# Who in your lifetime do you think was/is a bodhisattva/saint?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-in-your-lifetime-do-you-think-was-is-a-bodhisattva-saint/557529
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion
**Created:** [October 18, 2010, 4:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-in-your-lifetime-do-you-think-was-is-a-bodhisattva-saint/557529 "2010-10-18T04:16:35Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Zsofia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zsofia)
#### Post date: [October 18, 2010, 4:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-in-your-lifetime-do-you-think-was-is-a-bodhisattva-saint/557529/1 "2010-10-18T04:16:35Z")
We’ve been watching a lot of Mister Rogers recently, because Himself may soon be producing a children’s show himself, and I firmly believe that if there such a thing as a Bodhisattva (a soul that has such love for people that instead of achieving Nirvana itself it chooses to stay in the world so as to help others to enlightenment) or a saint (a soul so assured to be in heaven that you can pray to that person and ask for intercession) then it’s Fred Rogers. There are times watching him speak that I think, “this must have been what it must be like to be a bhikku or an apostle and sit around and watch Jesus or Buddha talk”. He is completely unlike any person I have ever seen or heard of in so many respects; so wise, so thoughtful, and so much his own person.
So: who in your lifetime do you feel that if there is such a mystical person, this person is it? It can be somebody we all know or somebody only you yourself have met.
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### Author:  [@dzero](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dzero)
#### Post date: [October 18, 2010, 5:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-in-your-lifetime-do-you-think-was-is-a-bodhisattva-saint/557529/2 "2010-10-18T05:00:35Z")
IIRC, bodhisattvas often adopt the guise of the soul they are trying to help. So if it is a bum, one would expect the bohdisattva to look and act like a bum. I guess it is assumed that they would have some air of peace or centeredness about them (whatever one might imagine those things to mean), but I don’t think it is something you could count on for the purposes of identification.
Anyway, assuming that someone like that would be remarkable in some other worldly way, then no.
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### Author:  [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)
#### Post date: [October 18, 2010, 5:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-in-your-lifetime-do-you-think-was-is-a-bodhisattva-saint/557529/3 "2010-10-18T05:25:27Z")
There is no such thing as either a bodhisattva or a saint (or a soul).
I always got a molester vibe off Mr. Rogers.
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### Author:  [@Zsofia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zsofia)
#### Post date: [October 18, 2010, 1:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-in-your-lifetime-do-you-think-was-is-a-bodhisattva-saint/557529/4 "2010-10-18T13:42:09Z")
Why, thank you. That’s totally the kind of answer I was looking for in this thread!
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### Author:  [@Autolycus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Autolycus)
#### Post date: [October 18, 2010, 1:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-in-your-lifetime-do-you-think-was-is-a-bodhisattva-saint/557529/5 "2010-10-18T13:53:32Z")
> [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](#):
>
> There is no such thing as either a bodhisattva or a saint (or a soul).
While I don’t believe in these things either, perhaps it might be more germane to the thread to post examples of people you believe have qualities similar to the definition listed in the OP.
For example, my list would include my friend John R, for being perhaps the most Christ-like person I know (in the gentle-yet-lionish groovy nonjudgmental awesome sense), and actually I consider my dad to be somewhat saint-like, for his huge and childish-in-a-good-way jovial heart.
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### Author:  [@wonky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wonky)
#### Post date: [October 18, 2010, 1:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-in-your-lifetime-do-you-think-was-is-a-bodhisattva-saint/557529/6 "2010-10-18T13:54:58Z")
I don’t know anything about him personally, so he might have been a child molesting serial killer, but the painter Bob Ross.
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### Author:  [@Zsofia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zsofia)
#### Post date: [October 18, 2010, 2:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-in-your-lifetime-do-you-think-was-is-a-bodhisattva-saint/557529/7 "2010-10-18T14:03:03Z")
I mean, seriously - I don’t believe in them either, the question is “who do you know in person or by reputation who is so special and good and wise that you feel they’re a different sort of person”?
Like Bob Ross. 🙂
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### Author:  [@Maastricht](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maastricht)
#### Post date: [October 18, 2010, 2:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-in-your-lifetime-do-you-think-was-is-a-bodhisattva-saint/557529/8 "2010-10-18T14:11:04Z")
Obama?
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### Author:  [@wonky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wonky)
#### Post date: [October 18, 2010, 2:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-in-your-lifetime-do-you-think-was-is-a-bodhisattva-saint/557529/9 "2010-10-18T14:18:31Z")
> [@Zsofia](#):
>
> I mean, seriously - I don’t believe in them either, the question is “who do you know in person or by reputation who is so special and good and wise that you feel they’re a different sort of person”?
>
> Like Bob Ross. 🙂
When my cousin was pregnant with her first child, her doctor told her to bring something to watch or listen to during her labor that she found relaxing. She chose Bob Ross. I thought, damn, that’s when you know you’re soothing!
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### Author:  [@Zsofia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zsofia)
#### Post date: [October 18, 2010, 2:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-in-your-lifetime-do-you-think-was-is-a-bodhisattva-saint/557529/10 "2010-10-18T14:28:04Z")
I’m feeling a little more chilled out just thinking about Bob Ross, honestly. Happy little trees!
