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, 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. 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 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, 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 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, 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, 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, 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.
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, 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 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, visit our home planet at how stuff works dot com.