A common misconception in Western culture is that Buddha is the fat guy with an open housecoat who seems to be laughing all the time. This is in fact a Chinese version of the Buddha persona, one who embodies contentment and good luck. His full belly symbolizes abundance, whether in spiritual or physical terms, as financially this Buddha, or Budai as he is more correctly called, carried around a cloth sack with very little in it.
Buddhism spread from India throughout Asian lands and found different forms within each culture. Hence we now have Japanese Buddhism, Chinese Buddhism, Korean Buddhism, Tibetan Buddhism etc. Each has it’s own unique flavor and local customs but at heart retains the core teachings of the original ‘Buddha’, Siddhartha Gautama, who lived in India some two and a half thousand years ago.
Gautama Buddha bore scant physical resemblance to the tubby, laughing Buddha. He spent most of his life in meditation or spreading his teaching, begging for sustenance and having little by way of material possessions. So whenever someone mentions about Buddha being that fat guy, you can point out that he was Budai, the laughing Buddha, but not ‘the’ Buddha.
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