A Buddha is an archetype understood by most Buddhists as an ideal pattern towards which a conscious being direct his or her evolutionary striving. If the goal of all beings is perfect happy unless others are also perfectly happy, then a Buddha is the form of life that experiences perfect happiness within itself while feeling simutaneosly fully connected to the perfect happiness of all other beings. That is why a Buddha is transhuman, an evolutonary mutation from the human species - a glorious butterfly emerged from a drab human cocoon. Such a perfect being - finite yet infinite, present yet timeless, perfectly happy yet perfectly aware - is almost inconceivable in normal human terms. Buddhist art attempts to convey his inconceivable life form to human, gods, and other animals by imaginative and artistic means.

Buddhas have all once been human, and they have been every conceivable form of animal, in every conceivable realm of the hells, the earth, and the heavens, in one previous life or another. They retain the human form to emphasise the connection with humanity, in order to teach and to encourage humans to strive to become Buddhas themselves. "Buddha" is thus not the personal name of a particular human or divine, and there are infinite possible Buddhas inspiring beings in infinite other words as well as here.

The Buddhist of Sri Lanka, Burma, Thailand, and Cambodia have inherited the Theravada form of what some scholars call Early, even Original, Buddhism, which I prefer to call Monastic, or individual Vehicle, Buddhism, in which the Buddha is much concerned with the liberation of individuals through the air, multiplies his body immeasurably, has clairvoyance, clairaudience, telepathic and telekinetic powers, and so forth -enven the relics of his body have enormous magical properties. The Buddha's "human" form is highly abnormal, with a freakishly domed cranium, long ears, webbed fingers and toes, and numerous other auspicious signs on his body, the point is ,even these Monastic Buddhist consider the Buddha to have evolved into a culminatory life-form distinct from ordinary human beings. In fact, accroding to much evidence, these Buddhist were originally so awed by the Buddha's presence and memory that for generation they did not dare to portray his image, representing his presence by a symbol such as a royal wheel, a Bodhitree, or a footprint.

In the school of Buddhism of india of the first milennium CE and of East Asia, China, Korea, Japan, and Vietnam, the Buddha is understood as a life from verging into the divine. These are the schools of Messianic, or universal Vehicle, Buddhism, which first emerged in india around 100 BCE and discovered or created a whole new collection of scriptures that portray the Buddha in a new light. In these universal Vehicle scriptures, the buddha is was now depicted on a much vaster canvas. The miraculous performances and bodily forms he used for teaching people were expanded to cosmic proportions, and he also manifested himself in celestial Buddha forms like the Buddha Amitabha ( Immeasurable Life) of the Western Pure Land, Sukhavati; Bhaishajyaguru, the dark blue Medicine Buddha; Vaircana, the cosmic Buddha of the galaxy; and Akshobhya, the Buddha of the Eastern Pure Land, Abhirati.

A third vehicle of Buddha, know as the Apocalyptic, Diamond, or Tantric Vechicle the apocalyptic, time-collpsing dimensions of buddhahood were revealed, and Buddhas were understood even more as omnipresent dimentions. The universe is presented as literally crawing with buddhas. The fortunate individuals who become aware of this gain acess to their own Buddha potential and actuality through the gateway of trantric initation. They then enter into mandala-palace universes and subtle virtual-reality dimensions that expand out the dynamic experience briefly glimpsed in the extreme zones of dream realms, sexual orgasm, and death. The forms the Buddhas manifest in these dimensions often have multiple heads, arms, and legs; they adopt divine forms that visually reflect the inconceivable, nature of their realisations and capabilities. These are the Tranric archetype deities for which Tibetan art has become so justly famous.

To realism how on ordinary Buddhist in incient times might have understood the evolutionary transformation of the Buddha form, it helps to listen to Nagarjuna, the great india philosopher and yogin of the early centuries CE. He writes to his friends the South India king Udayibhadra:

O great King, listen to how your body will be adorned with the.... signs of a great beings. From your proper honouring of stupas, worthies, holy persons and the elderly, you will become a universal monarch, your hands and feet marked with wheels. O King , always maintain firmly your vows to practices; you will then become a bodhisattva with very level feet. From your gift and pleasant speech, purposeful and harmonious bahaviour, you will have hands with glorious fingers joined by webs of light ... From your never doing harm and freeing the condemned, your glorious private organ will retract into a sheath of skin [ like a stallion ]... By striving to pratice what you preach, your crown dome will stand out prominently, symmetrical as a banyen tree. Form your speaking true words gently over the years, your tongue will be long and your voice like Brahma's. From your always beings honest, you will have lion cheeks, glorious and invincible. From your respecting and serving others and following your duty, your teeth will shine, white and even. From your peacemaking speech, steady and soothing, you will have forty glorious teeth, evenly spaced and effective. Through viewing things with love, free of lust, hate, and delusion, your eyes will be bright and blue, with eyelashes like a bull. - Nagarjuna, Precious Garland .

Nagarjuna reminds the king that these marks of a superbeing as achieved by a universal monarch are like a firefly in the sun compared to the same characteristics as achieved by a perfect Buddha, who evolves out of inconceivably greater merit and wisdom. He concludes by saying that the causes of an emanation body of a Buddha are immeasurable.

To come back to the beginning of this essay, we can now see how Buddhist regard the Buddha form as an archetype, a pattern encoding the fruition of an amazing process of evolution. The Buddha form of Shakyamuni serves to remind us what one human being did become, through aeons of acts of generosity, justice, torelance, and enterprise, and profound attainments of concentration, wisdom, arts, prayer, power, and intuitio. This then can inspire us to dedicate our efforts to become just like that ourselves, to find truly satisfying happiness, and to bring along us all those others whom we love.

Underlying the various among Buddhist tradtions is a unity of inspiration and aspiration. The Buddha image serves as a refuge, a baecon, and a template for creativity. Buddha images are Buddhas themselves in a very realsense - as art emanation bodies - because they have the power to transform. The purpose of the Buddha form is to produce happiness in those who encounter it, so all the viewer need to do is enjoy these sublime images of beuty.