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This chapter explores the religious utility and merit-making involved in statue building in Tibetan Buddhism. Turning towards the MPI statue itself, the chapter looks at its history from conception through various early instantiations of the design and then to its final iteration. The chapter looks at the MPI organization and staffers, and the early practices and plans of MPI in their first location: Bodh Gaya.

Drawing on the literature of the anthropology of futurity, this chapter engages with the articulations of hope evinced by those who desired to build the Maitreya Project statue. The chapter looks at some techniques of ritual forecasting in Tibetan Buddhism, such as oracles and casting divinations, and how these were deployed in service of the promotion of the MPI statue. The chapter also deconstructs administrative projections and missives directed at the public, and how momentum was constructed in the service of fundraising. I argue that the “future tense,” the culturally articulated gap between what is and what informants are striving towards, is a useful analytical frame for the anthropology of futurity.

This brief epilogue picks up where the author’s fieldwork leaves off. It tells the story of the end of the Maitreya Project iteration, MP 2.0, whose pre-life was detailed in the book. It then updates the reader about the next iterations of the statue, and how plans have proceeded since the revival of the project.

In the Introduction, I introduce the controversy that ensues between FPMT and the villagers of Kushinagar, India, due to the plan to build the biggest statue in the world: the Maitreya Project’s Maitreya statue. Beginning with a narration of the ethnographer’s first encounter with the anti-Maitreya Project resistance movement, this chapter introduces the object of my study, my methodology, as well as some of the framing narratives of the book: futurity, heritage, and advocacy. Also, in this chapter, I briefly summarize the chapters to come.

This chapter asks the question: how did a Buddhist organization manage to cause so much suffering and anxiety in Kushinagar, despite their solidly good intentions? Also, why did the project go largely unquestioned by devotees? This chapter explores “guru devotion” and “skillful means” in Tibetan Buddhism, especially as it extends to the manner in which the guru is deemed unassailable to devotees in matters of ethics and practice. Due to the widespread perception amongst FPMT devotees that their guru is omniscient, the MPI statue project–despite being contested and unpopular in India –could only be tentatively and furtively questioned in the hallways of FPMT.

This chapter focuses on the proposed site of the colossal Maitreya Project: Kushinagar, in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. The chapter explains the various communities and stake-holders of the Greater Kushinagar region that would be affected by the proposed MPI’s statue project. In order to examine the interacting communities of Kushinagar, I categorize people roughly along a spectrum of those least to most tied (or committed) to the fate of the town: pilgrims, short-term and long-term temporary visitors, and locals. I have introduced the locality here to set the stage for exploring the specific plight of local farmers fighting the Maitreya Project.

This chapter looks at the religious phenomenon of relic veneration in Tibetan Buddhism, and how that tradition has been harnessed by FPMT’s global Relic Tour. The Relic Tour, which travelled regularly for many years, both displayed relics and promoted the MPI statue. In this chapter, there is an in-depth ethnographic account of one particular Relic Tour stop, which shows the material and expressive culture on display