Via Phayul.com:

Recently Keds — a unit of Kansas-based Collective Brands, Inc. and a mass-marketer of canvas-top — sneakers came out with a new line of sneakers called ‘Tibetan Buddhist Shoes’. These bear images of the Dalai Lama, the Buddha, holy mantras and other sacred images that Buddhist all over the world revere. Buddhists generally keep these images and scripts in temples, monasteries and on altars in their homes.

Keds’ commercial trumpets:
“Gorgeous shoes! They’re Keds, so they’re sturdy and comfy, yet they’re beautiful because of the images on them. How unique is this! A Tibetan Buddhist image in brilliant pinks, yellows, oranges and blues. Colorful and Beautiful!”

The last three words should read — Shameful and Disrespectful!

What do you think? More here.

Update: There’s a possibility these are an urban myth of sorts. If you have a pair — of these shoes, I mean! — send a photo so we know they’re real. They currently don’t seem to be on the Keds site and one diligent dharma-friend is looking into it for us all….

As Heidiminx writes, “While there are numerous sites and TV shows dedicated to the meanings of tattoos, the tattoos of Tibet’s ex-political prisoners have not been well documented. Their experiences are crucial to understand the human rights violations China commits on a daily basis.”

Support and follow Heidiminx’s work here. And visit GuChuSum here.

“Journey of a Dream is a feature-length documentary that will take audiences on a global journey into heavy metal music, exile, Buddhism, and Tibetan roots. How one man is trying to find solace and self-realization through Buddhism, living the life of a refugee, and playing death metal.

I am IN. Are you? Watch the trailer here.

More importantly: Tibet Relief Fund has launched an appeal for victims of today’s earthquake. Donations can be made here.

A MAN LAYS DYING on the floor of a jail cell between two mountains of the Pacific Northwest. Not even two weeks ago, despite his middle-age, he’d had a head of youthfully dark hair; now, it is completely, shockingly, all-white. The sprinkler system of the sheriff’s department that holds him has been set off, creating the effect of a tumultuous indoor downpour that rains down upon the white-haired man and his captors.

One of his captors — the very one who has most doggedly pursued him — is kneeling down. The white-haired man has committed the kind of unthinkable crimes that would disgust and shake most of us to the core, but Special Agent Dale Cooper instead remains very much with the moment. He holds the white-haired man, stroking his hair, comforting him even as the horrors of his crimes are finally admitted between last gasps. Then, Cooper speaks. The words come to him naturally:

“Leland,” he says, “the time has come for you to seek the path. Your soul has set you face to face with the clear light and you are now about to experience it in all its reality, wherein all things are like the void and cloudless sky, and the naked, spotless intellect is like a transparent vacuum, without circumference or center. Leland, in this moment, know yourself, and abide in that state. . . Look to the light, Leland. Find the light.”

Though spoken as much from the heart as from the head, Coop’s words are not truly his own. Compare them with this famous passage from The Tibetan Book of the Dead, meant to be recited to the dying as they pass on:

“O, nobly-born [so and so by name], the time hath now come for thee to seek the Path [in reality]. Thy breathing is about to cease. Thy guru hath set thee face to face before with the Clear Light; and now thou art about to experience in its Reality in the Bardo state, wherein all things are like the void and cloudless sky, and the naked, spotless intellect is like unto a transparent vacuum without circumference or centre. At this moment, know thou thyself, and abide in that state.” [W.Y. Evans-Wentz (translator and editor), The Tibetan Book of the Dead (Oxford, Third edition, 1957)]

Leland, though in his final moment, is surprised, almost smiling, in response to Coop’s urging that he find the light: “I see it!”

“Into the light, Leland,” Coop says, ” Don’t be afraid.”

And with that, Leland Palmer is dead.

It’s unusually moving; hardly your typical primetime TV jailhouse scene.

But this is no ordinary jailhouse, and it’s certainly not ordinary TV.

