I rarely look at Bing; for better or for worse I’m generally a Google guy. But today, the Bing homepage’s cover star again hails from the Buddhist world.

It’s the stunning Thousand Temples of Bagan in Burma. You may have seen them in filmmaker John Bush’s also-stunning film, Journey into Buddhism: Dharma River, part of his three-part trilogy of films that reveals ancient Buddhist lands.

The Thousand Temples are really worth knowing about. Thankfully, Bing links to a short video, which you can see here. (But also, don’t miss the Bush films!)

Via the TimesOnline: “Burma’s military government is contemplating the release of the country’s democracy leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, at the end of the year, but only after the anticipated date of national elections, according to reports from Rangoon.”

Meanwhile, as the Times writes, “Supporters of Aung San Suu Kyi are unconvinced. They say they will be ordering the flying pigs.” (And with good reason; the Burmese junta is quite skilled at saying one thing and doing another.) At any rate, this will be one to watch; more here!

This 30-second spot was initially created as part of the Lancia auto brand’s sponsorship of the 10th World Summit of Nobel Peace Laureates in Berlin Nov. 10-11, 2009, for which the theme was “Knocking down new walls and building bridges for a world without violence.” How nice to see Chrysler, a major US automaker, joining in.

I’ll let the image do the talking for a moment here:

Beautiful, ain’t it?

In case you didn’t know: it’s a portrait of Aung San Suu Kyi, imprisoned leader of the National League for Democracy in Burma, as rendered by the great Shepard Fairey. You know, he of the Obama “Hope” poster, the famous “Obey/Giant” campaign, and a zillion other things.

I for one feel that we’re quite fortunate that the attentions and talents of so gifted a visual communicator are being applied to something that so many people in our community care so deeply about.

(If you’re reading this right now, you’re part of that community. At least that’s how I see it.)

The Obama/Hope image, which became truly ubiquitous, is only one example of how much real, capital-H Hope — and possibility – a good image can convey. And it seems that, more and more, this is becoming Fairey’s stock in trade. Though he can paint a bleak — but often necessary — picture with some of his images, he does “Hope” very, very well.

He sure has here, hasn’t he? And I think when it comes to Aung San Suu Kyi, the more Hope we can muster, the better.

HUGE thanks to the unstoppable Sam DeWitt for pointing this one out. It may be a year old, but man is it gorgeous, and as Sam says, damn well done.

CRISIS IN BURMA from Scott Denton on Vimeo.

Via Op-Ed News:

“More than 20 activists were sentenced in Burma on Thursday. A popular Burmese Hip-Hop singer Zay Yar Thaw was also included in the list of the detainees sentenced… Zay Yar Thaw organised and led the Generation Wave group with the young activists during the Saffron Revolution led by the Buddhist monks in 2007. He was arrested in March with his four other members of Generation Wave. He was sentenced today to 6 years imprisonment for possessing foreign currency and organising an illegal group. The four other members of Generation Wave were sentenced to 5 years imprisonment each. 14 members of NLD were given 2 1/2 years. The leader and spokesmonk for the Saffron Revolution Ashin Gambira gets another 15 years.”

Haven’t heard Zay Yar Thaw’s music, but you gotta admire people like him. If hip-hop was “The Black CNN,” as the mighty Chuck D of Public Enemy famously asserted, then Burmese hip-hop activists, too, stand to make a dent.

Details of the sentencing of bandmate Yan Yan Chan are pending. It looks like the site of Ashin Mettacara, a “Buddhist monk from Burma who is blogging with the aim of spreading news to the whole world about the crisis in Burma,” will be one to watch.

When it comes to comix, twenty bucks had better go a long way. Well, Guy Delisle’s Burma Chronicles goes a long way indeed. For some of us, this lovingly-made hardcover might be the closest we ever get to taking a trip to Burma (notoriously a.k.a. Myanmar).

Delisle has written and illustrated two previous graphic accounts of trips to Asia: Pyongyang: A Journey in North Korea, and Shenzhen: A Travelogue in China. In Burma Chronicles we see Delisle’s drawing and storytelling get even more refined, and at the same time, more personal. Even after all the coverage that washed over our PCs and TV screens with the recent surges of the Saffron Revolution, a more intimate sense of what life is like in Burma has somehow been missing. Thankfully, Delisle depicts so much with his simple panels: the near-unbearable heat and the intensity of “the rainy season”; the homes, so many of which look like “they were carved up by a mad architect”; the near omnipresence of government guards and the deeply-seated censorship that are part of Burmese life.

Delisle is an outsider, visiting with his family in support of wife Nadege’s work with Doctors Without Borders. Often left behind, Delisle does his best to be part of the strange new country he and baby son Louis find themselves in. In so doing, regular guy and great dad Delisle broadens his world: learning how to shop in village markets, teaching animation to a ragtag group of Burmese cartoonists, becoming fascinated with the life and story of National League for Democracy prisoner Aung San Suu Kyi, whose home-turned-prison is just a stroller-walk away. Also nearby is a Theravadan meditation center. “Good grief,” reflects Delisle. “Reaching Nirvana must be something else. I better get started one of these days.”

Finally, near the end of the Chronicles, Delisle’s day comes, and he visits a vipassana temple for a three-day retreat. Though he’s an Westerner in Burma, his is a pretty typical first-retreat experience: he’s hesitant, he’s full of doubt, and then, slowly, the beauty and the weight of the experience settle in. By the times he leaves, there’s a change: “…if I’d known, I would have come here from the start of my stay and not waited till the end… After 42 hours of meditation in 3 days, I feel more peaceful than ever before, but also very alert.”

At that point, only a few more pages of Burma Chronicles remain, as the Delisle family packs to leave the country.

Where will they go next? It almost doesn’t matter. If Burma Chronicles is any indication, it’ll be worth the wait and, for sure, another twenty bucks.

You can get Burma Chronicles directly from publisher Drawn & Quarterly, here.

Good ol Sam. He never stops. Here’s his latest contributions to the Horse:

“A storefront tattoo parlor at the famous/infamous Chelsea hotel:”

And, “From a store near Union Square here in Manhattan:

[Please note: the Horse has previously reported that this show would be a two-parter. Sadly, it turns out that it's not; the same one-hour episode ran on two nights. Sorry! ...The following is a run-down of the show; please feel free to comment.]

So, CNN’s Special Investigation, “Buddha’s Warriors,” debuted last night. It was a mixed affair.

Yes, reporter Christiane Amanpour traveled and talked with the Dalai Lama, and with a host of young Tibetan and Burmese monks as well. And the program’s structure — which took Amanpour from Dharamsala, India to Burma, to Tibet — allowed for a sweeping look at the practice of Dharma in its most politically charged hotspots. Perhaps that’s only fitting given the report’s title. But as a (non-Buddhist) friend who sat and watched the show with me last night said, “I can’t imagine how you’d learn anything about Buddhism from this, unless you knew nothing at all.”

And that’s a shame. Indeed, (more…)

Thanks to the mighty Sam DeWitt for passing this on.

DHARAMSALA, India (CNN) — I never knew much about Buddhism, and was not expecting much, spiritually, from covering the Dalai Lama. But what happened just goes to show how the unlikeliest events can affect you at the unlikeliest times.

[Read the rest here.]

Oh, and here’s a new Huffington Post piece by Robert Thurman, called “The Dalai Lama/Obama/McCain Connection.”