The Buddha Without the Buddha

The puzzle of early Buddhist art

It sounds a little like a Zen koan, or at least a westerner’s idea of one — how do you depict the Buddha without the Buddha?

When people think of portrayals of Siddartha Gotama (563 BCE-483 BCE), the prince who developed the spiritual system of Buddhism and later came to be known as the Buddha (“the awakened one”), they might think of something like thi…