Must not rub statues?
We read:
"The statues of "Buddha" at the Kansas City Zoo that are offensive to an Overland Park man are not images of Buddha at all, according to a local lama. "I have seen them," said Lama Chuck Stanford, executive and spiritual director of the Rime Buddhist Center & Monastery. "They are statues of Ho Tai, the patron saint of children in China and Japan. He is closer to Santa Claus."
David Engle, who said he and his family are Christians, was offended when he recently saw people rubbing the bellies and heads of the statues at the entrance to the Tiger Trail area of the zoo.
But Stanford said Engle was mistakenly comparing the statues to religious symbols like the cross or the menorah. "Buddhists do not worship or pray to the Buddha," he said.
Source
9 comments:
It's a short leap from the attitudes of David Engle to the ideology of Muqtada al-Sadr.
So all those Buddhist temples with statues to Buddha inside, the statues have no religious significance?
Ignoring the fact that most westerners are ignorant of the difference between the two figures, did the zoo label or address the statues as Buddha?
How can you be offended by a Buddha statue? Some people just look for ways to be offended.
No one cares when a Christian is offended. Now if this guy had been a Muslim, the statue would have been gone by the end of the day.
Because everyone knows what happens when Muslims are "offended," BOOM!
What is the statue doing in a KC zoo in the first place? (aside from just standing there)
I would suspect that the statues were put there for 'atmosphere'. They were probably considered a nice landscaping addition to what I haven't seen but suspect would have been an Asian jungle type theme - given it is a tiger enclosure.
"So all those Buddhist temples with statues to Buddha inside, the statues have no religious significance?"
Not as items of reverence, no.
They're decorations in the same way that a decorative painting of a biblical scene in a church is.
They're not prayed to like (many) Christians do to crucifixes and religious icons.
I rubbed the Statue of Liberty's arse once.
From Inside!
And we criticize the Taliban for "removing" those other Buddhist statues - albeit they did it more dramatically, but removed them from view nevertheless!
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