When a shimmering, four-tonne Jade Buddha worth $5 million arrives in Canada today as part of a world tour to promote “universal peace,” the colossal object of veneration -already consecrated by the Dalai Lama and seen by millions of pilgrims at stops in Asia, Australia and the U.S. -will be making an unlikely homecoming to this country, where Buddhism remains a relative blip on the spiritual landscape but big, beautiful rocks abound.
The statue of a slim, youthful, cross-legged Buddha -four metres high with its alabaster throne -was carved from a mammoth boulder of nephrite jade mined in northwestern B.C. a decade ago, possibly the single largest mass of the translucent mineral ever hauled out of the Earth.
Found in 2000 at the Polar Jade mine site 50 km east of Dease Lake, B.C., the original block dubbed “Polar Pride” weighed about 16.3 tonnes before being split into two smaller, more manageable chunks and sold for an undisclosed price -though certainly in the millions -to an international Buddhist organization headed by the Nepalese monk Lama Zopa Rinpoche.
The two blocks in 2005 were shipped from Vancouver to Thailand, where master craftsmen freed the smiling, meditating figure of Buddha from the largest of the great, green gemstones.
The second monolith and the remnants of the carved block are being used to produce smaller Buddha figurines, pendants and other objects to satisfy the demand of those who visit the giant Jade Buddha and seek souvenirs cut from its massive Canadian birthstone.
Formed in a mountaintop crucible 100 million years ago -when colliding tectonic plates gave rise to the Cassiar Mountains near the B.C.-Yukon border –the rock returns to Canada as a symbol of spiritual enlightenment.
The Canadian tour follows a host of showings in the U.S. this spring and begins Saturday at a Vietnamese Buddhist centre near Toronto, moves to Edmonton in July and concludes in August at a new temple in the Vancouver suburb of Aldergrove.
Kirk Makepeace, the B.C. mining executive and jade retailer whose company -Jade West Resources -discovered “Polar Pride” and made Buddhism’s newest global icon possible told Canwest News Service yesterday: “We’re really glad we didn’t let it get cut up into small pieces of jewelry,” describing how it took about three years to clinch the deal to sell the two jade blocks intact.
Source: montrealgazette.com
