Fasting Buddha, Victoria's Way, Roundwood

                               Fibre, 14 ft (to be cast in bronze)

    The sculpture, a copy of a 2nd century, Gandhara Period, 80 cms stone carving, now on show in Lahore Museum, Pakistan, shows Gautama, who later proclaimed himself Buddha, going to extremes (of self-mortification/denial - read: Yoga).

    After he had dumped his wife and child, Gautama, claiming that "household life is cumbersome and dusty", wandered all over India to find someone or some method to help him solve his problem, and which he later claimed was to discover the cause of suffering and how it might be ended. He never did find the cause (i.e. he came up with several), but proposed a user friendly (hence trance inducing) placebo anyway.
    The last problem solving technique he practiced was extreme self-morification/denial, which he had borrowed from the Jains. He quickly realized that extreme mortification/denial of the body/mind didn't work, in much the same way that the Yoga proposed by Patanjali doesn't work.    The Jains still have not got that message.

    After that he did what all rebellious whiz kids eventually do. He invented a new method, complete with a new theory, to wit (Pali): savitacco, savicaro samadhi, meaning, clear observation, clean analysis and reduction to a logic outcome (in short, the scientific, seemingly rational method). Both worked for him, but only for him, at least for a while. In fact, the 'peerless' Buddha stated that no-one had reached his awakened (in fact, psychotic) state, not even his two top hit men, Sariputta and Moggallana. Though his causal theories (and there were at least two, later even more) were not all they were trumpted up to be and the numerous practices he invented fiendishly difficult and hardly a sure bet (since both the precise goal and its results were left strangely vague), his followers adored him, save those who wanted to kill him (i.e. like his cousin). He was, apparently, an inconspicuous but truly nice guy and wonderful storyteller.
    The Buddha's philosophic legacy was an extraordinary mess, and which is why it will keep hordes of academics and sleep-walking followers busy and distracted and, consequently, and out of pain (Pali: dukkha), for several centuries more. Basically the Buddha recommended the Middle Way, and which means, "Don’t go to extremes. Keep a low profile if you don’t want to get hurt!," which is great if you want to spend your life in a state of suspended animation and going and getting nowhere.

    Boy oh boy !! Did he drop a clanger! To be sure, keeping to the Middle Way makes for political correctness and painless but dull safety. But it doesn’t win at darts, golf, love, the stock market or the Buddhist Path to Perfection. Guatama often claimed that he was a VICTOR, though it was later claimed by his obtuse groupies that after his Great Awakening he had withdrawn his penis, and which could have made him a VICTORIA. After all, it’s winning, usually resulting from extreme effort, that makes life the awesomely real wonder it is.

    His last words, roughly translated, were, and still are, significant, to wit:"Do your own thing, with effort!"