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The statue of a Mahamuni Buddha in a Mandalay temple in Burma (illustration image). REUTERS / Soe Zeya Tun

Buddhism is exhibited at the National Museum of Asian Arts, the Guimet Museum in Paris. The exhibition "Buddha, the Golden Legend" explores the life of the Buddha and the spread of Buddhism in Asia with 159 works in total.

In a room bathed in dim light, a young boy admires a golden Buddha, two meters high. Concentrated, the child looks at his hands, bends his fingers and tries to imitate the statue. Hand down, palm toward the faithful and fingers down. This is the sign of the gift.

He then returns to the tour of the Buddhist world offered by the Guimet Museum with this ambitious exhibition "Buddha, the golden legend". On silk, bamboo, gold, sandstone or bronze, the figure of Buddha is available on all media.

The opportunity for the visitor to discover Buddhism through the artistic representation of Buddha. Sitting, standing, lying, ascetic, fleshy, smiling or asleep ... The attentive eye discovers the many facets of the "Awakened".

The evolution of Buddha and Asian art

It follows the historical Buddha, his past lives, then his miracles until his awakening. It is Buddhism in general that we discover through the spread of the Buddhist word in Asia.

But it is also a beautiful pretext to discover Asian art and its evolutions, because the exhibition suggests Buddha of all periods and all countries, a bas-relief of Pakistan from the first century to this Japanese ceramic from 2016, through a delicate series of unique Chinese porcelain, from the late eighteenth century.

A dense exhibition that, failing to reach Nirvana, carries a time in the world of "Blessed". "Buddha the golden legend" is until November 4 at the Guimet Museum.