Throughout Loretta Hui-shan Yang's twenty year history of creating Buddhist artwork, the most commonly asked question she receives
is: what is going through your mind when you are sculpting Buddhist figures?

She has always found it difficult to answer the question and after much thought always replies with, “Nothing - I am not thinking of anything.
My heart and mind are focused on the face under my fingertips. My goal is to create a serene and gentle countenance.” When Loretta Yang's staff attempt to leave her with music knowing she will be working late into the night alone, she always tells them, “I do not need music.”

Most people can not comprehend Loretta Yang's lack of strategy.
It is actually quite simple - sculpting is soothing. She says: I have found happiness through creating Buddhist sculptures.

There is a general malaise in the air today. The economy has people worried about job security. And if your job is secure, what about your health? When you try your best, how do you feel when you are rebuked by your manager or when a customer calls in a complaint? All this worry, pessimism, defeat and unrest is aggravated by an uncertain future;
the future shared by your family, friends and loved ones. There is a rift developing between people, between this world. What have you given up in this place and time?

Twenty years ago Loretta Hui-shan Yang and Chang Yi left the film industry and established Liuligongfang. They were determined to create “Chinese Liuli” out of what they thought to be an exclusively French technique, pâte-de-verre. Developing the technique independently led to great personal financial burdens and to Loretta Yang's first Buddhist sculpture “Second Vow of the Medicine Buddha”.

The impetus behind this creation was simply her wish to shape the face of Buddhist compassion.

It could be that Loretta Yang discovered personal serenity and clarity while sculpting Buddhist figures. This quieting process has enabled her to face pass failures and future unknowns and showed her that attaining happiness meant focusing on the present. When Loretta Yang learned of the sutras of The Second Vow of the Medicine Buddha, the qualities of “Liuli” called to Loretta Yang and influenced her view on life: May the moment come when I attain enlightenment, The body, even the soul, become as Liuli. Pure, transparent, flawless.

The transparent nature of Liuli is ideal in illustrating the Buddhist concept of the “void”.

Liuli is diaphanous, beautiful and fragile. Light passes easily through it to give it an appearance of weightlessness despite its true density.
This mortal existence, life and death entwined, suffering in happiness and happiness in suffering; Liuli reveals all this and the “impermanence” in life.

Sculpting Buddhist figures in Liuli is Loretta Yang's life lesson. It is her spiritual philosophical awakening, her way of releasing the suffering and transcending the unrest that life offers. It took some time before she realized that all she hoped to convey through her twenty years of sculpting Buddhist figures was “happiness” and to “live for the moment”.

All pain and unhappiness will pass. Joy, anger, sorrow, happiness, uncertainty, regret, conceit and inadequacy will too pass. Examine yourself truthfully. Indulging in what can not be grasped is static of the mind; the only thing that can be grasped is the present.

Loretta Yang continues to sculpt Buddhist figures. To date, she has over three hundred figures in Liuli and continues working happily in the present.

Happiness does not come from yesterday or today; it comes from NOW.