Buddha Beer?

So, recently I found this at the local supermarket:

To be honest, I felt this was in poor taste because:

• It uses a lot of Asian and Buddhist stereotypical clichés.
• The Buddha warned against “consuming intoxicants” as part of the Five Precepts.
• The “fat Buddha” isn’t even a Buddha. However the website does include a nice explanation clarifying this.

Anyhow, I don’t necessarily want people to boycott the company because its employees depend on it for their livelihood, but I wish the company had been a bit more sensitive to Chinese culture and Buddhist religion. So, I felt like calling it out.

This is a re-post from Doug who lives in Japan and blogs about all sorts of cool stuff including sci-fi, life in Japan, and Shin Buddhism at Essays in Idleness. I’m always interested in how Buddhism is interacting with contemporary culture, which often is in terms of cultural appropriation and commodification. I found Doug’s response to be both compassionate and even-handed.

On the “fat Buddha” figure you can read more about him here being “legendary” according to the 2013 Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism; “a historical figure” in Edward Irons’ 2008 Encyclopedia of Buddhism, and “semihistorical” in the MacMillan/Thomson Encyclopedia of Buddhism from 2003.

If you’re a beer drinker, this probably isn’t a good choice. If you like the bottles though, okay.