Just a short story on a Florida robbery that caught my eye.
Whoever stole the Buddha head from a Boca Raton restaurant better know something: Bad karma is coming … That’s the sentiment of theft victim Zack Gardner, a native of Vietnam and a Buddhist who owns Saba restaurant in the 400 block of South Federal Highway. The 150-pound, four-foot-tall cement head was stolen sometime Sunday night from its spot in front of the restaurant … When the statue was stolen, Gardner called his sister, a Buddhist nun in Vietnam. She told him not to be upset and that things happen for a reason.
What drew me to this article was the panoply of “Buddhism” in this short piece, touching on the philosophical, familial, symbolic, sacred and institutional. It’s a snapshot of life interwoven with Buddhism, and not necessarily entangled in it. I hope Zack Gardner also gets his Buddha back.
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TivomeJuly 21, 2009 at 11:18 AM
It’s sad Zack lost his his statue, but he’s not really treating it as a religious item, but like great majority of non-Buddhist, a decoration. I’m not particularly fond of people who treat Buddhist statues in this fashion, but any association with the Buddha will give him good Karma which may lead him to deeper in the Dharma in his next life. Same goes with the Thief. There’s no bad Karma in being associated with Dharma. I hope he let go of his anger and move on, and I also hope the thief negate this act of theft with an act of compassion and return the head.
ArunJuly 21, 2009 at 10:18 PM
@Tivome: Did you read the source article, where Zach explains that he’s well aware that he was treating the statue as a decoration, not as a religious item? Did you notice how he reconciled the apparent conflict in using an otherwise religiously-inspired statue as a piece of decoration?