Day 776- Compassionate Buddha

This is the Weeping Buddha I just acquired for my meditation altar. The story of the Weeping Buddha and how I came to find him is I was watching a television show “Being Mary Jane” a couple of weeks after Shayna passed. There was a statue on the show that caught my eye. It wasn’t featured. It was just in the main character’s house, but it looked like a man in grief. Oddly enough, Ty said it was a Buddha, but I didn’t think it was.  Something about that statue drew me and I needed to know more about it.  As I was thinking of what to put on my meditation altar, the statue came back to mind. So, a few days later Google to the rescue. I Googled “Being Mary Jane” and statue and fortunately someone wrote about a Buddha statue she had in her house, but again, I’m thinking this isn’t a Buddha.  One Google search led to another and finally I found “Weeping Buddha”.

The statue is said to symbolize the Buddha weeping for the suffering in the world to take that suffering away from all of us. What it says to me is that the Buddha wept, Christ wept, even the most “enlightened” among us weep.  People who have had OOBE’s, NDEs and to whom the secrets of the universe have been revealed still weep when they lose a loved one from this physical plane. Weeping is part of being human. It’s part of what we came here to experience.

The statue is carved from a single block of wood. It is a statue that wood carvers must master before they can move on to more intricate carvings. The Buddha is portrayed as powerful in his musculature, yet he weeps. Even the strongest of us can be overtaken by grief.

I saw several Weeping Buddhas ranging from quite expensive to fairly inexpensive, but someone was selling this one used on eBay. It’s a little worn in spots where it looks like someone was handling it. Perfect. It’s vintage. I love it.