On another thread, I mused recently about how the Buddha, Buddhism, and I guess Buddhists, seem to be the targets of dispariagement by way of jokes, novelty items or as a form of prosetylization by christian zealots. The comment I made was in response to an episode ;ast Sunday of Rove, a variety program in Australia, which when portrayed a comedy sketch on the topic of karma, made a dispariaging remark about the Buddha. This evening, I found this news item: http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009 ... ion=justin" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
The brief story goes on to say that the figurine was pulled from sale.The plastic figurine of the seated, grinning Buddha had upset monks from an eighth century temple in the ancient capital of Nara.
They complained that the statuette had an inappropriately large bulge between its legs.
A couple of years ago, I remember reading about a clothing manufacturer who made ladies thong underwear with a Buddha printed on it and an Australian beer manufacturer who bottled their beer in Buddha (Hotei) shaped bottles.
I sometimes think that it an artefact of living in samsara, the profound and the profane changing places. But I wonder why the same people don't have the balls to make underwear with the veiled image of Mohammad printed on the front or statuetes of mohammad with a hard-on.
Maybe I'm just overly sensitive, cranky or both.
What do you think?
Ben