Buddha

I have no idea what the Buddhist equivalent of Sunday school is like, but I bet it has a similar effect to that of Bernardo Bertolucci's "Little Buddha. " Pitched toward children and, by extension, millions of Western adults who have no real knowledge of the religion, this unique film bears a warm, reassuring sweetness akin to a gentle sermon. It's quite a departure for Bertolucci, Italy's great examiner of man's darkest sexual ("Last Tango in Paris"), political ("The Last Emperor")

There is a hole stamped in the dust jacket of Karen Armstrong's new book, Buddha. In it rests a photo of a stone head of Buddha, who gazes downward, princely and serene. The effect is intriguing, even mysterious. It seems to suggest that we can know the Buddha only from a distance. Yet it hints, too, that Buddhahood, or enlightenment, awaits within, separated from our surface reality by nothing at all. For 2,500 years Buddha has been an elusive figure, as Armstrong, a religion scholar and best-selling author, discovered in researching her latest book.

When jockey Pat Day's phone rang early yesterday morning, the news was not good. His mount, Buddha, one of the favorites in today's 128th Kentucky Derby, was out of the race, scratched because of a bruised foot. Shortly before 5 a.m. yesterday, while the massive gray colt was being led out of Stall No. 7, Barn 48, on the backside at Churchill Downs, trainer James Bond noticed a limp. "This is tough," said the dejected Bond, 44, a 28-year track veteran from New York who believed he finally had his first Kentucky Derby-worthy horse, and even a potential winner, in Buddha.

One after another, women draped in baggy gray robes got up to sprinkle water and flower petals over a ceramic statue of the baby Buddha. The Enlightened Master turned 2,540 years old yesterday, the women said. To celebrate his birthday, the small contingent of the devout from the Philadelphia area's Vietnamese community had gathered in the converted garage of a ranch-style house in Salford to perform the ritual of the nine dragons, in which the Buddha is symbolically bathed with the water of the four seas.

On the narrow, blue-gray road that winds almost two miles up this mountain just outside Seoul, a block-long file cabinet has been erected under a feeble plywood shelter. In that crude wooden cabinet, 1,000 cubbyholes rest side by side. By late yesterday afternoon, almost all those cubbyholes had been filled with sheaves of paper - prayers for family, for friends, for health, for happiness and love; prayers for long life and the wisdom to make it worthwhile; prayers to Buddha, the enlightened one, on this, his 2,530th birthday.

The book chosen for next year's One Book, One Philadelphia tells a story many American families keep hidden in the attics of memory. For that reason alone, it's a very American tale. It's Julie Otsuka's Buddha in the Attic , a fictional retelling of the personal odysseys of hundreds of Japanese "picture brides" who sailed from Japan to the United States in the 1920s to marry men, most of them itinerant Japanese workers without other options, who had arranged for a wife to be sent over.

IN A FESTIVE MOOD, members of the Palelai Buddhist Temple in South Philadelphia mark the Cambodian New Year, which began at 9:21 a.m. yesterday. The Year of the Goat was celebrated by offering food and flowers to Buddha, to the monks and nuns who live at the temple and to each other.

Outside the Chua Bo De Vietnamese Temple at 13th Street and Washington Avenue, Buddha smiles serenely. Smoke from incense curls around offerings of flowers, fruit, rice and tea that have been placed at altars by the front door. Inside, children sit at long tables, learning to read and write in Vietnamese. And upstairs, several hundred worshipers gather for Le Vu Lan, one of the four holiest days of their year. Vu Lan, translated as Mother's Day, is devoted to the physical and spiritual health of mothers, living and deceased.

The place is quiet now - far too quiet, many believe - but the ancient walls and time-worn artworks tell of once-great happenings here in this small village in the flat, steamy lowlands of southern Nepal. There is a 12-foot commemorative pillar, erected on this spot 2,300 years ago to honor an event that took place even earlier. There are scores of other now-ruined brick temples built to glorify what happened here; there is a centuries-old purifying bathing tank and an air of history that is almost palpable.

A couple of years ago, I saw a movie in one of those New Jersey strip mall movie theaters where last week's popcorn is still strewn around the lobby and the seats are sticky with . . . you don't want to think about it. In the vestibule was a lampstand whose large white shade was disfigured with brown cigarette burns and holes. Below the shade, anchoring the pole that supported the shade, was a gilded figure of the seated Buddha about two feet high. The lamp pole entered his head in the center of his skull.

