Flights

THINGS NOT MADE BY HUMAN HANDS

After seeing the sarira relics exhibition I can say that I’m no longer much surprised by things not made by human hands. These include the tomes that appear spontaneously in the damp of mountain caves and let themselves be found every once in a while by righteous humans, who then ceremoniously transfer them to temples. Also, icons with gods’ faces. All you have to do is leave a clean wooden board with a primed surface outside and wait. Sometimes in the night a divine face might appear on it, look out from beneath it, flow out of deepest darkness, from the very waterlogged foundations of the world. Because maybe we live in an enormous camera obscura, just enclosed in a dark box, and as soon as a small opening can be made, as soon as some needle makes it through to us, an image from the outside hits with a ray of light and leaves its trace on the inner, light-sensitive surface of the world.

It is said that one particular Buddha statue appeared on its own, perfect, made out of the best metal. It only had to have the soil removed from it. It represents a sitting Buddha resting its head in its hands. This Buddha is smiling a little bit, to himself, with a hint of irony, like someone who’s just heard a subtle joke. A joke in which the punch line comes not in the final sentence, but in the breath of the person telling it.