BuddhaBuddies

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Enlightenment is Within You.

Wear It on the Outside.
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2008

Inspiration

The BuddhaBuddies clothing line was born from the name. Buddha isn’t a God. He isn’t a prophet ordained by God, nor a dictator, an idol to be worshiped, or any other implicitly religious entity. Buddha is a Guide. More directly, Buddha is a close friend, confidant.

Buddha is my Buddy. I wanted to create a cute t-shirt idea that could help to represent this. I started with the basic little BuddhaBuddy, sitting in lotus pose, meditating. As I worked, I was thinking of catch phrases, and eventually I had too many to count.

I organized the best of them into “The Path to Enlightenment”

1. Cessation of Anger: “… stop &*S%!^8 with my Chi…”
2. Seeking Peace: “Om Mani PahZzzzzz”
3. Pharmaceutical Aid: “… it’s, like, transcendent…”
4. Laughter: “Chi Boing!”
5. Contemplation: “… meditate on this…”
6. Meditation: “… just be…”
7. Enlightenment: “Enlightenment… It’s within You.”

From there, I felt driven to create Buddha’s Buddies, the religious figureheads of other major religions. The overall aim, being cute, inspiring, and just a little cynically poignant. Some of the quotes are from the relevant holy books, while others are my own musings and subtle modifications of legitimate quotes.

• Adam & Eve: “Lilith was right… Knowledge is Yummy!”
• Confucius: “Everything has its beauty. You just have less.”
• Darwin: “Two words: Occam’s Razor.”
• Gaea: “Show your mother some RESPECT.”
• Ganesh: “Remover of obstacles, like the block in your head.”
• Jesus: “If a blind man leads a blind man, both will fall in a hole.”
• Moses: “Be not afraid. For He will protect you from yourself.”
• Muhammad: “Flowers feed the soul, and souls feed the flowers.”

And further still, I collected some of the Buddies into a few designs culminating my message: “imagine world peace” complete with an atom bomb, bloody crucifix, machine gun, gasoline, and a mushroom cloud in the distance.