buddha's life are not very well-known, so it is not surprising that the sculpture has been misinterpreted. There are some legends in what we regard as Hinduism in which a particular ascetic has reached such a high state of absorption that anthills grow around his feet. That an ascetic could reach such a state of indifference toward his physical state would be regarded as a high achievement. There have been Hindu saints who have died from prolonged meditative practice including food-deprivation and are regarded as having achieved moksha which is the hindu equivalent of nirvana.
Jesus became Aquaman at the end
or maybe he was an nommo? or he became a nommo? do you mean aquaman as nommo XD
since yoga meant any serious spiritual practice - before lululemon - it is certainly not wrong to call the Buddha a yogic ascetic, as he was both a serious practitioner and, at least in this time of his life, an ascetic.
Thank you. Most buddhist don’t understand sanata dharma which is their historical and spiritual lineage. Most Buddhist can’t explain nirguna Brahmin, which is the ancient description of the Buddhist path long before Buddha was born. It’s in the 12thchapter of the Gita.
Buddha was considered a yogi. Period. Not what this culture thinks yoga means, but its original meaning.
Fun fact: There have been similar skeletal depictions among the Japanese pure land schools of the Bodhisattva Dharmakara, who eventually became Amitabha Buddha (Amida Nyorai), although the story behind them is different. According to the larger Amitabha Sutra, Dharmakara spent five kalpas in deep meditation before finally proclaiming his vows to establish his pure land. The problem is that artists trying to depict this in statue form couldn't decide if he would have been skinny or fat at the end of those five kalpas, or whether his hair would have grown or not. This means there are also statues of a chubby Dharmakara with an afro!
😄😄😄
I'm not familiar with all the details of the Buddha's life, but even I know that he was emaciated before enlightenment, not after. The Middle Way! Duh! 🙄
Thanks for the book recommendations.
Just FYI: Both volumes of "Gotama Buddha" are available for reading online or downloading (ePub, PDF) at the Internet Archive.
lol, somebody in charge of signs failed to do their research. Anyone familiar with Buddha's story should know that his "ascetic stage" came while he was living with the yogis, BEFORE giving it up for the Middle Way and awakening at Bodh Gaya.
boom
Thanks. I will be ordering that book soon. I found used copies in the 50 dollar range.
Nakamura is a great book. Two others that I like are "The Historical Buddha" by H.W. Schumann and "The Life of the Buddha" by Bhikku Nanamoli. The latter is a biography taken from the Pali Canon. It has the Buddha accepting food from two merchants under the Rajayatana tree 21 days after his enlightenment (see page 34).
If I remember, they've had that up for decades. If you read some of their other descriptors, it's evident that many need revision.
Viva Ziggy!
I'm probberly a bit late - I dunno - but is it still possible to send food?
Love yet channel bro! Currently rereading hardcore Zen!
The rice in milk is probably an ancient version of the contemporary Indian kheer. In Indian languages, a yogi is another word for ascetic, so 'Yogic ascetic' is a bit of a tautological expression.
What's the Kraftwerk book like? Anything new there or "how Kraftwerk influenced dance music in America" etc.
@@simeonbanner6204 I still haven’t read it!
I watched a video a while ago where they called the Buddha a trust fund kid.
LOL! Trustafarian!
Ah, I remember now - I've been racking my brain all the time - It was on the *Linfamy* TH-cam channel.
RE what Gotama died from, Joe DiNardo’s book references an MD upon hearing the symptoms who immediately said mesenteric ischemia, not mushroom poisioning.
'That where there is error, I may bring truth..' Yay! Go, man, go!
To call his son a fetter, my god what a person was this buddha person 😮
yeah, not good.. but he wasn't the Buddha at that time.
@@seachd2268 good point! Both his son and his wife joined the order of monks/nuns, so it seems like things worked out ok.
There's a story about this. After attaining enlightenment, the Buddha during his wandering visited a place near his home town. His wife, still nursing some resentment over Sid's abandonment pushed their son Rahula toward Sid who then asked him for his inheritance. Sid, in response, ordained Rahula as a monk in his order, much to his wife's alarm. It was after this episode that the Buddha was persuaded to make the rule that a minor could be admitted to the order only with parental consent. The Buddha was not infallible. He could change his mind.
