Who Is The Laughing Buddha?

Statues of this jolly fellow adorn the register counters of many Chinese American restaurants, but he's not the Buddha. Learn about this Buddhist diety in today's episode of BrainStuff.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to brain Stuff from How Stuff Works, Hey, brain Stuff,
Lauren bog O Bam Here. You've probably seen him seated
next to the cash register at your local Chinese American restaurant,
a shiny bronze statue of a bald, pop bellied man
with a laughing grin on his face, the same jolly
fella immortalized in key chains and other trinkets sold in
Chinatown tourist shops all across the US. That's not the Buddha,

(00:26):
but it's in the right religious ballpark. He's called the
Laughing Buddha, and the story behind him is complicated. We
spoke with Denise Lady, currently the Curator of Asian Art
at the Yale University Art Gallery. She held the same
position at the Metropolitan Museum of Art for twenty two
years and is no stranger to Westerner's confusion over the
laughing Buddha statue. She said, in Christianity, there's this one guy.

(00:50):
So when people see this fun guy, they think that's
the Buddha, but it's not the Buddha. In the singular
is the Darta Goltma. But the Buddhist religion over time
has added multiple layers of deities, many of whom have
multiple avatars, and so it's gotten mind bogglingly complicated. Buddha,
the story goes, was a man named Sadaka Gultma who

(01:11):
lived around the sixth century BC in India. Born a
wealthy prince, he chose to live an ascetic lifestyle in
search of the meaning of existence, which he found while
meditating for forty days under a fig tree. After achieving nirvana,
which is the escape from the endless cycle of suffering,
death and rebirth, he became the Buddha, or the awakened One.
Over the centuries, his teachings spread throughout India, into China,

(01:33):
across Asia, and eventually around the world. Today there aren't
estimated three hundred and seventy six million followers of Buddhism worldwide,
But so who is the laughing Buddha. Buddhism has expanded
over the millennia to include a pantheon of deities. In
addition to Guldtma Buddha. Those include numerous Bodhisatva, the term
for sage like individuals who work for the enlightenment of

(01:55):
all sentient beings. In Thetavad, Buddhism practiced mainly in Southeast Asia.
Guttma Buddha is only the most recent of twenty eight
Buddhas described in holy texts. And then there are avatars,
humans believed to be incarnations of deities. The Laughing Buddha
was one such avatar, a tenth century Chinese monk named Buddhai.
According to accounts written centuries later, but I was a gregarious,

(02:18):
pot bellied monk who wandered from village to village carrying
a large sack over his shoulder buddha I meaning cloth sack.
He was beloved by children and the poor, to whom
he would give rice and sweets from his sack. On
his deathbed, budd I penned a poem in which he
revealed himself as the avatar of Ma Trea, a deity
also known as the future Buddha. Lightie explains, in our lifetime,

(02:40):
this great cosmic era you and I are sharing, there's
a teaching Buddha named Suddarta Gotma. The world will ultimately
destroy itself. I don't know when, but when the world
is reborn, Matrea will come back as the teaching Buddha
of that era. Over time, Buddai became the subject of
popular devotion in Zen Buddhism, both in China and Japan.
His lar, ch, belly and sack are believed to represent abundance,

(03:02):
and he's included among these seven Lucky Gods of Japan
as a harpinger of abundance and good health. At some point,
he also became the patron deity of restaurants and bartenders,
hence his prized location next to the cash register. Lightie
isn't sure of the exact historical providence of today's laughing
Buddha statues, but she believes the Boddai imagery in Chinese
art and sculpture started popping up in the fifteenth century.

(03:26):
She said, As global trade begins to expand in the
late sixteenth and seventeenth century and porcelain is totally transforming
global ceramics, there's probably some imagery of this guy that
snuck in it got picked up in the West, turned
into the laughing Buddha and made into this kitchy thing
that you can buy anywhere. Although rubbing Buddhai's belly for
good luck is not Buddhist teaching and generally considered impolite,

(03:48):
devotees of Buddhism don't seem to have a problem with
the spread of the icon. Barbara O'Brien, a journalist zen
Buddhism student, wrote, it is indicative of Buddhism's broad tolerance
of diversity that this laughing Buddha of folklore is accepted
into the official practice for Buddhists. Inequality that represents Buddha
nature is to be encouraged, and the folklore of the

(04:08):
kind laughing Buddha is not regarded as any kind of sacrilege,
even though people may unwittingly confuse him with Gotma Buddha.
Today's episode was written by Dave Ruse and produced by
Tyler Clang. You can find brain stuffed shirts and more
at t public dot com, slash brain stuff, and of course,
for more on this and lots of other cultural topics,

(04:30):
visit our home planet at how stuff works dot com.