The Enlightenment of Buddha with All Creatures Great and Small: Handmade Sculpture

"This small hand-carved image of Buddha imagines him at the moment of his enlightenment accompanied by animals and other 'sentient beings': a cat in his lap, a deer, a goose, and the bodhi tree that gave him shade, all of these being some of his first witnesses. (Similarly, the Gospel of Luke describes Jesus being born in a manger, with animals looking on.) Buddhism is radical in its clear inclusion of all sentient beings in the scope of enlightenment. ('Every sentient being has Buddha nature'–the Dalai Lama.) In his 'Flower Sermon,' after all, Buddha transmits his wisdom by saying not a word and only holding up a white flower, a flower (it could have just as well been a napping kitten, a butterfly...) being a vehicle of satori, of awakening. The traditional story of Buddha: Born a prince, at 29 he, like St. Francis, abandoned his easy life and family and began a life of self-mortification. After six years of extreme asceticism, exhausted, he sat beneath a bodhi tree and determined he