Not all of us coming to this world are here to put more humans on the planet. Sure, without the great gift of his mother we probably wouldn’t have the dharma that ends all sufferings either. (At least not in this world, anyway?) Prince Siddhartha did put the gift from his mother to great use and actually transformed it into something that have had immeasurable benefit to countless others. Is that the view we have of the life we were given by our mothers too? If so, what are we doing with our lives that is bringing about the same type of transformation that the Buddha accomplished? It is the light of such considerations that we should ‘moralize’ around childbearing and family life, I think. The abundance of obstacles in this world are staggering, but they are all self-inflicted if we care to investigate their origins. If we insist on following the general ways of the world we will have no hope of transcendence and cutting the ties with samsara. Only radical diversion from the views of the world will set a mindset that will have a chance for true mental transformation.
heck yeahhhhh what an intro
The confusion is often associated with India having at least one hundred,
and twenty languages. Just under three hundred 'mother tongues'.
Each territory has differing stories, with unusual 'region specific' complexities.
There is no one 'truth'... it is a fairytale told with regional flavours added to it.
Each priest or religious leader uses the overarching story to elicit their own message.
Writers for a Western audience 'spin' or weave their translations from within,
the stories they prefer. They amalgamate and coalesce, or just pick,
the most well known myth from one of the largest regions.
Religion isn't ever a conduit of divine truth, it's a tool of control for the cunning,
over the trusting.
I've seen some mistakes at the met and other museums too that aren't right. I'm a Vajrayana practitioner in the Karma and Shangpa Kagyu, and I can't remember what I was looking at specifically, like maybe Vajradhara's consort or maybe Mahakala, but it didn't describe the meaning of a primordial buddha like Vajradhara, Samantabhadra, etc. It's an academic that is not familiar with actual buddhist practice, stories, and the twilight meaning.
Thanks for the book recommendation. I found a pdf that I put in my books. I love that kinda shit. Also, I heard it was bad fish. Either way, the buddha didn't go out like a chump. In fact, never left as we all have the mind of a buddha but usually can't uncover it.
Good video. I've found this kind of thing often. What absolutely f'in freaks me out, here in Britain, is the use of the word "zen" to describe products, services etc that just abuse the word (zen architects, zen garden services, zen nails, zen housing development, zen music player, zen computer tablet..) "I'd like my house to look a bit you know... "zenish" a bit "minimalist". Japan should sue inappropriate use of the term. I heard the Maasai have copyrighted their tribal name! Quite a few journalist in say the Guardian get basic facts about Buddhism incorrect; usually confusing it somehow with yoga.
This labelling and misuse of the term Zen in the UK always annoys me too
Wait, Jesus rose from the dead?! We have to tell people about this!
People are just copying and pasting info from the internet these days...everyone is lazy now......distracted
By the standard of his time, he was a yogi practicing a form of yoga.
There is no way to validate in reality the intention behind the particular statue without evidence.
In my opinion, both stories have the same value of evidence. Just that one story is far more popular
Generally, a museum is just to get your feet wet. I could say more, but who cares?
I am terrible at music, so it might be terribly wrong, but it seems to me like you sing better than you used to. How did you do it, do you practice something specific? I'd love to learn it too!
@@TheJedynak Thanks. I’ve just been working on it myself. I don’t have a particularly good voice so I have to find ways of singing that make use of what I can do.
Why did the person from the MET send you this picture?
@@Smoggyrob1 He didn’t. He told me about the exhibit. He wanted to know if the description could somehow be correct.
Hi. It was I that contacted Brad. I did not send him a picture. I described the statue and quoted the placard. When I read the placard I said to myself that it was wrong, but before emailing anyone on staff I decided to reach out to Brad for a second opinion. He then emailed me back, basically agreeing with me, but then adding more information that I was unaware of, like the fact that Gotama did fast at least once after his enlightenment (or, "enlightenment", if you disagree with the term.) As for the video, Brad simply decided to do that. I did not ask him to, but it did not break any agreement we had.
I always wondered how the Buddha could have no experience of death or loss before going outside of the palace, given that his mother died.
I believe his mother died in child birth. So not something the to-be Buddha would have remembered.
That story was supposedly from a previous Buddha, not Siddhartha, but as time went on the story became associated with him. I could see why it would be inserted into his life story as the centuries went on because it's quite dramatic, but its not actually the reality. According to the Pali Canon, the Buddha states that he contemplated old age, sickness, and death on his own, and then proceeded to go on his spiritual quest.
@@TheWrongCar84 Thank you. I guess that's a good way to account for it. It just seemed to me he would feel the loss of his mother and learn what happened to her. I'm probably thinking too much, as I usually do.
