The Buddha

Most of what I know about Buddhism I learned from watching Kung Fu on television. I know, for example, that Shaolin priests are wicked good at cracking head when they have to. I know also that Shaolin priests-in-training can walk the length of the rice paper and leave no trace. They’re awesome.

Step back with me, then, to 1974. The television series is in its third season. “Kung Fu Fighting” has earned Carl Douglas a Grammy Award for best-selling single. I’m riding with my father down a two-lane country road.

We round a bend in the road and there’s a yard sale. Tables of junk. Except on one table, strikingly out of place, a rosewood Buddha in perfect condition.

Our house wasn’t like the other houses in Sumter. Our house was wall-to-wall nipponalia. Shoji screen, tansu chest, silk tapestries and porcelain vases. The cream of the crates that my father had skimmed with his employee discount at Amthor Imports (later to become Cost Plus, and later yet World Market) in San Francisco. He had what was considered to be at that time and in that place a good eye. The Buddha was “a find.”

So we bought the Buddha and installed it on a shelf all by itself in my bedroom. There it sat through high school and college. There it remained when I moved to Columbia, throughout my 20’s and 30’s and into my 40’s. And there it was, waiting for me, when I returned to Sumter in 2006 to dispose of my parents’ modest estate.

Now the Buddha lives with me and the Chinese money toad that I bought on ebay. Funny thing about that money toad, bringer of prosperity that it’s purported to be. I bought it right before — and I do mean right before — my mother died.
I’m just sayin’.

Contrast Wednesday’s relatively mild post about the “alien card” with this …

Speaking with host Joe Montaldo during a “UFO Undercover” podcast dated January 11, exopolitical attorney Alfred Labremont Webre claimed that Barak Obama has been to Mars. According to Webre, the future president was seen there by DARPA “chrononauts” (time travelers) between 1981 and 1983.” He said also that native Martians come in three colors, one of which is greenish-blue.

Sweet baby Jesus, Alfred, couldn’t you have kept some of that on the down low? And please stop dying your hair. It makes you look like a vampire.