Kuya must have one hell of a voice....

...If his words are visible.

This piece to me is pretty amazing. To start out ( and i don't wanna sound like a sheltered child ) the only Buddhist artwork i had ever seen was sculptures of fat Buddha and nothing else. So me seeing anything but that threw me off a little. This piece out of all the other Buddhist art stood out though. I think that may be that simply the fact that Kuya's words are visible and he appears as though he is singing them.

I love how lifelike figure is. His pose is the slightest bit slouched and he is supporting himself with his deer antler staff. It looks like he is about to ring his gong when he began preaching. And i'll say it over and over my favorite part about this piece is how his words are visible; I feel it gives a sense of the power of Kuya's preaching.

Giant Columns...

make me feel short. The first thing i thought when i saw this column is "Gee I'd like to stand on the top of that column. I bet there is a nice view at the top" that was of course until i saw that it was 97 FEET TALL, at which point i thought "Holy S***, that thing is massive." 

625 feet of sculpture encircling this thing. My god. I don't think I've even drawn/sculpted/etc that much in my entire life altogether. The most remarkable thing ( in my opinion anyway ) is that this is only one story about Trajan ( even though it has several chapters on the column ). I can't imagine how much more detailed, or for that matter how much larger this column would have been had it displayed another military victory of Trajan's. As a side note, I enjoy that Trajan was not an arrogant military commander. He did not make himself to be a larger than life hero of Rome, but a strong leader against a formidable opponent. For that reason he gets much more of my respect.