I look around and some pictures of buhdda show him as at a healthy weight and figure.In other pictures he is fat.And in some pictures he is allmost a skeleton.Why is this?
I visited a Buddhist temple in Kent, NY. They said that Buddha has 3 different incarnations. Looking back on the trip, I wish my memory were better Details! Details!
they also represent different points along his path. When he is fat that is supposed to represent enlightenment ( this seems to be more a northern idea) When he is medium he is just medium, probably the way the ideal should be. When he is anorexic looking it probably refers to the time he spent doing austerities.
Probably because of being like Elvis, or Oprah, or anyone else - different phases at different times in his life. But also because weight is perceived differently in different cultures so for instance amongst predominantly poor people fat persons are seen as rich and masterful. Whereas amongst the wealthy slim and artistic peaceful figures are seen as masterful.
The fat Buddha, that you normally see, was originally a Chinese kitchen god. When Buddhism came to China it was kept but renamed as the laughing Buddha. It is not supposed to represent any historical figure but rather health and happiness. Although it is a nice little figure, it drives me nuts that it is wildly mistaken for a historical representation of the Buddha. It is not meant to represent him at any point in his life as the Buddha. The very thin Buddha, often seen under the Bodhi tree or the work will be named to imply that it was Buddha at the time of his enlightenment. This is a historical representation of one point in his life (assuming you take his life as a historical thing... in any case it represents a valid point in the story). At the point of his enlightenment he had just given up years of extreme physical deprivation. He was so weak from starvation he fell in a river and nearly drowned because he did not have the strength to pull himself out before he realized that that was not a path to nirvana. After this realization he sat under the Bodhi tree determined not to rise until he figured out the path to release. So, this is what you are seeing... it was roughly what he could have looked like physically when he reached enlightenment. The average Buddha would be the enlightened Buddha. Who lived a life without extremes. He ate enough to fuel his body. Not enough to get obese and not so little as to return to skin and bones. It is a representation -- in the physical -- of the middle way.
My father once told me that he had heard somewhere that the overweight Buddha figure was shown in his local to better sympathise with the community and in an effort to be more accepted. I do not believe that anyone can pretend to know the true story of the Buddha since we cannot relive the time period and investigate the stories. We can purely speculate and draw our own conclusions, or we can do nothing and accept things as they are but learn from them on our own accord.
Also a good question. But the answer to that is simply because it was asked. And when a question arrises, one should try his or her best to help the asker the answers he or she is looking for.
If the question is important, that is true. But our minds often attach far too much value to meaningless things and tend to harp on that. In such a situation, is it not better to try to transcend the question?
An interesting point. You are right. We have answered the question, and you have answered it by posing another question. I think as a whole, we have done our job properly.