The book chosen for next year's One Book, One Philadelphia tells a story many American families keep hidden in the attics of memory. For that reason alone, it's a very American tale. It's Julie Otsuka's Buddha in the Attic , a fictional retelling of the personal odysseys of hundreds of Japanese "picture brides" who sailed from Japan to the United States in the 1920s to marry men, most of them itinerant Japanese workers without other options, who had arranged for a wife to be sent over.

Paul Bogart, 92, a puppeteer who bumbled into the new medium of television in 1950 and rose to be an Emmy-winning director known for popular shows like All in the Family and The Defenders , died Sunday in Chapel Hill, N.C. Mr. Bogart was recognized as a master of live television, from game shows to high drama, and later as the respected director of filmed shows like Get Smart . Known for his skill in positioning actors for best effect...

CONTINUING a tradition, the annual dialogue between God and Your Favorite Columnist. GOD: How you doing, Sonny? YFC: Not so hot, as you know. GOD: Got the blues, Sonny? YFC: Kind of, and please stop calling me Sonny. GOD: OK, kid. YFC: I don't care for that, either. GOD: People often get mad with God. It's OK. I can take it - and still forgive. YFC: I've got the Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary praying for me - they're friends of the Geator and I send them a check because that's all he's ever asked of me - I got a couple of rabbis on my side, plus a Muslim friend or two. GOD: You're quite the ecumenical kid, aren't you?

J AMES HONG has been turning heads for several weeks since the veteran character actor arrived in town to work on "Safe," an action thriller that wraps filming here on Friday. Hong, 81, whose hundreds of credits include "Blade Runner," "Chinatown" and "Big Trouble in Little China," plays the leader of the Triads, the Chinese mafia. He speaks Mandarin in his several scenes in the film starring Jason Statham . The Minneapolis-born actor spent time sightseeing with local businessman Alex Wong , who served as a liason to the local Chinese-American community and organized a Sunday afternoon lecture that Hong gave about his career at Joy Tsin Lau (1026 Race)

On screen, James Gandolfini has become the big, beefy Buddha of unresolved internal conflict and quiet rage. He developed the persona on "The Sopranos" and gives us a law-abiding version in "Welcome to the Rileys" as Doug, a hardware salesman from Indianapolis who uses a sales convention in New Orleans to take a break from his wife (Melissa Leo) and his stifling home, where the couple grieves messily and separately over the death of their teenage daughter. In the big N.O., he meets a teen dancer/hooker named Mallory (Kristen Stewart)

With its floppy ears, majestic size, and undeniable mix of elegance and whimsy, the elephant is home design's perennial darling. - Caroline Tiger Black and white and read all over The Savannah Story Bust ($128), crafted from the pages of vintage books, is literally literary. Available at Anthropologie, 1801 Walnut St. and anthropologie.com. Bedtime for Babar Exuberant elephants join Buddha and a flock of flowers native to Thailand on Blissliving Home's Chang Mai Duvet Set ($102.

Moviegoers of a certain age remember Kelly McGillis as Rachel, the Amish widow of Witness (1985), a milk-fed madonna who looks as though she stepped out of a Vermeer and into Lancaster County. Or as Charlie, the smoking-hot flight instructor to fighter pilots in Top Gun (1986), one who makes pupil Tom Cruise look like her key ring. Or as Kathryn, brainy assistant D.A. in The Accused (1988), who convicts witnesses to rape as accessories. After this trifecta that established her as one of the screen's most sought-after leading ladies, McGillis flew off the Hollywood radar.

Leave your watches and calendars behind when you come to this dreamy river town. Louangphabang is a mural of the 1950s, somnolent and undisturbed, a place where the ghosts of French Indochina still whisper in the breathless heat of summer and the mighty Mekong River rolls past palaces and villas of royalty long dead or banished into exile. Louangphabang was once the home of Laos' royal family and the capital of this landlocked, impoverished country where 80 percent of the roads are unpaved.

The supervisor halted work. Another suspicious piece of metal had been uncovered. As 50 workers stood amid the remains of two giant Buddhas carved into the cliffs of this serene valley, a munitions expert examined the rubble for unexploded bombs. This time they were safe. This mess is what the Taliban left behind when they blew up the monuments in March 2001. From the volume of twisted shrapnel mixed with the dust and rocks, it's clear the Taliban expended an arsenal to bring down the statues - one was 174 feet tall and the other was 115 feet.

The 15-year-old girl critically injured in a fire that killed her father and grandmother has died. Aleah Martin, 15, had suffered burns to 90 percent of her body and smoke damage to her lungs, her family said. She had been in critical condition at Temple University Hospital since the blaze destroyed her Strawberry Mansion home last week. Aleah was the only member of her family to escape the fire. Her grandmother, Louise Martin, 79, and her father, Alfonso Martin, 51, died in the house.