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Note: LonePeak takes RP to new heights! Anyone else have a project that "tops"
this one?
The following story appeared on deseretnews.com on December 15, 1998, 12:00 AM
MST
========
Headline: Karma for Utah computers
Subhead: Local expertise preparing way for 500-foot Buddha
Author: By Elaine JarvikDeseret News special writer
It is probably safe to say that Utah isn't known for its statues of Buddha.
Still, this is the place that the international Buddhist community has turned to
for help in building the largest Buddha ever.
In fact, the 500-foot Buddha will be the largest statue of any kind ever built.
You could stack the 151-foot Statue of Liberty three high and the Buddha would
still be taller.
The Buddha -- known as the Maitreya Buddha -- will eventually be built on 40
acres in southern India, in the city of Bodhgaya. Project Maitreya planners hope
it will become a focal point of Buddhists everywhere, a statue whose
enormousness is meant to inspire not pride or even curiosity but loving
kindness.
Buddhists tend to take the long view on things, so the statue will be made to
last 1,000 years, minimum. It is expected to help sentient beings reach
enlightenment, a journey that Buddhists believe takes many lifetimes. The bigger
the statue, they believe, the more lasting imprint it will leave on the memory
of the person who sees it; a reminder, as the person travels from one
reincarnation to the next, that loving kindness is preferable to other, perhaps
more human, tendencies (greed, arrogance, desire and the like.)
First, though, designers and engineers have to figure out how to make a statue
that big. And that's where Utah comes in.
Utah has computer know-how, and that's useful when you want to take a 4-foot
statue and turn it into a 500-foot statue that still has the same proportions.
Proper proportions are crucial to the project, explains English artist Denise
Griffin, who, with her husband Peter, sculpted the 4-foot prototype statue. The
Maitreya Buddha's exact proportions -- the length of his fingers, the size and
shape of his ears, the size of the curls on his head -- are a part of Buddhist
tradition.
The Maitreya Buddha is not the Buddha the Western world is most familiar with.
That was Shakyamuni Buddha, who attained Enlightenment under a Bodhi tree in
Bodhgaya 2,540 years ago. The Maitreya Buddha will be the world's fifth Buddha;
according to Buddhist teachings, he'll appear after the world goes through a
cleansing, perhaps in the next millennium. He's the Buddha of love.
So Project Maitreya planners want the statue to be perfect. But what often
happens when you try to enlarge a smaller version of something is that
imperfections begin to emerge.
The solution is to use a grid system, and the high-tech way to do that is to
scan the original statue into a computer, create a 3-D graphic, then transfer
that data to a machine that will sculpt a larger "rapid prototype" out of layers
of polystyrene foam.
The executive director of the Maitreya Project, a British Buddhist named Peter
Kedge, surfed the Internet looking for a company that could do such a prototype
and found Javelin, a Salt Lake divi- sion of Lone Peak Engineering.
Javelin generally isn't in the statue-making business. Its forte is more along
the lines of asthma inhaler prototypes. But Kedge was impressed by a model
Javelin had made of a real human brain, working from CT scan data of a man
injured in an accident. The brain model, constructed layer by layer, revealed
that the man's actual brain had become deeply and abnormally fissured. The
insurance company was so impressed, it settled on the spot.
Once the Maitreya Project noticed Javelin, it began finding other Utah computer
expertise as well. University of Utah engineering professor Charles Thomas, for
example, has invented a water-jet, four-axle cutter that will rapidly slice
through plastic foam in patterns dictated by computer data.
That data is generated by a third Utah connection, Viewpoint Data Labs of Orem,
which makes 3-D graphics. Its most recent claims to fame are the mommy and baby
monsters for the movie "Godzilla," as well as the bugs in "Antz."
This past week, workers at Javelin finished constructing a 24-foot plastic foam
prototype of the Buddha. The real statue will eventually be cast in either
bronze or steel, probably on-site in Bodhgaya. The Buddha will sit on a 17-story
throne that will house a temple and shrine rooms. The 40 acres will also include
monasteries, guest houses, meditation pavilions, teaching centers and animal
sanctuaries.
What project planners want to figure out ahead of time, though, is how the
weather will affect a 50-story statue. The chest will expand in the Indian heat,
but how much? Can the statue survive an earthquake? What about torrential rains
falling off the Buddha's robes onto tiny humans below?
Utah engineers will try to figure out all eventualities -- 1,000 years worth of
potentially wacky weather -- via computer simulation.
The Maitreya Project was originally conceived by Lama Yeshe. Buddhists believe
that when the Tibetan lama died in 1984 he took rebirth in a Spanish boy, Lama
Osel. And that gives Utah its fourth connection to the project.
Lama Osel lives in a monastery in India, where he is friends with 9-year-old
Gomo Rinpoche, whose mother, Yanki Risopa, lives in Salt Lake City. Gomo
Rinpoche's aunt is Pema Chagzoentsang, who spearheaded the selection of Utah as
a resettlement site for Tibetan refugees.
The 24-foot plastic foam prototype of the Buddha will be assembled in Javelin's
parking lot this week -- where it will hopefully spread loving kindness on
nearby I-15 reconstruction.
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Copyright 1998, Deseret News Publishing Co.
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