What makes the Buddha's smile so special?
What is its fascination? Is it a misleading Mona Lisa smile? Is it a smile at all, or an inward directed gaze seeing something we don't know?
It's a secret, the smile of the Buddha.
A Buddha all to myself
Today I have one all to myself. I found it in the middle of the marshes surrounding the Inle Lake, over a narrow access road, looking for ... nothing.
What fascinates me about these so-called free days is the contrast to our normal everyday lives. Suddenly I have - what a shock! - a lot of hours at my disposal, which can be filled (or not, because even unintentional doing nothing is an option).
So after breakfast you're faced with an empty day (well, not quite; I have to find a taxi to the airport, but somehow empty, no to-do list anywhere, no urgent phone calls or emails, nobody wants anything from me, how did I deserve this?)
Get carried away
So I decide, once again, to let myself drift, somewhere where not every tourist is going. I love those walks or, as in this case, the rides on the bike along lonely paths, along nameless rivers, to houses where I am looked at with astonishment.
A quiet concert for no one
And so I find my very personal Buddha. It is part of a huge complex, consisting of countless small and large stupas, decorated in gold, whitewashed with white paint, here and there a little bit of a trinket, playful, as the Asians love it.
And since the noise from the channels is hardly audible at this point, I can hear the infinitely soft ringing of countless tiny bells attached to the tips of the stupas.
A quiet concert for no one.
Or maybe for me alone?
Gautama and I
For there is no one there, and it does not seem as if any human being has admired the sublime majesty of Buddha in the last hundred years. I take my time, for at this moment I am convinced that this encounter – like the nocturnal dream – has something to mean, but I don't have a hint of what it might be.
We face each other for a long time, Gautama and I, he with his gaze in eternity, I with the drinking bottle in my hand. It is one of the representations of the normal-weight sublime, not the bold version, not even the lean one. His right hand touches the ground, the other lies, palm up, on his lap. It has a special meaning, but I don't remember it anymore.
Maybe I should become a Buddhist after all.
Tomorrow is my last day in Myanmar. It will be hard for me. Damn, how can you feel so comfortable in a country?
P.S. Matching Song: Quintessence - Jesus, Buddha, Moses, Gauranga
And here the journey continues ...
