but a dream within a dream

atla-annotated:

Sozin’s Official Portrait

Sozin’s portrait, i.e. actually all of the Fire Nation’s royal portraits, resemble, in posture and symbolism, Buddhist statues.

Now here’s the fun part: Pretty much everything about Sozin’s portrait is a corruption of Buddhist teachings:

He is standing on, what looks from afar, like the lotus flower of enlightenment,  (compare the other statues) but when you look closer you can see that he has replaced enlightenment with fire and soldiers.

His right hand is in a gesture calledbuddhashramana,“Gesture Beyond Misery” is also called theascetic’s Gesture of Renunciation. How fitting, considering what is going to come, that it is holdinga flame with this gesture.

Image source: One, two