The Buddha Shakyamuni as an ascetic

This extremely thin and intensely focused figure is identifiable as Shakyamuni—the historical Buddha— before he achieved Enlightenment. After the Buddha abandoned his early life as a prince to seek spiritual liberation, he tried many paths, many of them selfpunishing and ultimately futile. Shakyamuni finally found Enlightenment through meditation and by practicing the Middle Path, which rejects both self-denial and selfindulgence. Here he is portrayed as a hermit meditating in the wild and starving himself. Chinese artists rarely depicted the historical Buddha in this state until the Yuan dynasty when the Mongols ruled. It was in the ancient region of Gandhara (present-day Pakistan and northwestern India) in the second and third centuries that this extreme form of spiritual practice was especially popular.