Getting Our Buddha Shakyamuni Statue Painted

If you’ve visited Vajradhara Center lately, you’ve probably noticed that although we do now have a larger Buddha statue as the centerpiece of our shrine, he remains unfinished.  A lot more effort by many, many people goes into this type of Buddha statue than is obvious upon first glance.  Our statue, for instance, traveled across the world to us from India after the brass was initially cast there.  From here in Charlotte, he journeyed down to Florida to be filled with rolls of mantra strips, flower petals, incense, and other traditional substances in a very labor-intensive process.   His robe was tailored by a nun in our tradition up in New York who located the special silk material for it, after a considerable search, out in California.  Now, in order to finally complete this project, it will be necessary to get Buddha painted in the traditional manner by an artist who’s undergone extensive training in this sort of work.  The process will entail preparing the metal surfaces and then using paint made with genuine 24 karat gold (like in the above picture) from Nepal carefully applied with the skilled touch of an artist.  As you would imagine, artists with all of the necessary qualifications to do this work are few and far between.

The good news is that we’ve located one who just completed her prior commitment to the latest temple project in Sarasota, FL and has agreed to work on our statue!  This will not, however, be an inexpensive undertaking.  With the pure gold, the cost in just materials will be around $1000!  So if you have the means, please consider contributing to this very auspicious project by clicking the link below.  No donation is too small as every little bit helps.