Honestly, I think this Dharma-Burger is cool. It makes sense, it’s safe, it seems to be well-designed: It’s the electric butter lamp.

Really. Offered by “Offering Light” who describes the product as:

We design and create innovative electric butter lamps for butter lamp offerings, Buddhist lamp offerings & Tibetan light offerings. [...]

How do butter lamp offerings become safe and clean? Make them with flameless candles! Learn how you can brighten up your world with these electric butter lamps.

Our Offering Lights are a brand new illumination on this classic Tibetan Buddhist ritual. It uses earth-friendly, super low-energy LED flameless tea lights that flicker just like real candles! Order now–you’ll love them!

I don’t have one so can’t vouch for the product but I have no problem endorsing the idea and the spirit behind it. Check ‘em out here.

PS: Thanks to online friend Ross B. for bringing this to my attention.

You may have seen that the awesome blogger TMcG, on her blog Full Contact Enlightenment, recently shared that she has bought a new skateboard deck from Skull Skates. Part of the company’s “True Champions of Justice” series (which also features Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, and Mother Theresa), the deck pictures the Dalai Lama, accompanied by the maxim, “Be Kind Whenever Possible, It Is Always Possible.”

Some people are less thrilled than TMcG is about the deck. Blogger/activist (and friend) Heidiminx thinks it’s “disrespectful to the max” to depict His Holiness there, especially since most skaters are likely to grind the bottom of the deck. She’s encouraging online friends to write the company and share their thoughts, though she reports that “When I left a comment on their page that this was disrespectful, they deleted it.”

So what do you think? Is it disrespectful? Sure, it’s not what an adherent of Tibetan Buddhism would do, but it seems (to me, at least) like a gesture/idea made out of respect. Personally, I think it’s cool that Skull feels it’s worth depicting such “True Champions of Justice” — it’s more meaningful than much of the usual skate-deck art fare. Likewise, TMcG has followed up with a comment from Skull that seems to satisfy her sense that her purchase wasn’t ill-placed. Check it out and join the discussion here.

Not that he’s endorsing it, but the people at Victorinox say that His Holiness uses one of their famous Swiss Army Knives — at least according to this new Bloomberg article.

Being that he’s an avid tinkerer, it only makes sense… (I’ve almost always had one; I can think of no other item that could make me feel, so much, like a boy and like “a man” at the same time. What with the saw, and the magnifying glass, and the little scissors, one was always ready. And then when you got older, you never had to look far for a corkscrew or a bottle opener…)

Anyway, odd for them to drop His Holiness’s name… But they dropped the Pope’s, too. Hitting all the Religious Knife-lover’s Market bases, I guess.

Their last T-shirt made quite a splash. Now New York City’s Interdependence Project has created a new shirt meant to benefit their efforts, and to spread the love via the idea of metta, or lovingkindness. Says the IDP site:

“This shirt is a reminder of the preciousness of being human, and the capacity we have to love ourselves, our friends, our family and our enemies with unconditional attention and kindness.”

The shirt is responsibly made and, if you order by Feb 3, you’ll have it by Valentine’s Day. (US orders only.) Nice gift, right? And for a very worthy cause. Check it out here.

Joining Ethan and Rinpoche are Roshi Pat Enkyo O’Hara of the NYC Village Zendo and Nalandabodhi’s Mitra Mark Power. It’s a good question.

And there are some good responses here, no?

Not really! But here’s a diversion. Via CNN: “What do you get if you mix one U.S. president, green tea ice cream and a Buddha statue?” Not exactly a barnburner of a story, maybe, but it’s nice to see Kamakura’s Buddha on the news.

Cool. There’s gonna be a new Buddha Machine, called the Chan Fang (or “Zen Room”) Buddha Machine. Details here.

The original Buddha Machine is a very favorite thing of mine. So what is this little contraption? Read a write-up from the Worst Horse archives.

New York City’s The Interdependence Project has made a head-turner of a new T-shirt:

What’s the story here? Well, as the IDP site says, “Wearing this tee is a reminder to stay in touch with the reality of impermanence as well as a way to support the efforts of the Interdependence Project.” To do so, click here.

If the IDP ever makes one with the same slogan in small reverse type, a la Memento, I’m all over it.

Update: after expressing some of my developing reservations about the shirt to the IDP’s Ethan Nichtern, I was invited to share said comments on the IDP blog. See this post: Sure, “This Body Will Be a Corpse”… but should I wear a shirt that says so?

Okay, this one might be more an accidental Dharma-Burger, but…: readers and fans of John Daido Loori may recall that the late Zen Roshi was fond of using the phrase “skin-bag” to refer to our bodies. More than just another way to say “this mortal coil,” this phrase (which seems to be adapted from a previous Zen master’s usage or two) was meant to instead to aid us in shuffling off our attachments to our bodies in the here and now.

And now, there’s “SkinBag” — the product (as found on the Vice website), which seems timely given Lady Gaga’s already infamous “meat dress“:

From the SkinBag website:

SkinBag is a material created by Olivier Goulet, a french transmedia artist whose vision is in the crossroads of activism and human design.

The SkinBag family is made up of synthetic skin, bags, accessories and overgarments with distinctive folded texture, flexible material, and seamless organic appearance. You can view the SkinBags as bodily extensions; external organs which serve as holdalls for items we have around us.

A carrier of mutation, SkinBag symbolizes the ambivalence between the natural and the artificial, the instinctive and the optimized, and foresee the fusion between the digital and the organic.

and, from elsewhere on the site…

The SkinBag material distinguishes itself by its pleated aspects, its wrinkles, pimples, and its ocacasionel [sic] spots. Its texture provokes attraction and turmoil, it prompts one to touch and caress.

Whether or not SkinBag is informed by Daido’s usage is unclear, but in ways — “You can view the SkinBags as bodily extensions; external organs which serve as holdalls for items we have around us” — there’s some conceptual resonance here, not just with Daido’s usage of the word, but also, for example, the Theravadin Buddhist practice of working with awareness of the body in all its beautiful, mysterious, and putrid manifestations.

For more about SkinBag, see their website. I think it’s safe to say you’ll be surprised by the breadth of their offerings.

There’s no shortage of ads and merchandise that play off the (unfortunate?*) use of the word “Buddha” as slang for weed.  Hence this one, above, sent by Alex of Dharma Bums, who writes:

Saw this ad in the back of Citybeat Magazine here in San Diego. They have a ton of ads for Medical Marijuana dispensaries and this was one of them. As usual, the Buddha is tokin’.

Thanks for sending it on, Alex.

* Whether or not the slang term is unfortunate, actually depicting the Buddha smoking has got to be. At the very least, it sure is hacky. Plus, it’s not even a Buddha, but a Buddha statue. Duh.