REGISTER

The large, rotund physique, a sack full of gifts, and love of children characterize the archetype of Santa Claus and China’s jolly Budai (Japanese: Hotei), a comparison that has invited comment for decades. Well known stories feature each of these two demi-gods, stories full of magical thinking and wonder-filled spirit.

The Laughing Buddha, the Happy Buddha, the Fat Buddha: All are names for the pot-bellied Budai (which means “Cloth Bag” 布袋), who was an actual Tang-era monk, a beloved figure of artists and storytellers for a millennium. The Chan poet Kuoan Shiyuan featured Budai’s visage in his depiction of the final stage of awakening in this famous verse from his Ten Oxherding Pictures:

Behind a brushwood gate, alone in his hut, even a thousand sages don’t know.
Burying his own natural beauty, he avoids the wagon tracks of past wisemen.
Dangling a gourd, he enters the town; pounding his staff, he returns home.
Visiting wine bars and fish stalls, these become for him the Buddha.

With chest bare and bare footed, he enters the marketplace.
Covered in the grit of the earth, painted with ash, he breaks into a great laugh.
Without using the mountain wizard’s secrets,
He teaches the old tree and withered flowers how to bloom.

I was in the third grade when my classmate Rodney came up to a couple of us kids standing around the playground. We were talking about what we wanted from Santa for Christmas and he came right out with it: “Santa Claus is stupid. There is no such thing. Your parents made it up.” Though in the same grade, he was a little older and tougher than the rest of us. Somebody said he had a brother in jail; one morning in the fifth grade he rode his motorcycle to school.

I was stunned and angry about his claim – my whole understanding of the holiday world was at risk. Thinking about it now, I wasn’t afraid of losing “stuff,” older kids, who presumably were aware of the ruse, still got presents. I was afraid of losing the magic and warmth of giving and receiving.

When I got home, I asked my dad about what Rodney had said, and he had an idea: “Well, let’s call the operator and ask her!” He picked up the beige rotary phone hanging on our kitchen wall (our number was Yellowstone 5-4545), got the operator on, and said, “My young son here heard that there is no Santa Claus. Can you please talk with him?” My father handed me the phone and the kind voice of a young lady assured me there was a Santa and he would be coming soon. I was hugely relieved that the world as I knew it was still intact.

“Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus,” wrote Francis Pharcellus Church in the fall of 1897, responding to a letter sent to The New York Sun by eight-year old Virginia O’Hanlon. “He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy.”

—Jon Joseph

COME JOIN US on Mondays for koan meditation, dharma talk and conversation. Register to participate. All are welcome.

Jon Joseph Roshi, Director of San Mateo Zen Community