One of my favorite things to do during our annual family vacations to Maui is to mindfully tour the extensive Asian museum-quality art and sculpture collection throughout the corridors and amidst the lush manicured gardens and lagoons of the Hyatt Regency Maui Resort and Spa. The sculptures—many of them Buddhist—seem to go along with the wise words of one of the most celebrated religious figures in the world: The legendary Siddhartha Gautama, also know as Buddha, who once said: “Better than a thousand hollow words, is one word that brings peace.” The simple message and the inner peace that the artworks that accompany this post inspire, are responsible for the appeal of the Buddhist art among people around the world. In the fourth and fifth centuries B.C., the time of the great thinkers such as Plato and Socrates in Greece, Lao-Tzu, and Confucius in China, India had its own great philosopher, thinker, and inspirational teacher: Buddha, who achieved enlightenment while meditating under a banyan tree.
