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Religious Decor

You can find this picture together with a discussion on whether or not it is disrespectful to put a statue of Buddha in a bathroom as a decorative piece.

Comments range from 1. It is offensive to Buddhists. 2. It isn’t offensive to Buddhists who “really” understand their religion. 3. Would you put Jesus in the bathroom? 4. People can put whatever they want in the bathroom. Who cares?

The Buddha, especially his head seems to be the most popular in terms of religious statuary employed for a chic decor. A secular context which loosens religious imagery from their underlying meaning or narrative seems free to appropriate that imagery with greater and greater promiscuity. Past generations may have been more offended, or perhaps were more superstition, imagining that it would be safer to avoid the possibility of angering a god, inviting a spirit or offending your neighbor.

I remember an HGTV show where a young couple who identified themselves as Buddhists, who were trying to redesign a room that already had some Buddhist statuary demanded every increasing luxurious and costly reconstruction because they couldn’t live in what appeared to me to be an already comfortable space. The scene seemed ironic given their devotion to the image of someone who saw desire as the enemy and the bringer of suffering. Can you be a hedonist AND a Buddhist? I don’t know.

Secular AND Spiritually Chic

While secularism continues to disconnect people from religious traditions the appetite for spiritual visual aids continues to increase as people are driven to “spirituality” from the emotional vacuum abandonment of religious has left behind. This transition leaves people divided and confused. You can find a Facebook group named “Hindus have statues not idols” while other Hindu pages boldly declare “Yes, Hindus worship idols” and then go on to defend the practice and explain how it fits in with their tradition. The landscape of “no-god, all-god, which-god” is complex indeed.

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