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### Author:  [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)
#### Post date: [October 18, 2010, 2:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-in-your-lifetime-do-you-think-was-is-a-bodhisattva-saint/557529/11 "2010-10-18T14:29:09Z")
> [@Zsofia](#):
>
> I mean, seriously - I don’t believe in them either, the question is “who do you know in person or by reputation who is so special and good and wise that you feel they’re a different sort of person”?
>
> Like Bob Ross. 🙂
My wife.
(I thought you had meant the OP lterally. Sorry for the first answer)
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### Author:  [@NicePete](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NicePete)
#### Post date: [October 18, 2010, 3:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-in-your-lifetime-do-you-think-was-is-a-bodhisattva-saint/557529/12 "2010-10-18T15:21:55Z")
> [@Zsofia](#):
>
> We’ve been watching a lot of Mister Rogers recently, because Himself may soon be producing a children’s show himself, and I firmly believe that if there such a thing as a Bodhisattva (a soul that has such love for people that instead of achieving Nirvana itself it chooses to stay in the world so as to help others to enlightenment) or a saint (a soul so assured to be in heaven that you can pray to that person and ask for intercession) then it’s Fred Rogers. There are times watching him speak that I think, “this must have been what it must be like to be a bhikku or an apostle and sit around and watch Jesus or Buddha talk”. He is completely unlike any person I have ever seen or heard of in so many respects; so wise, so thoughtful, and so much his own person.
>
> So: who in your lifetime do you feel that if there is such a mystical person, this person is it? It can be somebody we all know or somebody only you yourself have met.
Based on his writing and what he spent his life doing, I’d have to agree with you.
I don’t subscribe to any particular dogma which purports to identify saints or arhats or whatevers. I just know the more I learn about Fred Rogers the more I admire the way he lived a life full of love.
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### Author:  [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)
#### Post date: [October 18, 2010, 3:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-in-your-lifetime-do-you-think-was-is-a-bodhisattva-saint/557529/13 "2010-10-18T15:32:44Z")
Plenty of folks, really. I believe that the significant majority of people, possibly up to all of them, go to Heaven when they die. But if I have to single out someone specifically, it’d have to be my grandfather. He was the father of eleven, and raised them all to be good people. By the time he died, he had something like 90 descendants, and made it a point to know all of them personally. He always managed to see the good in everyone, and I never once saw him lose his temper, and hardly ever had anything bad at all to say about anyone.
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### Author:  [@aruvqan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aruvqan)
#### Post date: [October 18, 2010, 3:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-in-your-lifetime-do-you-think-was-is-a-bodhisattva-saint/557529/14 "2010-10-18T15:52:18Z")
> [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](#):
>
> There is no such thing as either a bodhisattva or a saint (or a soul).
>
> I always got a molester vibe off Mr. Rogers.
> [@Zsofia](#):
>
> Why, thank you. That’s totally the kind of answer I was looking for in this thread!
Well, so did I. Sorry, but he struck me as amazingly smarmy, and it would really not surprise me if someone unearthed some sort of evidence he was a pedophile.
The people that I know that interact best with children of all ages talk to them as if they were normal people. Not slowing stuff down, and dumbing stuff down.
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### Author:  [@StusBlues](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/StusBlues)
#### Post date: [October 18, 2010, 3:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-in-your-lifetime-do-you-think-was-is-a-bodhisattva-saint/557529/15 "2010-10-18T15:56:47Z")
L. Ron Hubbard
heh heh heh
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### Author:  [@MegaBee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MegaBee)
#### Post date: [October 18, 2010, 4:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-in-your-lifetime-do-you-think-was-is-a-bodhisattva-saint/557529/16 "2010-10-18T16:10:27Z")
> [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](#):
>
> I always got a molester vibe off Mr. Rogers.
…
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### Author:  [@cjepson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cjepson)
#### Post date: [October 18, 2010, 4:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-in-your-lifetime-do-you-think-was-is-a-bodhisattva-saint/557529/17 "2010-10-18T16:20:37Z")
I have a couple of friends whom I feel this way about.
And, this may draw some serious flak from the right wing, but – Pete Seeger. (Yes, I know he supported Stalin for a long time. He was wrong, and he’s apologized in print.)
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### Author:  [@Rigamarole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rigamarole)
#### Post date: [October 18, 2010, 4:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-in-your-lifetime-do-you-think-was-is-a-bodhisattva-saint/557529/18 "2010-10-18T16:26:15Z")
Ain’t no saints in my lifetime or anyone else’s.
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### Author:  [@Snickers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snickers)
#### Post date: [October 18, 2010, 4:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-in-your-lifetime-do-you-think-was-is-a-bodhisattva-saint/557529/19 "2010-10-18T16:28:48Z")
Jimmy Carter.
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### Author:  [@Sattua](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sattua)
#### Post date: [October 18, 2010, 4:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-in-your-lifetime-do-you-think-was-is-a-bodhisattva-saint/557529/20 "2010-10-18T16:29:17Z")
I sort of wonder about Jane Goodall. She has the same calm, placid, self-assured manner of Fred Rogers and Bob Ross, and she has certainly done a lot of good in the world.
What makes me unsure is that, like Tasha Tudor who was also an amazing placid self-assured woman, she seems to have raised a somewhat disturbed child. Grub Goodall was obviously traumatized by the chimps. Should a bodhissatva/saint have put the good of her child first, or not? I can’t decide.
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