About Budai

By Victor M Fontane

Let’s put to rest the perennial confusion about the fat, laughing “buddha” figure who graces menus and knickknack shelves. That’s Budai (or Hotei, in Japanese), a semilegendary Chinese monk who may have lived around the 10th century. Considered a deity of contentment and abundance, Budai is also a protector of children and the sick. A collection of Zen stories mentions him briefly as a possible emanation of Maitreya, the buddha of the future, but he has never held the place of Shakyamuni Buddha.