Exploring Buddhism in Kyoto

So here I am in steaming Kyoto with the temperature hitting 35 degrees. To my surprise I don’t feel any hotter than in Tokyo. Well anyway we are expecting cooler weather next week so only few more days of heat. I am now going around temples, museums and antique shops with my client from New York.

Yesterday we visited antique shopｓ and saw couple of small statues of Buddha as a child. In Japan statue of baby Buddha always has his right hand raised to the sky and the left pointing towards the ground.

The reason for having that posture is because when Buddha was born he walked seven steps and raised one hand to the sky and the other toward earth and said “I am a unique being that nobody can replace me neither in the universe nor on this earth.”

This means since you are one and the only one in the world, each individual is a very precious being and has to take care of oneself.

Then there was a similar statue of baby Buddha with his left hand raised to the sky instead of his right hand and his right hand pointing to the earth instead of his left hand. Another word the arms were in reverse position. So I asked the antique dealer who must have been over 80 years old the reason for the difference.

His explanation was very simple and that was the Chinese statues of baby Buddha as his left hand raised instead of the right. Interesting!

I suppose when Buddhism was passed onto Japan, we must have interpreted it differently.