RiceSweet cakesTeaFruit given to a childA coin given awayThe first bite left for someone else
Invocation Approach
Tone
Easy laughing without ceremony
Address
HoteiBudaiThe Cloth-Bag MonkHotei-osho
Relationship
The fat monk at the edge of the market who is not in a hurry
Warning
He is not the Buddha and the western name for him is a misnomer
Resonance
Children the poor the sick those who have stopped counting
Symbols
Cloth sackFanThe laughing faceThe bare bellyThe childrenThe road
Mythology Summary
Hotei is the Japanese name of Budai, the cloth sack, a Chinese Chan monk called Qieci (d. 916 or 917) who lived at Fenghua near Ningbo, carried a sack through the market, laughed, foretold the weather, and left a verse at his death identifying himself as an incarnation of Maitreya, the future Buddha. In Japan he became Hotei, one of the Seven Lucky Gods, the patron of children, the weak and the poor, and a god of contentment and of divination, shown with the sack, a fan and a laughing face. The Western label the Laughing Buddha is a misnomer: he is not Shakyamuni, and the Chinese tradition knows him as Budai.
Modern Practice
He is honoured with rice, cakes and tea, and the practice is the small generosity rather than the large vow: a coin given away, a meal shared, a child fed. He is the one of the seven it is hardest to ask anything of, because what he offers is enough rather than more.