This is Twin Peaks, where nothing — not family, not FBI-men, not even the owls in the trees — is as it seems.

FAST-FORWARD SEVENTEEN YEARS OR SO and you’ll find that Leland Palmer has, in fact, been reborn.

It’s not the kind of karmic (or, “dharmic”) rebirth that Special Agent Cooper was shooting for, but Leland and the entire Twin Peaks cast have found new life in a definitive Gold Box set that collects each of the show’s 29 episodes, remastered, along with some fascinating behind-the-scenes extras.

The show was, of course, a true pop-culture phenomenon in the early 90s. The brainchild of writer-directors Mark Frost and David Lynch, it posed a now-famous question, one that was never meant to be answered – Who killed Laura Palmer? — and then, bafflingly, went ahead and filled in the blank. A full viewing of the series makes clear a sad truth with which even its creators agree: without that question, the show, despite guidance from directors like Diane Keaton, Uli Edel, and Lynch himself, became more or less direction-less. (Luckily, when Coop’s nemesis Windom Earle finally appeared in the last few episodes, he brought with him a renewed sense of the old Twin Peaks spirit. By then, though, most viewers had long ago lost the thread and weren’t interested in looking for it anymore.)

But throughout Twin Peaks’ run, there’s one constant: Dale Cooper. Played with quirky confidence by previous Lynch co-conspirator Kyle MacLachlan (Dune, Blue Velvet), Coop was young, handsome, and — by all network TV standards of the time — seriously weird. Though a bit of a goody-two-shoes, Cooper was somehow, enviably, cool — a thumbs-up, yet decidedly non-Fonzarelli kind of cool. And his contagious, can-do-it demeanor was upstaged only by his stated work-style, made from a mix of “Bureau guidelines, deductive technique, Tibetan method, instinct, and luck.”

All this, of course, makes him eminently watchable. But he’s more than that. He’s more, even, than the top-notch lawman that Twin Peaks’ Sheriff Harry Truman (yes, that’s the character’s name) defends Coop as. He may even be a bodhisattva.

Now, it should be said that David Lynch is not a Buddhist, and there’s no word on co-creator Mark Frost’s spiritual leanings. But no matter. Neither Lynch nor Frost needed to be Buddhist to create Dale Cooper any more than Bob Kane needed nocturnal crimefighting experience to create Batman. Or, to put it another way, as Lynch recently wrote in his fantastic book Catching the Big Fish, “The filmmaker doesn’t have to be suffering to show suffering.”

But: it should also be said that, while Lynch is no Buddhist — and, fairly or not (probably not), the show is primarily identified with Lynch — he is in fact a meditator. For some thirty-four years, he’s been a practitioner of TM, or Transcendental Meditation, as taught by the famous/infamous Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and thrust into the public’s collective consciousness by John Lennon, George Harrison, and Paul McCartney. (Ringo Starr tolerated their dabblings but would have preferred that the other three Beatles focus instead on music.) So it’s not a stretch to see, as one astute and excellent friend has suggested, that Coop is Lynch. It’s all a matter of, as Bill Clinton put it, what your definition of “is” is.
.

LIKE LYNCH, COOP delights, wholeheartedly, in the odd. Like Lynch, he believes in the power of dreams and intuition. He marvels at the mysteries of the natural world, and he’s fascinated, lovingly, with human beings and what makes them tick. As such, Twin Peaks can be argued to be a meditation on life, death, good, evil, and identity as seen through Lynch and Cooper’s shared vision.

Also like Lynch, Coop is a meditator, as is confirmed in episode #28. (He reports to his assistant Diane that he’s been meditating in lieu of sleep, which has not been coming easily what with the goings-on in Twin Peaks; what’s not said is whether or not he has an ongoing meditation practice.) So, he shares with his (co-)creator an active interest in how he can better perceive Reality by first looking closely at his own mind. More important, though: Agent Cooper seems to be a fine Dharma-friend to his colleagues at the Sheriff’s Department. Whether any of them know it, or care, or not.

