Awakening the Buddha

Awakening the Buddha is a museum intervention to reinvigorate the living Dharma into Buddhas that sit dormant in western museums and miss their intended discourse with Buddhist communities. It also dispels the sense of erasure that Buddhists feel when viewing their material culture in aestheticized display rather than in a temple.

The intervention took place at the Seattle Asian Art Museum in February 2020, with a standing marble Buddha from Northern Qi to Sui dynasties (550-618), and conducted with Rev. Katsuya Kusunoki of the Seattle Betsuin Buddhist Temple and its sangha.

Museum visitors made crepe paper flowers and learned to offer their flowers to the Buddha. Over a four-hour period, we held three services with the Buddha by chanting sutras with museum visitors and listening to Kusunoki-sensei give brief Dharma talks. He explained the their interaction within the framework of the Three Treasures (Buddha Dharma Sangha) in which this statue is the visuality of the Buddha’s guidance, the sutras are the written form, and the Sanghas — those chanting and offering flowers to the statue — are showing gratitude for this guidance, not only for this one statue, but to express appreciation to all the statues in the museum.