82nd & Fifth from The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Soyoung Lee

Photography by

Paul Lachenauer

Pensive Bodhisattva, mid-7th century; Three Kingdoms period
Korea
Gilt bronze
Purchase, Walter and Leonore Annenberg and The Annenberg Foundation Gift, 2003 (2003.222)

In Buddhism, the bodhisattva is an inherently compassionate being
that knows how to achieve enlightenment,
but stays here to help us mortals get there.
Many people consider the pensive bodhisattva very Korean because of how
prevalent it was in the sixth and seventh centuries.
The Korean versions are so approachable even if you don’t know them.
There’s something about them that’s immediately appealing.
And perhaps that’s one of the reasons I identify with the pensive bodhisattva.
Many of these small statues were made as as individual devotional pieces.
Sometimes to be carried around
to be able to spread the faith. This is in some ways the antithesis to,
say, the Rococo, Baroque statues from Europe that are all about outward expression.
It is a figure that is contemplating and invites me
to come and think with it. For me,
not being Buddhist, it's more about contemplating the notion of a being or a world that is
beyond the one that I'm inhabiting. To really release the worldly concerns, and try to attain a state that I imagine
this figure is at.
The Bodhisattva is seated, leaning slightly forward.
His head is tilted to the right.
I feel like he’s thinking and drumming his fingers and toes.
It is a very calming and peaceful figure;
at the same time, full of energy and dynamic quality.
There’s also something about the act of
walking around the piece,
looking at him or her
from different angles.
I see the piece from slightly above, where you fully appreciate it in its pensive mode,
but then as I change my perspective
his face changes
in the expression that it bestows on me.
What I really try to do is empty my mind
when I’m standing in front of him,
and I don’t think that’s actually too far from
one of its objectives as a religious icon.

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82nd & Fifth

PensiveSoyoung Lee

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