Big buddha

Reading my guidebook more carefully I realized the Buddha statue we visited in Chengde was the “biggest wooden Buddha statue in the world.”  It even features in The Guinness Book of Records.  What’s this thing about big Buddhas?

The Buddha statue I once went to in Kamakura, Japan, was “the biggest outdoor Buddha in the world.”  The Buddha we saw on Langtau Island in Hong Kong last year was the “world’s biggest Buddha on a mountain top.”  The sleeping Buddhas in Vat Po in Bangkok is the “largest reclining Buddha.”  Meanwhile I thought the Bamyan Buddhas really were the biggest (before the Taliban got to them in 2001).

Why do all Buddhas have to be so big?  What about the world’s smallest Buddha?  Or the world’s most middle-sized one?  After all, isn’t Buddhism supposed to be “the path of moderation”?