The empty throne · the aniconic Buddha

For roughly the first four hundred years, Buddhist art did not depict the Buddha. At Bharhut and Sāñchī the crowds bow, the kings arrive, the elephants kneel — and at the centre of the scene there is an empty seat: a cushion, a footprint, a parasol above nothing, the fig tree with no one beneath it. Scholars still argue whether this was a prohibition, a convention, or a doctrine drawn in stone; the effect is unmistakable either way. Put that image beside the destination of the Merkavah ascent and the whole door comes into focus. The rider passes seven palaces, survives the water-test at the sixth, and arrives to behold the One seated upon the Throne of Glory — the entire literature exists for that sight. Buddhism's path arrives at the same furniture and finds it unoccupied. Keter means crown, and a crown implies a head to wear it. This bench holds no sharper parting than that.