Perhaps it is relevant that Buddhism is a religion without a god and thus heaven or hell, though reincarnation. Depending on how you define religion therefore Buddhism is not even one, so atheists can display a Buddha as decoration without commitment. Both a Budai and a Gautama are cool, and the latter had good ideas (so had Jesus too, I know).
For me Buddhas are much less commiting than a Jesus on the cross. We had a cross in class at shool all through my schooling in Spain, long time ago. A Madonna is something different again, but they were quite common too. Now there is not a single Christian symbol in my home*, but my wife has at least five Buddhas here and there, from 2" to 1’4", they are quite decorative. I don’t give it too much thought, one is in the toilet. I would object to a cross, I’m sure, but she would not suggest one.
* Apart from books that I’d had to open, of course. But that is not a display.
Is it redundant to refer to Buddha as “The Ancient Buddha of Asia”?
I wondered why you wanted to know why someone might refer to Buddha as “The Ancient Buddha of Asia”. I googled on that phrase. I got one result from the search. There’s a line in the song “I Want to be Neenja” by Jennifer Murphy using that phrase. Is that where you’re taking it from?
While Buddhism does not have a concept of eternal heaven or hell there are still hell-like and heaven-like realms of which you can end up in the next life. Gods also can exist but aren’t considered important in the grand scheme of things.
My understanding is that Buddhism is not a religion, (as it lacks dogma, or a God to worship), but is instead a philosophy.
There a millions of people who consider it their religion.
You are correct, that webpage is no more realistic representation of the world than The Onion, and I would hope fair-minded posters on The Dope would realize the satirical point of the page I shared, related to the speculation going on in this thread.
I’m an atheist and I have a Gautama Buddha sculpture in my koi pond. For me it is an idealized personification of serenity and enlightenment (that also jibes with the Asian theme of my water garden ) and has nothing to do with spirituality or divinity.
I guess that images and statues of certain figures can give rise to emotions even if we don’t fully subscribe to the full set of beliefs. Buddhist teachings are much more well known in the west compared to those of Hinduism or Jainism. People wouldn’t really get much of a feeling from a statue of Ganesha or Krishna.
Mostly thanks to Hermann Hesse, I suspect.
And other like comments.
To me, while Buddha is associated with the religion, he is also associated with the concept of self exploration/actualization, peace, meditation, wisdom, and finding one’s own way. As such it is picked up by many (I know) who consider themselves spiritualists, and those who practice meditation. It is also common to have such a statue in meditative retreats. And to some that is the real meaning of such a statue, the religious use is even considered by a few to be a corruption of the teachings of Buddha.
Yes it is
Hermann Hesse who wrote Siddhartha in which the hero meets Gautama Buddha and decides not to follow him but instead to go his own way? That’s a formula for making hippies, not Buddhists.
D.T. Suzuki and Alan Watts were the real movers behind the Buddhification of America. Over in the UK, Van Morrison sang of “reading Christmas Humphreys’ book on Zen.”
As far as I know, the Hotei/Budai craze was started by American soldiers occupying Japan after the war who brought him home. The three monkeys also originate from a Buddhist temple in Japan.
I’ve read Christmas Humphreys’ book (it’s published by Pelican Books). It’s generally pretty good, but he includes some things that are actually Theosophist, rather than Buddhist. the Theosophists were trying to introduce Buddhism to the West, too. One Theosophist – Henry Steele Olcott – wrote “A Buddhist catechism”, which was an interesting attempt to try to codify Buddhist beliefs and to try to encompass as many branches of Buddhism as possible. I have a feeling that this is a very Western way of thinking, and that a person born to Buddhism wouldn’t think of putting together such a book.
As for why the Buddha statues – they look interesting, they give you the feeling of being someone who will look at other faiths, and they let you put a religious statue on your table or lawn without the cultural baggage that comes with a statue of Jesus or a saint.
My wife gave me a small statue of Avalokiteshvara and made up a song to go with it that she mostly stole from a Hanna Barbera cartoon…
“Don’t you want a little Buddha you can call your own
A Buddha like Garuda when you’re all alone”
We’ll ignore the fact that Garuda is, in fact, a Hindu deity and has noting to do with Buddhism. It scans and it rhymes. You try coming up with a rhyme for “Avalokiteshvara”.
