“Touching the Earth: Calling the Earth to Witness Revisited”

Dessi Vendova (Buddhism Public Scholar, MFA Boston) - “Touching the Earth: Calling the Earth to Witness Revisited”

Tree worship and the belief in tree spirits were essential to various religious belief systems in premodern Asia. We see significant traces of it in the earliest extant Buddhist archaeological, art historical, and textual evidence from around the second century BCE. Trees, tree deities, and other earthly spirits also appear in the life of the Buddha, where each of the major life events is closely associated with trees. One tree of particular importance is the Bodhi tree, which, in turn, is also an object of worship, and also a symbol for the Buddha himself. One of the most recognizable visual representations of the events under the Bodhi tree is Gautama’s calling the earth deity as a witness. Contrary to one commonly established simplified explanation of the meaning of this gesture, the Bodhisattva is not asking the earth to witness his Enlightenment, but rather, challenged by Mara, calls the earth goddess as a witness to his worthiness to be seated on the “Diamond Seat” as the powerful spot under the Bodhi tree is also known as. The important implication is that the Bodhisattva has earned to sit under the Bodhi tree through countless acts of generosity in his numerous previous lives, thus meaningfully tying this pivotal biographical moment with the Buddha’s extended life story. Drawing on early textual and visual sources from South and East Asia, this paper will discuss different textual and visual representations of this and other pivotal moments connected with the events of Shakyamuni’s Enlightenment.