Buddha - Short, Fat Guy?

After his great renunciation, Siddhartha placed himself under the spiritual guidance of various renowned Brahman teachers. Karen Armstrong provides an excellent account of his experiences under these teachers, and explains the teachings within the philosophical and religious context of their times, in her biography Buddha. Most of the following account is from P. Lakshmi Narasu’s shorter version from The Essence of Buddhism (1912), which became the first chapter of Dwight Goddard’s A Buddhist Bible (1938).

Siddhartha’s first teacher, Arada Kalama, lived in Vaisali and was the head of a large number of followers. He was evidently a follower of the Sankhya system of philosophy, and laid great stress in the belief in the atman, or soul. Without the belief in an eternal and immaterial soul, he could not see any way of salvation. The soul, it was believed, when freed from its material limitations, would attain perfect release, like a wild bird when liberated from its cage. When the ego-self finally realized its own immaterial nature, it would attain true deliverance.

Although it was not taught by Arada Kalama, this belief system had also given rise to the asceticism being practiced at the time by forest monks and wandering mendicants. To liberate the soul, one had to weaken its cage, the body, with the idea that the weaker the physical body became, the more the soul would shine through. So the ascetics would starve themselves, eating only one sesame seed a day, or spend hours in freezing cold rivers, believing that through these forms of self-mortification eventually all sense of “self” would drop away, the spirit would become stronger and liberation and release could be achieved.

Siddhartha was apparently both a difficult and a gifted pupil. He always refused to take anything on trust, and later, when he had his own sangha, he insistently warned his disciples not to take anything on hearsay. They must not swallow everything that their teacher told them uncritically, but test the teaching at every point, making sure that it resonated with their own experience. Even at this early stage in his quest, he refused to accept Arada Kalama’s teaching as a matter of faith. He went to his master and asked him how he had managed to “realize” these doctrines - surely he had not simply taken somebody else’s word for all this?

Although he had risen to become one of Arada Kalama’s leading disciples, the teachings did not ultimately satisfy Siddhartha, and he quit his teacher and placed himself under the tutelage of Udraka Ramaputra. Udraka also believed in the atman, but laid greater stress on the effects of karma and the transmigration of souls. Siddhartha saw the truth in the doctrine of karma, but could see no evidence for the existence of a soul or its transmigration.

He therefore quit Udraka too, and went to the Brahmin priests officiating in temples to see if he could learn from them the way of escape from suffering and sorrow. But to his gentle nature, the unnecessarily cruel sacrifices performed on the altars of the gods were revolting, and he preached to the priests on the futility of atoning for evil deeds by the destruction of life and the impossibility of practicing religion by the neglect of the moral life.

Wandering from Vaisali in search of a better system, Siddhartha came upon a group of five wandering mendicants near the kingdom of Magadha. He saw these five ascetics keeping their senses in check, subduing their passions and practicing austere penance. He admired their zeal and earnestness, and he applied himself to their practice of self-mortification and joined forces with them.

During this period, he went either naked or clad in the roughest hemp. He slept out in the open during the freezing winter nights, lay on a mattress of spikes and even fed on his own urine and feces. He held his breath for so long that his head seemed to split and there was a fearful roaring in his ears. He stopped eating and his bones stuck out like the beams of an old shed. When he touched his stomach, he could almost feel his spine. His hair fell out and his skin became black and withered.

One day after bathing in the river Nairanjana, he tried to leave the water but could not rise on account of his weakness. However, with the aid of a stooping branch of a tree he raised himself and left the river. But while returning to his camp, he again staggered and fell to the ground, and might perhaps have died, had not Sujata, the eldest daughter of a herdsman living near the jungle, who accidentally passed the spot where he had swooned, given him some rice-milk.

Having thus refreshed himself, he perceived that asceticism, instead of leading to the goal he had sought, brought about only an enfeeblement of both body and mind. However severe his austerities, perhaps even because of them, his body still clamored for attention, and he was still plagued by lust and craving. In fact, he seemed more conscious of himself than ever.

So, if the Buddha had almost starved himself into oblivion, then who is that fat guy we keep seeing in cartoons and statues at Chinese restaurants? Did he start binging after renouncing asceticism?

No, the fat guy is not the Buddha at all - it’s only Western ignorance that confuses Sakyamuni Buddha with the figure of Hotei. Fat old Hotei, better known in the English-speaking world as the Laughing Buddha, was called Bu-Dai (sounds a little like “Buddha”) in China, and dubbed the Loving or Friendly One. Based on a well-loved and eccentric Chinese monk, he has become incorporated into Asian culture, and Hotei statues and amulets have become relatively well-known in Western cultures as well. According to Wikipedia, misconceptions have arisen because of this new enthusiasm, including the false connection made between the Laughing Buddha and Sakyamuni Buddha.

Okay, good. Glad to get that out of the way.