Word: buddha
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...ring he is a joke, standing there like Buddha, hoping some galoot will walk into his earth-orbiting fist. But Foreman, 42 and gaining, laughs as much as anyone. Along with other grand old fogies, like baseball's Nolan Ryan (who at 44 pitched his seventh no-hitter), Foreman answered the sports fan's need for father figures who can still play with the kids...
Even the most accomplished soul may be ambivalent about miracles. The Buddha disapproved of them. Once, by the bank of a river, he met an ascetic who claimed that after practicing austerity for 25 years, he was at last able to cross the river by walking on the water. The Buddha said he was sorry that the man had wasted so much time and effort: the ferryboat would take him across for one penny...
Still, the Buddha understood the theatrical possibilities. In his native city of Kapilavastu, the Buddha rose in the air, emitted flames and streams of water from his body, and walked in the sky. In order to convince his relatives of his spiritual powers, he cut his body into pieces, let his head and limbs fall to the ground, and then joined them all together again before the astonished audience...
...Egyptian farmer will not report an archaeological find for fear his fields will be confiscated. So he either throws the object away or sells it to a cousin in Cairo." Though a peasant who finds an artifact makes a small fraction of its retail value -- one contraband Cambodian Buddha head on sale in Hong Kong recently carried a $37,000 price tag -- it is better than nothing...
...reference is apt. Like Thoreau, Iyer combines an acute sense of place with a mordant irony. The revealing detail is his specialty: he recalls "an old monk brush, brush, brushing a pathway clean . . . a sitting Buddha imparting a peace so strong it felt like wisdom . . . Yet one could never forget the world entirely. Floating up from below came the sound, plangent and forlorn, of a garbage collector's truck playing its melancholy song...