The person who made me aware of the video’s existence criticizes Sullivan’s take as “shallow.” He goes on: “Again with the ‘extinguishing of the individual,’ the nihilist error. The point being, of course, that *no* independent self can be identified or proven as having *ever* existed as an entity beyond false concepts imputed on the dependently arisen, temporarily-hung-together, psychophysical array – i.e., there’s nothing to extinguish except erroneous ideas that keep us in cycles of dissatisfaction. Who wouldn’t want to extinguish those? All Buddhism asks is that we give up false ideas. But don’t expect a political commentator to embrace that any time soon. [...] I do agree with him that Merton’s cool, though.”

What do you think?

UPDATE: The same person who commented above now writes with this update:

“A reader has followed up with Andrew, quite intelligently and gently. I don’t know what’s the matter with me. Maybe my perception of his attitude set me off. Also I said ‘nihilist’ when I should have said ‘eternalist.’ Now who’s the dope?” Click here to read the followup post.

I got to speak to him a couple of times, one of which was for an audio interview for Shambhala SunSpace. It’s good stuff and I do recommend you checking it out. But if you really want a concise taste of who Mike was, check out this new piece, “Uneasy Rider,” culled from the WTF Podcast for “These American Lives,” a NYT piece curated by Ira Glass about people who died in 2011.

Mike was hilarious, and a beautiful, fearless guy.

(Thanks to the great Sam DeWitt for the heads-up on this one.)

Photp by Kristin Dos Santos (w/permission)

Thanks to friend Konchog Norbu for the heads-up on this one — it’s hardly news, but it’s kinda cool when celebs go public with their interest in dharma. Seems David Duchovny (of Californication, X-Files, and Larry Sanders-crush fame) just did a retreat at what sounds to be Zen Mountain Monastery, and he’s told Perez Hilton’s pet-gossip site (yes, you read that right) TeddyHilton.com about the experience.

Again, not news, but at least Duchovny’s not looking for star treatment. “I’m a beginner,” he says, “I’ve only been meditating for a little while. You pay a fee to go for this weekend and what I didn’t know is that even though you pay a fee they put you to work immediately. You go there and first you bus some tables after you eat and they had me working in the garden everyday for an hour-and-a-half. It was fun, I was shoveling horse shit out there. You pay money and then you shovel horse shit!”

Zen, life…. Sounds like Duchovny is getting the basic gist of it.

More here.

So is he Buddhist? I can’t really tell. His new album is called “A Great Stillness.” That seems like something, no? A Google search turns up a reference or two or three to Pepitone from Zen teacher Brad Warner — who counts the comic among his favorites — and some gags from the Pepitone’s Twitter feed:

• “Watching Saturday Night Live is like watching a Buddhist monk light himself on fire except for no reason.”
• “As a buddhist child I got teased a lot for renouncing all thought.”
• “I studied zen Buddhism with Maharishi Gus Lobotomovich and he always said “shit, did you hear that?”

And here’s a quote from a new AV Club interview with Pepitone: “You wanna give life meaning against all of this pain and anguish. You’re trying to give it meaning and you’re trying to be happy, but you have all this stuff that is in the way. And that’s the stuff I talk about.”

Know anything about the Bitter Buddha? Let us know.

Sure, they caused Jobs to “think different.” But so did Zen Buddhism. But you don’t hear Maher, who made Religiulous, saying anything about that. And, I’ll wager, won’t. …Anyway, watch below.

Ah yes, the “meditation defense.” I see it catching fire by way of bored students and employees everywhere.

(And, really, it’s not just what the anchor says here. Belafonte’s handlers have now publicly stated that he was really was meditating, and not sleeping.)

As a Buddhist, it’s really refreshing to see a pop-star so outwardly embodying these values. But I also have to say that — again, just as a Buddhist — it’s also disconcerting to see her quote on the of cover her Metro issue: “Let identity be your religion.” I understand that Gaga’s not a Buddhist, and we’re all of course allowed to have different views, but I thought it was worth exploring some of what the Buddha had to say about identity.

The Buddha in fact identified the idea of identity as a cause of our suffering. As the teacher Thanissaro Bhikkhu writes in his essay, “Ignorance”:

The four truths are (1) stress — which covers everything from the slightest tension to out-and-out agony; (2) the cause of stress; (3) the cessation of stress; and (4) the path of practice leading to the cessation of stress. [...] Stress he identified with examples — such things as birth, aging, illness, and death; sorrow, distress, and despair. [...]. The cause of stress he identified as three kinds of craving: craving for sensuality, craving to take on an identity in a world of experience, and craving for one’s identity and world of experience to be destroyed.

So you see, the idea of “identity” comes into play in two of the three causes of stress, which here you may read as “suffering.”

Lady Gaga wants us all to be proud and brave about who we are, and that’s only a good thing. But the key word there, from a Buddhist point of view, is are; to “lock onto” some idea of ourselves or others and how things are, thereby transmuting this all too easily into an idea of how things should be, can be a cause of our suffering. Because those things, like all things, will change.

Which is to say, you may have been “Born This Way,” and that truly is a beautiful thing. But that doesn’t mean that you’ll die the same way. We never know who we’ll become, because becoming is something that’s always happening. That’s why the Buddha stresses that being attached to outcomes doesn’t make us happier.

All that being said, it remains obvious that, like the Buddha, Gaga wants us all to be happier. Whatever its faults, her issue of the Metro ultimately makes that clearer. If you get a chance to look at it, do leave a comment and let us all know what you think.

Here‘s the back story, via MovieFone.

Notice the scare-quotes there? That’s because Efron’s not into the practice of Zen meditation, or anything to do with Buddhism, but rather, ZEN Foods. (Zen here stands for “Zero Effort Nutrition.”) According to The Daily Mail: “The 23-year-old star has been pictured carrying a Z.E.N.  Foods cooler bag as he left a Hollywood studio. Z.E.N. is a diet delivery service that helps stars eat calorie-controlled meals.”

And according to the Z.E.N. Foods website, Vanessa Hudgens (actress and supposed former flame of Zac) is into the diet, too.

Hey, why make Right Effort,* when you can instead make Zero Effort — and indulge in a big, heaping Dharma-Burger while you’re at it?

(*Link opens up a Dhamma talk on Right Effort by teacher and friend of the Horse Thanissaro Bhikkhu.)