Growing up in a half-Chinese household we had a few “Happy Buddha” tchotchkes lying around. Rubbing his stomach was supposed to bring luck (or fertility, if it was one of the statues with kids climbing all over Buddha). No Buddhists in the house, just Catholics (I got better). Pretty sure any relatives on the Chinese side had similar statues, also with no actual religious significance.
No one had a Gautama Buddha statue. I seem to remember a lot of movie and TV shows would have such a Buddha statue (or just the head) as decor on a shelf, especially in modern, minimalist settings. I think the statue is meant to imply worldly sophistication rather than and belief system. I suspect most people just have one because is looks cool.
Humorous hijack: I was in the Forbidden City with a small tour group. A clearly developmentally disabled Chinese youth was selling some photo books about the Forbidden City. He saw me, walked over and rubbed my stomach and said (in English), “Happy Buddha”. The group I was with found it hilarious.
I believe that in one of his books, Jean Shepherd (of - A Christmas Story fame) wrote of his mother winning a Buddha incense burner in some card game. A figure seated in the lotus position presented a place to put the incense cone.
Prewar, there was a fascination for things Oriental. It was a thing for women to get dressed up and play mahjong, etc. (At least they did according to the Time-Life series This Fabulous Century.) I suspect it started as interest when missionaries to China wrote back to their churches in the United States. Then there is always the aspect of exoticism. And don’t underestimate the effect of the GI’s returning from the Pacific after WWII - which created the Tiki craze - but that’s another story.
My parents had a ceramic fat monk out as decoration. I never asked why, but I assume because it was funny and cheerful, and maybe exotic.
I have a photo of one carved into the steps of the Potala Palace in Tibet.
Part of the rebellion of the Reformation included the notion that the statues and other decorations in churches were encouraging idol worship, rather than being taken as the symbolic representation of an ethereal being - plus the de-emphasizing of saints, since to some it appeared that praying to saints sort of awarded them the status of demigods. But then these iconoclastic tendencies have come and gone over the course of history.
I think this is the general idea. While most westerners know very little of Buddhsm - other than karma happens and rebirth, perhaps - the general image of the religion and the monks associated with it is peace and serenity - so this sort of decoration helps sort of set a mood for the room, and especially if one is looking for a small ornate garden look, it sets the same ambiance expected from one of those small serene East Asian gardens.
Which doesn’t explain Easter Island heads…
As for Jesus statues - generally, we expect those in churches; normally, standing alone they’d be a small shrine.
It certainly has a dogma. It just isn’t a monotheistic religion, being a reform of Hinduism circa 4th century BCE.
As to why statues of the Buddha are common among non-Buddhist westerners, I can think of several possibilities.
One, an infatuation with trappings of the far east which has influenced western art, decor, and philosophy in waves, beginning in the 19th century. The garden statue would be part of Japanese garden design which has been absorbed by western landscape architecture, then cheapened into the mass-produced buddha sitting by a goldfish pond.
The huge popularity of eastern Asian philosophy and religion that swept the west beginning in the 1960’s and led to so many ‘seekers’ ending up in Indian ashrams, or coming home to start imitations of these on western soil bumped up the Buddha statue market considerably. For many people, who are estranged from monotheism, the Buddha represents a spiritual path devoid of whatever estranged them – shallow rote faith practices, constraining rules that didn’t make sense to them, etc.
In contrast to this, statues of Jesus are not decorative, at all. They are specific religious artifacts. Statuary in particular is associated with Catholicism since historically, one of the protests of Protestantism was the idea of praying to images, and imbuing objects with a sense of the sacred. Protestants (some of them) have softened some about this, but in all groups I’ve ever been part of there is an instinctive desire to make clothing, habits of speech, gestures, and everything else, into “something we do” while the “other people” do the other thing. At this point I don’t think it’s much more than that. But that’s going to limit the statues of Jesus mainly to Catholics who are setting up a home altar or prayer corner .