ABC
Religious texts
Religious schools and traditions
Heavenly beings and deities
Legendary and historical figures
Legendary and real places
Symbols and art
Doctrines and rituals
- Awakening
- Community
- Compassion
- Craving
- Dependent origination
- Dharma
- Eightfold Path
- Emptiness
- Five Precepts
- Four Noble Truths
- Happiness
- Heavens and hells
- Impermanence
- Karma
- Koan
- Kung fu
- Meditation
- Merit
- Mindfulness
- Nirvana
- Non-self
- Om (mani padme hum)
- Parinirvana
- Pilgrimage sites
- Prajnaparamita
- Puja
- Pure lands
- Realms of existence
- Rebirth
- Recitation
- Renunciation
- Ritual
- Self
- Suffering
- Tales of rebirth
- Three Jewels
- Three-body doctrine
- Universal ruler
- Vesak
- Ye-dhamma formula
- Yoga
Budai
Heavenly beings and deities
In Chinese, Budai (Jap. Hotei) literally means ‘hemp sack’, and is the name given to the figure of the laughing pot-bellied monk who carries a large sack around with him. Budai is said to have lived as a mendicant monk in tenth-century China. Always known to be jolly and contented, he never took anything for himself; instead he handed out presents from his sack to children and the poor. He is also considered to be a manifestation of Maitreya, the Buddha of the Future. It is Budai who is known as ‘the Fat Buddha’; he is widely portrayed on all manner of kitschy ornaments.