Also, Buddha believed in taking care of the body, because that's the only way to also take care of the mind. And at one point, he was an ascetic before becoming enlightened. He wasn't like the image that everyone sees.
In the beginning of Buddhism people were allowed to openly portray the Buddha in statues and art but sometime within the first few hundred years, much like with Islam, the Buddha wasn't allowed to be portrayed in art so everything that was created previously was deemed wrong so they destroyed it all, after some time it became acceptable again and now we have the statues and art that we have today that portrays him as very large even though that's most likely the farthest from his true looks.
Comments