The Buddha at Tao Downtown

Last week I went to Tao Downtown, an Asian fusion restaurant in manhattan, to celebrate a birthday party. This was my first time in this restaurant; the restaurant was enormous. As I was walking down the stairs to enter the main dining room, I noticed an enormous sculpture of a Buddha in the center of the restaurant. This sculpture of the Buddha was beautiful; it consisted of 26 hands, 13 on each side symmetrically. The Buddha was using two of those 26 hands to pray with its eyes closed while the rest of its hands ascended toward the sky. Throughout the night a projector was pointing at the Buddha and different images and patterns were drawn on the Buddha; these images included flowers and different colorful patterns consisting of pinks, blues, purples, greens, yellows, etc. The projections changed every five minutes or so, every single time I looked at the Buddha I was in awe of its beauty. I found the placement of this statue significant and the statue affected the mood of my dinner throughout the night. Buddhism is a very complicated religion, as is every other one, that primarily teaches one to avoid suffering and to free oneself of life’s materialistic and hedonistic “pleasures”. Like any other religion, Buddhism gives one guidelines as to how one should live one’s life. Buddhism encourages knowledge and seeks enlightenment. Buddhism condemns materialistic things because it says that these things encourage jealousy and envy which result in tress and unhappiness; these are the polar opposite as to what Buddhism seeks to achieve, happiness.

I found the placement of this Buddha extremely ironic; on one hand, it is entirely appropriate for it to be there and on the other it is completely inappropriate for it to be there. I believe that it is inappropriate because Buddhism condemns materialism; this is an expensive restaurant that encourages people to spend a lot of money and has standards to people’s demeanors and their dress code. Buddhism would teach that these things are irrelevant and people should just be able to eat freely without having to worry about these standard’s of society. However, I also thought it was appropriate for it to be there because the Buddha also encourages happiness, escaping physical reality, and freeing ones mind. While I was eating there I was able to laugh and just enjoy my night without having to worry about real world problems; everyone in that room is able to live freely for those few hours and get away into a different world, one of which is stress free. The Buddha sculpture makes one feel at ease; it’s as if this greater force is watching over one and encouraging one to live stress free. Every time I looked at the Buddha while I was eating, I thought of Buddhism as a whole and realized that one can make ones own definition of it; one does not necessarily need to include all aspects to follow Buddhism. I believe that Buddhism encourages one to strive for happiness; by placing a Buddha in a place where people are supposed to be happy, the restaurant successfully achieved the goal of the Buddha in my opinion. The placement of the Buddha reminded me of Kerouac’s The Dharma Bums; in this book the character’s take on a form of Buddhism that encourages them to stray away from the conventions of society and to live freely; I believe that by placing this spiritual sculpture in the restaurant, the restaurant encourages this happy-free living lifestyle.