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It's morning in Battersea Park in London, and I'm standing near the river, next to the Peace Pagoda. Every day, watched by four gilded Buddha statues, a Japanese Buddhist monk drums his way over the grass. His name is the Reverend Gyoro Nagase, and he knows these gilded Buddhas very well. But then so, in a sense, do we all: here, looking out over the Thames, is the Buddha sitting cross-legged, his hands touching in front of his chest. I hardly need to describe the figure any further, because the seated Buddha is one of the most familiar and most enduring images in world religion.
這是位于倫敦泰晤士河南岸巴特西公園的一個早晨，我正倚河而立，這聽起來不像是會邂逅佛陀的地方。但正是在這里的和平寶塔一側，一位來自日本的長瀨法師每天都會敲著木魚在4尊金佛像的注視下穿過草坪。法師對這幾尊佛像極為熟悉。從某種意義上說，每個倫敦人都很熟悉。從泰晤士河看過去，佛像盤坐雙手置于胸前。無須過多描述，因為坐佛是世界宗教史上最著名，歷史也最悠久的造型之一。
Today you can find statues of the Buddha-seated and serene-all over the world, but it hasn't always been like this. The Buddha has not always been there for us to contemplate. For centuries he was represented only through a set of symbols. The story of how this changed, and how the Buddha came to be shown in human form, begins in Pakistan around 1,800 years ago.
如今，在全世界都能找到寶相莊嚴的佛陀坐像，但起初，并非此番光景。佛陀其實并沒有供人瞻仰的具體形象，幾百年間都只能通過一些象征物來表現。佛陀以人類的形象示人，始于一千八百年前的巴基斯坦。
