BATIK BUDDHIST PAINTINGS

"...The young prince Gautama Siddhartha was born into the ancient Sakya clan...he learned in a few days the sciences suitable to his race...Intrigued by his first encounter with old age...Four weeks after he began meditating under the Bodhi tree...on the night of a full moon, Sakyamuni attained enlightenment…" Gautam Buddha\'s life and teachings offer valuable insights into the human condition and the pursuit of inner peace and enlightenment. His legacy continues to inspire and influence people around the world, and his teachings remain relevant and meaningful today.

"The Buddha\'s journey to spiritual awakening or \'Nirvana,\'... perfectly mirrors the ... progressive development of a hero... Not at ease with his immediate environment... a constant unease gnaws at his heart, prompting him to question the very nature of his existence. This inner strife is the first inkling that a greater destiny lies ahead of the potential hero... Buddha was born an ordinary mortal. His path to fulfillment... was a journey full of exciting experiences and mistakes made. He learned from each of his mistakes, making it a springboard for all future, and finally the ultimate success... each of us... is capable and deserving of Nirvana, having a potential Buddha hidden in us..."

"In its characteristic unique way, Buddhist thought divides the eventful life of its founder into twelve glorious "events." These defining incidents of his life are given visual form in densely packed sequences narrated in a special genre of paintings... These artworks not only delineate Buddha\'s gradual progress towards spiritual enlightenment, but also present a visual depiction of a vast number of abstract philosophical notions underlying esoteric Buddhism..."

"The Buddha image...has constantly been under debate as to its origin and evolution...Some believe that the first Buddha image had come into being during the lifetime of the Buddha himself...For most scholars however...he earliest Buddha images come from around...some five hundred year after Buddha\'s Mahaparinirvana...early Buddhist art...sought to represent him by a number of symbols, or material motifs, which had remained associated with him...These motifs, the empty throne and stupa in particular, depicted rather, and with utmost thrust, only Buddha\'s absence, as it was in his absence that his devotees realized the presence of their Master...the artists, working as per the Buddhist tradition itself, saw Buddha more in the Dharma rather than in a human form...Even during the subsequent late phase...not a single Buddha image...has so far come to light, which does not depict one aspect or the other of the Dharma...It does not so much portray the Buddha as it does the Dharma..."

The Buddha image, which completely revolutionalised, by its great dynamism, unimaginably diversified iconography, massive scale and unique spiritualism, the art scenario in ancient India, seems to have evolved upon human mind during the lifetime of the Buddha himself, although this image of mind took some six hundred years to emerge into stone or clay like mediums. As the Buddhist tradition has it, even during Buddha\'s lifetime, the idea of making his images persisted in his devotees\' minds. The widely quoted legend of king Udayana, commissioning Buddha\'s image to represent the Great Master during his absence and that of Anathapindaka praying Buddha to allow at least the images of Bodhisattvas, suggest that his followers contemplated the possibility of covering their Master\'s absence by his anthropomorphic representations even before the Mahaparinirvana.