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The Great Buddha Statue

80-ft tall statue:  height of statue is 64 feet, lotus is 6 feet, and pedestal is 10 feet.

The statue is a patchwork of blocks of pink chunar sandstone,
the lotus of yellow chunar sandstone, and the pedestal of red chunar sandstone.

The Great Buddha Statue [Daibutsu – in Japanese] stands on This Holy Land of Bodh Gaya, the place of Enlightenment of Gautam Buddha. Bodh Ggaya is revered as The Holiest of the Holy by the Buddhists all over the world. In order to pay homage to the Enlightened and to propagate His teachings and to mark as a Symbol of peace and happiness – the Daiyoko Sect of Nagoya Japan erected this Great Buddha Statue in Meditation pose [Dhyana Mudra] seated on a lotus in open air.

The work was done by Shri Ganpathy Sathpathy from the Mahabalipuram in Chennai, and Shri Rishikesh Dasgupta from Kolkata, and took four years to complete. H.H. the XIV Dalai Lama conducted the inauguration ceremony. Around the main statue are a further ten statues of the Buddha’s disciples.

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Seeing the Great Buddha Statue and the Statues of Ten Great Disciples, worshipers familiar with the Lotus Sutra might recall a scene in Chapter 1 – the scene of Buddha surrounded by a large audience, including the Ten Great Disciples, on the summit of Gridhakuta mountain. A moment of mysterious tranquility, in which Buddha is just about to begin preaching the truth: the Lotus Sutra.

The Great Buddha turns damask when the sun rises in the east, and the tuft of white hair between his eyebrows bears a golden glow. The view almost represents the world of the Lotus Sutra, which begins with the scene in which a ray of light, emitted from the tuft of white hair between Buddha’s eyebrows, illuminated all the eighteen thousand worlds in the east and made all sentient beings visible from this world.

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Statues of Ten Great Disciples of Buddha
Sariputta, Mahamoggallana, Mahakassapa, Subhuti, Punna, Mahakaccana, Anuruddha, Upali, Rahula and Ananda.

In the precincts of the Great Buddha Statue, the Statues of Ten Great Disciples of Buddha stand on either side of the Great Buddha, as if protecting or following him. Of the ten standing statues, those of Sariputta and Mahamoggallana were unveiled and consecrated in November 1993. The statues of the other eight great disciples, namely Mahakassapa, Subhuti, Punna, Mahakaccana, Anuruddha, Upali, Rahula and Ananda, were consecrated in March 1996. The ten statues are made of sandstone from Chunar, near Benares – the same material as was used for the Great Buddha Statue.

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History of Daijokyo Buddhist Temple
１９７７ Dispatching of Daijokyo missionaries to India commenced
１９８３ Shakado completed (completion ceremony attended by then-President Zail Singh)
１９８５ Daijokyo Vocational School founded
１９８８ Buddhist House completed
１９８９ Consecration of the Great Buddha Statue (consecration ceremony attended by the 14th Dalai Lama)
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１９９６ Consecration of the Statues of Ten Great Disciples of Buddha
１９９８ Ananda School founded in Miyabigha village
２０００ Daijokyo Health Care Centre (for free distribution of medicines) opened in Sujata village
２００１ Consecration of the Statue of Daijokyo Founder Tatsuko Sugiyama
２００４ Received a commemorative gift from Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, President of India, at the International Conclave on Buddhism and Spiritual Tourism held in New Delhi , for contribution to the promotion of Buddhism in India