GammaGeek wrote:
blauSamstag wrote:
That's absurd. The fat guy is Hotei.
Haha, thank you you that. After all, the Buddha was tall and slender, or at least I picture him as such.
Siddhartha Gautama is usually depicted as emaciated, as he was when he discovered the Middle Way.
As i understand it, Buddha is more of a title than a name, and there are many incarnations. But the fat guy is someone else.
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Buddhism looks drab and mundane compared to the complex and bizarre tapestry of east-indian faiths.
It very much does seem very drab compared to many other religions, but it is crazy to other folk here in the west. I didn't even know it existed until I saw it on The Simpsons and realized it fit me perfectly.
Utah, despite or perhaps due to being somewhat more than half mormon, is relatively cosmopolitan compared to some regions of the USA. Three are certainly people here who look down on or pester endlessly those who are not conspicuously mormon, but there is a good variety all the same.
The thing about india, though, is that westerners misunderstand their culture because for the majority of our recent history, india has been near the bottom of their dynastic cycle and is currently on the up-slope. It turns out that they have a complex history going back thousands of years.
And thousands of years ago, when the Gupta family was in charge and had united most of the tribes into a single nation, they outlawed religious intolerance.
I'm simplifying here, a lot, but it turns out that a few thousand years of tolerance gets to an extreme where it turns out that there are in fact dozens of what would otherwise be considered separate faiths in the subcontinent that have sort of agreed with each-other that they are all part of the same pantheon.
The indian community in salt lake city comes from every different state in india, and every state (and some times every major area in each state) worships a different way, but they all worship at the same temple.
And they don't seem to get into arguments over it, either. The tamil problems in sri lanka not withstanding. (Trivia: there is a character in indian mythology who is, depending on perspective, either a demon, or the king of sri lanka)
25 May 2011, 7:30 pm
