Buddha's Bag

Factual Questions
1

Every place I go, I am always seeing little (and really big) buddha statues. Jolly little fat bald man, with a big poop-eating grin on his face, sometimes with children climbing all over him, and always with a big sack over his shoulder.

What’s in the sack?

2

  1. Candy, rice plants, food, etc.

  2. It ain’t really Buddha. I mean, it is, sorta, but not Siddartha Gautama. The “Laughing Buddha” is a wandering Zen (Chan) monk from the T’ang Dynasty, Hotei (or Hotai, or Pu-Tai), whick means “cloth sack”, or something close. Hotei was/is friendly character who wanders around taking sadness and giving presents and spreading cheer, sort of like a Buddhist Santa. Here’s a link.

3

Giving thanks that this thread was not about a religious relic.

4

Pravnik, thank you for your response :slight_smile:

Degrance, I am not sure what you mean. Isn’t Budda a religious relic?
JD

5

I think it might be a play on the word ‘bag’, JD.

6

No. The Buddha’s tooth is a religious relic. A statue of the Buddha is a religious image or icon. The Buddha was a religious reformer and is a religious figure. But the Buddha is not a relic.

DICTIONARY.REFERENCE.COM says:

  1. Something that has survived the passage of time, especially an object or custom whose original culture has disappeared: “Corporal punishment was a relic of barbarism” (Cyril Connolly).
  2. Something cherished for its age or historic interest.
  3. An object kept for its association with the past; a memento.
  4. An object of religious veneration, especially a piece of the body or a personal item of a saint.
  5. or relics A corpse; remains.
7

Amen to that! I gotta read this thing every day till it fades! :smiley:

Jersey Diamond, to complete the information here, as you’ve read a “relic” is an actual item such as a piece of the True Cross or the Holy Grail or whatever, as distinguished from an icon such as the cross in a church. And as Mangetout said, Degrance was making a little joke, as am I. Specifically, he was expressing his feigned worry that this thread would be about the actual, preserved testicle of Buddha.

8

D’OH!

Thanks.

:smack:

9

Also, it should be worth noting (because I hear a lot of people refer to Buddha as ‘fat’) that the obesity is simbolic of spiritual wealth.