My Home Altar

 

I bought this Buddha--apparently a project for a student carver--in a shop in Shenzhen. When we left there in 2015, I shipped it to Pilgrim's Rest, our home in the Philippines. He sits at the top of a staircase and looks out over the street below.

Which Buddha? In his hands (not visible) is a jar, that makes him likely to be Shakyamuni (the jar would contain sutras), though there's a chance it's a medicine pot and he's the Medicine Buddha (Bhaishajyaguru). I don't really care: in this case, a Buddha's a Buddha.

The scarves are from a Tibetan bar we used to go to with a dear Tibetan friend from Sichuan; the yellow one was given by a genuine (maybe) lama. The candlestick is from the Mexican décor of my last house in America; the reddish bit in his lap is a bundle of amulets from my pilgrimages in Japan; the giant "abbot's beads" were given to me by my great friend Peter in China.

--Picture posted on Reddit March 4, 2020