The Buddha of Affluence wears a tailor-made suit, a fancy necktie, and expensive leather shoes. He drives a fancy sports car and eats in all the right places. He’s never to be seen in Jack’s Breakfast Diner and he’ll never be caught buying a bag of soggy chips in the Mermaid Fish Bar! No way my friend, he isn’t ever going to be found in common places like that. You can forget about that straightaway. Chances are, in fact, that you won’t ever be meeting him. Not in your whole life. The truth of the matter is that he simply doesn’t rub shoulders with the likes of me or you! That’s how come we know that he’s the Buddha of Affluence – because he’s not ever going to have anything to do with nonentities like us.

And then there are other types of Buddha too of course. There’s the Buddha of Violence for a start. We all have to watch out for him because if we meet him and he’s in a bad mood then he’s likely to give us a right good pasting. That is what he’s famous for, after all. If he’s not in a bad mood then maybe he’ll walk right by us with an ugly scowl on his face (the Buddha of Violence always has an ugly scowl on his face, even when he’s not in a bad mood) and we will get away without a pasting. That doesn’t happen very often though – the Buddha of Violence is almost always in a foul mood. He’s not a happy chap. He’s got serious issues.

And then what other Buddhas are there? Let me just try to think about it for a minute. There are so many of them, you see. So very many – one for every occasion, you might say. There’s the Lying Buddha – he’ll come right up to you and lie to your face. He’s as bold as brass and he’ll tell you that black is white. He doesn’t have any shame you see – he won’t stop lying for anyone. He’s never said a true thing in his life. He’s as twisty as they come. ‘What the hell are you talking about?’ I hear you saying. ‘How can he be a Buddha if he’s lying his damn head off the whole time? How can he be the Enlightened One if he can’t help telling porky pies?’

It’s no good getting metaphysical with me though – I don’t pretend to understand all that stuff. I can only report you what I know to be the case and if you don’t like it there’s nothing I can do about that. Some things are hard to process, hard to figure out. Some things may not fit into your neat and tidy scheme of how you’d like to understand things and that’s just tough titties to you, wouldn’t you say? Tough titties to be sure. There’s the Junkie Buddha too – did you ever hear of him? Bit too fond of Henry the horse, if you take my meaning. He’s a bit too fond of the old brown powder. Pinned every day. Always on the nod. I suppose you’ll say that he shouldn’t be a Buddha either but there you go. He’s a Buddha all the same and there’s no denying it.

Inscrutable are the ways of the world. What can we do except keep our wits about us and try to do our very best to drop any outmoded notions that we might still be clinging onto? It’s no good hanging onto those old outmoded notions is it? The faster you can give them up the better it is, after all. Get shot of them as fast as a machine gun fires bullets, that’s my advice to you. Drop them as if your very life depended upon it. Drop them, drop them, drop them. Drop the bastards. Inscrutable are the ways of the world, inscrutable are the bloody old ways of the world. I wouldn’t advise you to follow my advice though. I’m known as the Buddha of Bad Advice in some circles you see. I know, I know, I know – how can I be a Buddha when I always give people bad advice? It doesn’t make any sense does it? How could I be a Buddha when I don’t know shit about anything, in other words? There’s a Buddha for everything though, that’s kind of the point I’m making here. Whatever it is, there’s a Buddha for it. There are lots and lots of them, like I was saying.

‘The smartest person in the world isn’t who you think they are.’ I just read that just now. It was a suggestion for me on YouTube, it was a suggestion that I should go right ahead and watch a video called that. Some smarmy asshole in a suit, mouthing his dumb head off, probably. That’s some hook, isn’t it? The smartest person in the world isn’t who you think they are. Yeah? No shit boyo! You’ve really got me thinking there. What a bombshell, huh? Back to the bloody old drawing board, I guess. I always thought it was you know who, that it was whatshisface, but if it isn’t then that means, that means, that means… I don’t know what the fuck that means. Talk about sowing confusion, right? Some smarmy generic dumb-as-fuck asshole in a suit, I’d say. Talking shyte for all he’s worth, Talking shyte as if there’s no tomorrow. Trying to enlighten you with his bloody moronic bullshit…