Buddhist scripture foretells that thousands of years from
now, after the final traces of the historical Buddha's teachings
have vanished from living memory, his awakened successor will
descend into the world. Called Maitreya (derived from the
Sanskrit word maitri, meaning “love”), he
will restore the dharma, the Buddha's teachings of
liberation, to a spiritually impoverished humanity. But in the
ancient town of Kushinagar in northern India, where the Buddha
passed into parinirvana 2,500 years ago, there are
rumors that Maitreya may be arriving an eon or two ahead of
schedule.
Since 1995, the California-based Foundation for the
Preservation of the Mahayana Tradition has been rallying behind
a proposal to bring this future Buddha down from his blissful
rest in emptiness* and into the realm of form—a colossal,
500-foot-tall bronze form, that is. The “Maitreya
Project,” as it is known, was conceived by the late
Tibetan Buddhist master Lama Thubten Yeshe and his student, Lama
Zopa Rinpoche (currently the project's spiritual director).
Their stated goal is to construct the largest Buddha statue in
the world, a “Buddhist cathedral for the public . . .
designed to last at least 1,000 years so it can act as a
catalyst for peace for a full millennium.”
Funded solely by donations—with an estimated total
cost of two hundred million dollars—the project was
originally intended to be implemented in Bodhgaya, India, the
site of the Buddha's enlightenment. But local resistance was
fierce, with critics decrying the absurdity of paying two
hundred million dollars to foreign building contractors and
providing few employment opportunities for local workers in one
of the poorest regions of the country. Years later, the project
is currently underway in the more receptive town of Kushinagar,
despite Maitreya's still-exorbitant price tag. Perhaps to allay
any concerns about the statue's ultimate benefits to the
residents of this ancient town, Maitreya Project is planning to
implement a number of social programs, including a school for
local village children called the Maitreya Project Universal
Education School, where students aged five to eighteen will
attend free classes daily.
For those curious about the statue's design, Maitreya
Project's website (www.maitreyaproject.org) features a slideshow
tour of computer models and artistic renderings of the seated
golden Maitreya figure, its lush surroundings, and the
cavernous, ornate temple housed inside its throne. This
seventeen-story temple will feature its own forty-foot Maitreya
statue, an enormous wall bejeweled with 200,000 images of the
Buddha, and a more reasonably sized thirty-three-foot statue of
the historical Buddha, Shakyamuni. At five hundred feet, the
main Maitreya statue will be over three times the height of New
York's Statue of Liberty, and upon its scheduled completion in
2008, will stand as the tallest statue in the world.
As for any disputes regarding the elaborate monument's
monumental cost, Maitreya Project's Victoria Ewart, for one, has
heard enough. “People may say that two hundred million
dollars is an enormous sum,” she says. “But
[consider] Hollywood, where a film like The Matrix
contains a momentary special effect lasting only a few
seconds, but costing several million dollars. It is indicative
of our times that we can spend so much money on something that's
just momentary—and ends up on a video shelf—while we
are reluctant to provide enough money to build an important
spiritual symbol like the Maitreya Project.” And who could
argue with that?
* Technically he's on deck in the Tushita Heaven,
paradise of the thirty-three gods.