CARVING BUDDHAS
One summer afternoon years ago, I was sitting on a pier in Provincetown Harbor drawing fishing boats. A flock of sea birds took wing over the water.
Suddenly, they were writing a sky calligraphy with their bodies - and I became them.
No sky, no birds, no me - just complete immersion.
Apparently, I kept drawing and sometime later emerged from that amazing state. My drawing looked like a Japanese ink painting. It was like nothing I had ever done before.
What was that all about?
An artist friend later told me it was a “Zen moment”.
What the heck does that mean, I asked her, and how do I find out? She told me to call the Zen Center in Cambridge and ask them how I could learn.
They instructed me to go to their temple in a small town in Rhode Island and join the practice.
When I arrived, I was told that new students sleep in the Dharma Room with their heads towards the big gold Buddha on the altar.
I was the only one there.
All night long, I lay on the wooden floor in my sleeping bag, unable to rest. Powerful energies poured into me, as if my head were plugged into the wall socket.
I moved into the temple the next week.
Since I had started to carve stone several years earlier, I received permission to set up a workstation in an old barn behind the temple.
A boat builder had his studio there too. We heated the space with a wood stove.
After a few weeks of carving, the other Zen students came to look.
Someone asked if I would carve a stone Buddha, something I had never done before. It felt like a huge challenge.
I didn’t know the rules: the correct proportions or traditional poses. I was given a photo of an ancient Korean Buddha in a standing position, just his upper torso.
I carved him out of a large slab of limestone, copying the pose in the photo.
When it was finished, the Head Dharma Teacher exclaimed, “she’s got it!”
The next week they set the sculpture in the front hallway of the temple, the first image anyone would see when entering the lobby.
I was overwhelmed with emotion.
I stayed in that temple for seven years and became an ordained Dharma Teacher.
After I moved to a house in Providence to accommodate my daughters, I opened a Zen sitting center on the third floor called “The Meditation Place.”
I led practice there for another seven years until my girls graduated from high school.
Since then I have carved more than 30 Buddhas.
Some were commissions that now reside in Zen temples in Cambridge, New York City, Providence, and San Francisco.
Others sit in a Thai temple in Rhode Island, a mountain cave in Kentucky, and in private collections in Maine, Vermont, Santa Fe, and Tucson.
Over 35 years later I am still carving Buddhas, although much smaller ones now because of my advanced age.
I also carve other spiritual figures in stone:
Bodhisattvas
Devotees
Goddesses
Monks
Saints
-even humorous pieces like the Zen bear below.
For all this, I hold my carving-scarred hands together in gratitude to the Buddha.
Photos
Limestone Buddha stage 1, 2012
Limestone Buddha stage 2, 2012
Limestone Buddha stage 3, 2012
Limestone Buddha stage 4, 2013
Cream alabaster Buddha, 2018
Carving a Buddha - photo byDiane Taylor, 2020
Korean-style limestone Buddha (commissioned), 1982
Small limestone Buddha carved from a balcony railing spindle, 1989
Furnace Mountain KY limestone Buddha (commissioned), 1995
Mocha alabaster Buddha, 2021
Mocha alabaster Zen Bear, 2021
Green Montana soapstone devotee, 1995