I woke up this morning to find that my bracelet had broken apart, the little round beads untethered from the string nestled in a bunch by my pillow. I had gotten it at a Korean temple and was partial to it. It even had a tiny little gold Buddha that appeared when you opened a small chamber (a kind of 'peek-a-buddha') which fell out soon after I brought it home. I saw that as a bad omen but was more likely just a sign of inferior craftsmanship.  I have very mixed feelings about religious symbols but Buddhism gets a pass usually from non-religious types like me. That's partly because it's seen as more of a philosophy/belief that doesn't necessarily preclude coexistence with other beliefs and encompasses a less doctrinaire view of  the world. I notice a near-epidemic of temple bracelets these days on all kinds of people in the West, whose spirituality you suspect is many cases less than skin deep. Is that unfair? Maybe. Who am I to judge? A Greek Orthodox Jewish agnostic with only the  scantest notion of the teachings of Buddha. It's become a cringeworthy cliche that Buddhism is some sort of eternal timeless symbol of peaceful coexistence. As a kid we would go to a Chinese buffet-style restaurant that had the archetypical smiling chubby Buddha statue at the front and it became a tradition for me and my brother to rub its belly for luck. Now I know that the "fat Buddha" isn't really depicting the Buddha at all, who in real life was thin.. Anyways, fast forward a few decades and I became aware  that even Buddhists committed acts of ethnic violence like any other religious group and then there was that horrible enduring image of a Buddhist monk setting himself ablaze  in Viet Nam in the '60's. All of which is a million miles away from the middle-class bracelet wearers and casual practitioners gathering in upstate New York or Hollywood who try on beliefs like fashion accessories. 

I wore the bracelet in part because it reminded me of my visits to Korean temples and because of a vague but sincere kinship with Buddhist thought. The bracelet above is a replacement I slipped on this morning. Its genesis is very different. I picked that one up from a man in robes who may or may not have been an imposter who approached me on a busy street in downtown Seoul and caught me unaware. I ended up giving him too much money as a "donation" then felt like I'd been had as I put the cheap trinket in my pocket. It doesn't represent an encounter with an ancient tradition like the first one did. Instead it's maybe a cautionary tale about not being taken in by ideas that are wolves in sheep's clothing