Big-Tummy Buddha

By Xiao Gang

The spell of the Big-Tummy Buddha

Mr. Lu looked like a Big-Tummy Buddha; even he himself believed so. He was over 200 pounds in weight and with his protruding fat abdomen, his chubby cheeks with their funny dimples and his round chin, he reminded me of the clay sculpture of Buddha in the City of Wuxi. Mr. Lu had oily skin and a wide, shiny forehead. Although his two huge earlobes didn't make it all the way to his shoulders, they were big enough to catch many envious eyes. His arms were way longer than average. They didn't quite reach down as far as his knees, but Mr. Lu enjoyed a decent reputation among the boxing fans in colleges in the Northeast. Fortune tellers told him he had really lucky looks. His palms provided excellent psychic readings. When he straightened his thick fingers and laid them one on top of another, not a single bit of wealth had a hope of leaking through them. Mr. Lu had been born in the year of the rabbit and one of the fortune tellers called him The Jungle Rabbit. The fortune teller was dead right this time because Mr. Lu later did research on forest materials. Even when he was in college, he often made trips to the mountain or forest areas. After graduation, he was hired by a foreign company as the head of a wood processing plant. He went on, like a true rabbit, to travel widely all over the world.

Mr. Lu studied material sciences, so he believed only in science; anything supernatural was totally alien to him. Everybody told him his looks alone promised him a bright future, and at that he would simply smile, without really taking it seriously. Four years ago when he went to Burma to do research, he saw a piece of jade in the shape of a Big-Tummy Buddha and took a fancy to it because the Buddha looked so much like himself. He paid a big price for it and hung it around his neck on a red string. From then on he wore it all day long, even refusing to take it off when he was in the shower. It wasn't that it was an amulet or anything; Mr. Lu simply liked it. But wouldn't it be great if the Big-Tummy Buddha had a spirit that would protect him 24 hours a day?

There were five brothers and sisters in his family, with Mr. Lu the youngest. During that year when there was a leap August, which was considered bad luck, the Big-Tummy Buddha seemed to demonstrate his power. That year all of Mr. Lu's brothers and sisters ran into some kind of disaster. Some were involved in fatal car accidents, others had serious illnesses. All but Mr. Lu and his family. He felt extremely lucky, and couldn't help caressing his amulet and believing that Big-Tummy Buddha had really looked after him.

Double insurance

Mr. Lu came to America to do research on wood processing. Three days after his arrival he was invited to a buffet party. He accepted the invitation without hesitation because the party would not only provide him with a free meal, it would also give him a chance to meet new friends. It was a Christian party and there were a lot of moving testimonies. At the end of the evening Mr. Lu was invited to the front to receive a blessing Before he knew what he was doing, he found himself on his knees. Never in his thirty years of life had he felt so awkward. His weight was too much for his knees; first he knelt on his right knee, then on his left, then on to his right knee again. He couldn't really hear what his Christian friends were mumbling though he knew they were praying for him. He comforted himself that some extra blessings would do him no harm. The Buddha plus Jesus Christ - a perfect double insurance.

So Mr. Lu joined the Fellowship and he came to church often, making a lot of Christian friends. Mr. Lu had always thought he had had a pretty happy life but now he realized his Christian friends had a much better life than his, and laughed more merrily than he did. He knew his observations couldn't be wrong. It is no easy matter for a person to become a blessing to somebody else, nor to smile in such a way that others want to have that same kind of smile.

One evening, out under a street light, Mr. Lu was quite moved after one of his friends preached the gospel to him, and he accepted Jesus. He prayed by repeating what his friend said: he confessed that he was a sinner (not a criminal kind of sinner) and he accepted Jesus as a savior (not the same kind of savior he had had before). That night, he went off into dreamland with a big smile on his face and Big-tummy Buddha still hanging around his neck.

First disappearance

On the third day after Mr. Lu accepted Jesus, he went on a tour to Grand Canyon and Las Vegas. During the trip, his intuition told him that something was not quite right. He touched his neck and was shocked to discover that Big-tummy Buddha was not there! Only the red string remained. He remembered clearly that it had still been around his neck that morning. Yet now, while the red string remained intact, where was the Buddha? Was it broken? Impossible! It was a very expensive piece of jade and it wouldn't break even if you deliberately hurled it to the ground. Mr. Lu searched all over his body for broken pieces and couldn't find any. He searched under his seat on the bus and it was still nowhere to be found. He was quite bewildered.

That night the puzzle was solved. As Mr. Lu was getting ready to take his shower he discovered the Buddha hiding in his underwear. He found this both annoying and silly. Annoying because he had treated the Buddha really well but the Buddha hadn't seem to care for his friendship and had left him without even saying goodbye. And it was silly too, because he didn't know why the Buddha would choose to go to such a very dark and smelly place for the whole day. Mr. Lu washed the Buddha and examined it closely. Both the Buddha and the red string looked perfectly fine; what on earth had happened for the Buddha to escape from him? So he went to see his Christian friend, the one who had helped him with his prayer. His friend told him that God had just shown him through a miracle that he could not belong to other gods. Mr. Lu felt a bit sceptical, but it was the best answer he could get.

Second disappearance

There was a Chinese festival in June, and once again Mr. Lu was invited to a party. On the way home someone asked him what he planned to do with his Buddha. He replied that he didn't want to wear it any more and planned to give it away when he went back to China. After all, it was a $300 piece of jade. His friend suggested that he should throw it into the trash can, but Mr. Lu gave a smile and quickly changed the subject. That night as he was ready to go to bed, he was shocked to discover that the Buddha had disappeared again! His keys and loose change were all there in his pockets, but the Buddha was nowhere to be found. Then the phone rang and his friend told him that the Buddha had been found on his sofa. Mr. Lu realised he must have dropped it when he was sitting there, but how come it was only the heavy piece of jade that was missing, while everything else seemed to be OK? Mr. Lu felt quite sad and angry too. He had now had the Buddha for four years. Although he couldn't tell whether the Buddha could really look after him, it was still good to have it as a friend. But why had it been hiding itself so often lately? So he decided to get the Buddha back the next time he went to the Fellowship, wrap it up and stow it away in his suitcase for good.

Third disappearance

The following weekend, his friend gave the Buddha back to him, and Mr. Lu told everybody the story of the Buddha's adventures. When he finished, everybody laughed uproariously. Mr. Lu wrapped it up in a napkin and laid it down in front of him. He wanted to make sure the Buddha wouldn't disappear again. When the Fellowship meeting was over, Mr. Lu suddenly shouted that the Buddha had disappeared yet again. This was not a practical joke as everybody was quite scared of it.

Finally it was recovered in a dirty trash can. Since Mr. Lu had wrapped it up in a paper napkin, a sister clearing the table had accidentally swept it into the trash can. Now Mr. Lu really believed that God existed and that God didn't like him having this man-made idol. Now Mr. Lu didn't even dare to put the Buddha into his suitcase because he didn't want the suitcase to disappear along with the Buddha.

Epilogue

On July 7 1996, in a Chinese church in Monterey Park, Los Angeles, the Buddha was burned. The jade was extremely hard and it took four hard blows before it was broken to pieces. A week later, Mr. Lu was baptized and gave his testimony before others about the way the Lord had given him guidance.

The author came from Shanghai. He is now a minister in a Chinese church in Los Angeles.