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Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff from How Stuff Works, Hey, brain Stuff,

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Speaker 1: Lauren bog O Bam Here. You've probably seen him seated

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Speaker 1: next to the cash register at your local Chinese American restaurant,

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Speaker 1: a shiny bronze statue of a bald, pop bellied man

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Speaker 1: with a laughing grin on his face, the same jolly

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Speaker 1: fella immortalized in key chains and other trinkets sold in

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Speaker 1: Chinatown tourist shops all across the US. That's not the Buddha,

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Speaker 1: but it's in the right religious ballpark. He's called the

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Speaker 1: Laughing Buddha, and the story behind him is complicated. We

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Speaker 1: spoke with Denise Lady, currently the Curator of Asian Art

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Speaker 1: at the Yale University Art Gallery. She held the same

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Speaker 1: position at the Metropolitan Museum of Art for twenty two

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Speaker 1: years and is no stranger to Westerner's confusion over the

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Speaker 1: laughing Buddha statue. She said, in Christianity, there's this one guy.

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Speaker 1: So when people see this fun guy, they think that's

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Speaker 1: the Buddha, but it's not the Buddha. In the singular

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Speaker 1: is the Darta Goltma. But the Buddhist religion over time

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Speaker 1: has added multiple layers of deities, many of whom have

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Speaker 1: multiple avatars, and so it's gotten mind bogglingly complicated. Buddha,

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Speaker 1: the story goes, was a man named Sadaka Gultma who

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Speaker 1: lived around the sixth century BC in India. Born a

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Speaker 1: wealthy prince, he chose to live an ascetic lifestyle in

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Speaker 1: search of the meaning of existence, which he found while

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Speaker 1: meditating for forty days under a fig tree. After achieving nirvana,

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Speaker 1: which is the escape from the endless cycle of suffering,

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Speaker 1: death and rebirth, he became the Buddha, or the awakened One.

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Speaker 1: Over the centuries, his teachings spread throughout India, into China,

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Speaker 1: across Asia, and eventually around the world. Today there aren't

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Speaker 1: estimated three hundred and seventy six million followers of Buddhism worldwide,

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Speaker 1: But so who is the laughing Buddha. Buddhism has expanded

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Speaker 1: over the millennia to include a pantheon of deities. In

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Speaker 1: addition to Guldtma Buddha. Those include numerous Bodhisatva, the term

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Speaker 1: for sage like individuals who work for the enlightenment of

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Speaker 1: all sentient beings. In Thetavad, Buddhism practiced mainly in Southeast Asia.

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Speaker 1: Guttma Buddha is only the most recent of twenty eight

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Speaker 1: Buddhas described in holy texts. And then there are avatars,

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Speaker 1: humans believed to be incarnations of deities. The Laughing Buddha

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Speaker 1: was one such avatar, a tenth century Chinese monk named Buddhai.

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Speaker 1: According to accounts written centuries later, but I was a gregarious,

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Speaker 1: pot bellied monk who wandered from village to village carrying

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Speaker 1: a large sack over his shoulder buddha I meaning cloth sack.

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Speaker 1: He was beloved by children and the poor, to whom

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Speaker 1: he would give rice and sweets from his sack. On

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Speaker 1: his deathbed, budd I penned a poem in which he

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Speaker 1: revealed himself as the avatar of Ma Trea, a deity

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Speaker 1: also known as the future Buddha. Lightie explains, in our lifetime,

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Speaker 1: this great cosmic era you and I are sharing, there's

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Speaker 1: a teaching Buddha named Suddarta Gotma. The world will ultimately

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Speaker 1: destroy itself. I don't know when, but when the world

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Speaker 1: is reborn, Matrea will come back as the teaching Buddha

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Speaker 1: of that era. Over time, Buddai became the subject of

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Speaker 1: popular devotion in Zen Buddhism, both in China and Japan.

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Speaker 1: His lar, ch, belly and sack are believed to represent abundance,

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Speaker 1: and he's included among these seven Lucky Gods of Japan

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Speaker 1: as a harpinger of abundance and good health. At some point,

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Speaker 1: he also became the patron deity of restaurants and bartenders,

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Speaker 1: hence his prized location next to the cash register. Lightie

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Speaker 1: isn't sure of the exact historical providence of today's laughing

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Speaker 1: Buddha statues, but she believes the Boddai imagery in Chinese

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Speaker 1: art and sculpture started popping up in the fifteenth century.

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Speaker 1: She said, As global trade begins to expand in the

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Speaker 1: late sixteenth and seventeenth century and porcelain is totally transforming

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Speaker 1: global ceramics, there's probably some imagery of this guy that

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Speaker 1: snuck in it got picked up in the West, turned

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Speaker 1: into the laughing Buddha and made into this kitchy thing

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Speaker 1: that you can buy anywhere. Although rubbing Buddhai's belly for

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Speaker 1: good luck is not Buddhist teaching and generally considered impolite,

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Speaker 1: devotees of Buddhism don't seem to have a problem with

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Speaker 1: the spread of the icon. Barbara O'Brien, a journalist zen

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Speaker 1: Buddhism student, wrote, it is indicative of Buddhism's broad tolerance

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Speaker 1: of diversity that this laughing Buddha of folklore is accepted

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Speaker 1: into the official practice for Buddhists. Inequality that represents Buddha

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Speaker 1: nature is to be encouraged, and the folklore of the

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Speaker 1: kind laughing Buddha is not regarded as any kind of sacrilege,

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Speaker 1: even though people may unwittingly confuse him with Gotma Buddha.

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Speaker 1: Today's episode was written by Dave Ruse and produced by

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Speaker 1: Tyler Clang. You can find brain stuffed shirts and more

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Speaker 1: at t public dot com, slash brain stuff, and of course,

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Speaker 1: for more on this and lots of other cultural topics,

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Speaker 1: visit our home planet at how stuff works dot com.