Toys and idols

Continuing from the last post...
I realized that it would be nice to have something, a toy, to pass on from generation to generation. Like, this was your great great great grandfather's toy. People do this sort of thing with family statues and pictures they pray to. In fact, the statues of Guan Yin and the Happy Buddha that we lit incense too, I could not even think of throwing away, like you just can't do that. But those were just social pressures, and honestly your not supposed to neglect those statues in the attic either, which is what I have done. But nor are you supposedly supposed to set up an altar, and a position of an altar has to be changed, and even the Feng Shui people will suggest a way to avoid being cursed is to simply never set up an altar.
It would also be inconceivable to take those statues and play with them like Buzz Light Year and Woody.
Though if you had statues that weren't supposed to be "real" statues I guess at least those statues could work as dolls. And when you think about it, when kids are playing tea, is that so much different than adults putting food on the altar (or if you want to go back really far, sacrificing people to certain gods?) I mean not in morality. I mean that essentially you are playing at a game of imaginary feeding. Even if you believe in those gods you have to admit that the statues do not "eat" the food, nor do your dead ancestors come out of the grave like zombies and chow down on some Fay yuk with you. If that did happen, I bet the most pious pagan/folk religion practitioners would shit there pants. Not only is that not expected, it's just not supposed to happen. There is a belief that because something has happened in the physical world, that we translate into something being received in the spiritual world. And what is the spiritual world made of? Souls, spirits, thoughts, pretend?

In a way though, my Rabbit was more real to me than the statues. The statues were over there, while I actually slept with my Bunny. And the amount that Andy played with his toys and for how long and until how old... in a way they became real. You could say things take on some sort of spirit from being used.

This isn't just me making this up. In Japan, they have temples to Kitchen gods where chefs will place their unusable knives. Because they don't believe that they can simply discard a knife they have used for so long.

So toys, in a way gain souls because they have been played with. Again you may think I'm crazy but can you prove that anyone has a soul?

Still not done on this subject.