@@soma_182 Thank you. To me that makes a lot more sense. I guess one always has to consider cultural accretion over time as a way to account for potential ambiguities, questions or, especially, discrepancies.
@@EvanBerry. Absolutely, I always had a feeling the leaving the palace and seeing the 4 sights story seemed a little too much like a legend rather than a real event, and this is confirmed if you read what the Buddha actually said.
my kind of TH-cam
tera bas? terra bes? I can't find it
terebess.hu
I'm not gone donate but I could send you a donut 😊
How do we know any of it is accurate?
We don't.
"Only go straight... don't know!" --Seung Sahn
How do we know the world existed before we were born?
@@AliceBowie How do we know if the world exists now?
How do I know any of you are real.
I'm a current PhD student specialising in early Buddhism (in Australia). There are definite issues with this placard.
I completely agree with you that the line "...a yogic ascetic who has ultimate control of his body...", is associated with Hinduism, not Buddhism. So that's a bad conflation of two religions that are metaphysically inconsistent. It's as lazy and inaccurate as saying Jesus prayed 5 times a day with Mohammed.
I haven't read Nakamuru - but I would like too. But he's right - there are contradictions all through the Suttas - Bhikkihu Analayo has a great discussion on Wisdom podcast about how to deal with these inconsistencies & the likelihood of exaggeration in the early Suttas too.
It is true the Buddha practiced harsh ascetic practices for 6 years & nearly starved himself, but the whole concept of "the middle way" - central to his teachings & approach - neither encourages sense indulgence or, harsh ascetic practices.
Nanamoli describes the Buddha giving up the practice of starving before making his adhittana for liberation in The Life of the Buddha, "Now when I had eaten solid foods and had regained strength, then quite secluded from sensual desires (a reference to the lack of any of the 5 hinderances distracting the Buddha), secluded from unwholesome states I entered upon and abode in the first meditation, which is accompanied by thinking and exploring, with happiness and pleasure born of seclusion" (page 23). This mean Buddha ate, then entered the first Jhana.
The Buddha then had the night of his full liberation, followed by 7 days & nights of deep concentration (possibly Nibbana or Nirodha Samapatti - as both are available to the arahat and would allow 7 days of cessation & no eating). Delson Armstrong claims to have done this in modern times using Nirodha Samapatti BTW.
Nanamoli then references Vin. Mv 1:4, when two merchants approach the Buddha 7 days after his enlightenment these merchants offer the newly enlightenment Buddha food, "Lord let the blessed one accept this rice cake and honey, so that it may belong for our welfare and happiness" (page 34).
This would suggest the Buddha renounced food for 7 days after his enlightenment but accepts the offering of honey & rice cake earning them merit for giving alms to the newly enlightened Buddha. Again - this is the middle way because by this point Buddha has already renounced extreme fasting.
The 49 days the placard refers to is not the Buddha in Nibbana or not eating - but rather than time he reflects on his liberation and decides to teach the path to others. So the 49 days is the period of reflection and contemplation during which the Buddha developed his teaching strategy before going to Sarnath and teaching his 5 former ascetic companion the Noble Eightfold Path.
Yes, the facts on this a very muddled and not very respectful to Buddhism.
Buddha was a Hindu before he became a Buddhist. If he can even be called that. (was Jesus a Christian?)
TH-cam:)
The Buddha was just another dead beat dad.
was any of those ´´dead beat dads´´ a rich prince?
Well, he left them basically all his money and possessions and his son became his heir, so it wasn't like he left them without paying child support. They were richer than anyone else in the area and at the top of the kshatrya hierarchy. He abandoned them, but not without material support. So, he was an absent father, but not deadbeat dad, which means someone who doesn't pay child support. Also, his wife and son later both became ordained by Buddha, so they weren't resentful, at least later.
@@AliceBowie Apologists can't escape the fact that the Buddha is the dictionary definition of a deadbeat dad.
It doesn't matter if he was rich or poor. Or how the child fared once he left.
As soon as this fictional character heard his wife was pregnant, he left.
@@commonwunder what are you doing in a Buddhist channel then? yapping that much about something you dont believe in, typical atheist nihilist behaviour
It's tricky to apply our contemporary expectations to lives in the past. Even a few generations back fathers were not expected to interact with their kids much, except to be the authority figure that could be invoked fom time to time (wait till your father gets home...) And, as others have pointed out Rahula was the heir to the kingdom - of whatever size, so his life would not have changed much either way.
First❤