Kettha Buddha

One of the many statues of Buddha at the Yaza Mani Dula Kaunghmudaw pagoda outisde of the town of Kettha in Sagaing Region, Myanmar. Right across the Chindwin river from Homalin (see Roadwork).

I post the image because I was struck that it offers a powerful metaphor for practice. The Buddha is always there, inside, and you can occasionally catch a glimpse of him/her. But there is a locked, heavily-fortified cage around our Buddha—that we built ourselves—and getting this open requires continual, diligent, selfless effort. And, of course, the other part of the metaphor is that the cage is really not locked at all. It just looks that way.