Word: buddha
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Parthenon. Very little is known of the people who built and used it, or of the reasons it was permanently abandoned in 1006 after an earthquake and the eruption of the nearby Merapi volcano. Covered with some two miles of bas-reliefs that depict the life of Buddha and the sacred stories of Buddhism, Borobudur is a source of immense national pride to Indonesia, even though Islam is now the religion of more than 95% of its people...
Carved of gray-brown volcanic stone, Borobudur consists of a large platform, roughly 400 ft. on each side, surmounted by a wedding cake of five progressively smaller square terraces. These are topped by three circular layers. Crowning the entire structure is a bell-shaped stupa. Dozens of statues of Buddha line the balustrades on each level. Ancient Javanese architects, under Hindu influence, designed Borobudur as a model of the Mahayana Buddhist cosmos; the various levels represent the ascending stages of enlightenment that must be passed before nirvana, or spiritual freedom, is reached...
...returned to its place. Thousands of stones that had tumbled down over the years had to be fitted, like parts of a brobdingnagian jigsaw puzzle, into then" proper niches. Even local mystics were consulted, along with the computer, to find where the stones be longed. (Sadly, 54 of the Buddha heads still have not been matched with 258 headless Buddha torsos...
...with uncomfortable intimacy. While reporting to magazine headquarters in New York City from the Commodore Hotel in West Beirut, Stewart got word that his apartment house had been shelled. He rushed home, and amid the piles of plaster and shredded furniture found his prized statue of a 17th century Buddha presiding undamaged over the wreckage. Only one hour before, Stewart had been in the apartment writing his story...
...only by photographs. Some of Paik's pieces were more permanent, like a television set with the screen removed and a candle burning in the empty cabinet-a neat comment on the votive, shrinelike role played by TV in the home-or a closed-loop setup titled TV Buddha, in which a stone effigy of the Buddha sits with a camera pointed at it, ceaselessly contemplating its own immobile image in a small monitor...