Unashamed of his intellectual and spiritual sides, it’s not long before Cooper’s got the entire Department not just tolerating his ways, but playing happily along. In an early episode, he gathers them in the woods for an experiment: Employing a blackboard that he’s dragged into the great outdoors, he gives the TPSD crew a summary of his admiration for His Holiness the Dalai Lama, as well as a quick Tibetan History lesson. Then, he asks them to indulge his beliefs about “deductive technique, Tibetan method, instinct, and luck” with a session of absolutely unorthodox, dream-informed mind-storming meant to sort all the wheat from the chaff in the mystery of Laura Palmer’s murder.

Though initially skeptical, his colleagues warm to Coop’s unusual ways; they suspend all they know — or think they know — and instead trust and affirm their new partner-in-crimefighting. In a following scene, we even see Lucy Moran, the supposedly ditzy Department receptionist, reading a massive hardcover book marked, simply, Tibet.

Now, Dale Cooper never declares himself to be “a Buddhist.” But that too is of no matter.

What matters is the way he connects with and inspires the people around him; the way he lives every moment as truly and deeply as he knows how.

He lives in exactly this way even when his methods have clearly failed him.

At one point in the series (I’m doing my best to exclude any spoilers here!), Coop is, at least temporarily, stripped of his FBI badge and gun in response to what the Bureau sees as a cavalier and dangerous attitude. But the former Special Agent is nonplussed. While he feels that his dressing-down is the result of Washington’s short-sighted- and closed-mindedness, he goes with the flow even as bureaucratic justice goes unserved. He’s come to love Twin Peaks — the people, the town, the unanswered questions that seem to reproduce like dandelions — and so he takes his ex-agent status as an opportunity, forgoing the G-man outfit that he wears so nattily for more region-appropriate duds. Cooper, it seems, is just as comfortable in lumberjack’s flannel as he is in his old standard-issue black-jacket, white-shirt, black-necktie outfit. He evens starts investigating local real-estate offerings, thinking that he might just have found his home. Right where he is.

And what is it that could fill the gap in his life now that his career — to which he has been so dedicated — might be going the way of Twin Peaks’ endangered pine weasel? Coop, unashamed and calmly excited as ever, states his new priority himself:

“Seeing beyond fear, and looking at the world with love.”

[See also:  David Lynch's INLAND EMPIRE: More of a Dharma connection.]

The tattoo in question, via farm4.static.flickr.com

Sports site TSN reports that:

“English welterweight Dan (The Outlaw) Hardy’s stomach tattoo was airbrushed out of the UFC 111 fight poster because it is ‘anti-Chinese government stuff,’ according to UFC president Dana White.

‘”I’m trying to get into China,” he told fans at a question-and-answer session Tuesday. ‘I don’t need anti-Chinese government stuff on my fighters.’

“Hardy, however, says the tattoo — the fighter’s favourite — is a Tibetan Buddhist prayer written in Sanskrit.

‘”It’s basically just like a prayer for focus,’ Hardy said. ‘It keeps me walking the path that I should be walking without veering off and distracting myself.’

“Apprised of that explanation, White said: ‘That’s not what I heard.’

[...] “‘I heard that it was anti-Chinese government, so I ripped that thing off it. I’m not going to put him on a poster with anti-Chinese government writing on it when we’re trying to get into China. . . . I don’t know what this stuff means, so I’ve got to be safe.’

But, as the MMA site Bloody Elbow (nice name, that) points out:

“The tattoo is the well known Buddhist mantra “Om mani padme hum” which has no political significance in relation to China.”

Well, not quite no political significance.  While the tattoo isn’t an overt anti-China statement, China sure is sensitive to hearing about Tibetan Buddhism. Some, like Robert Thurman, would even go so far as to say that the Chinese government is trying ‘re trying to, um, airbrush it away.

The benefit will be held at Carnegie Hall on February 26. For tickets or more info call Tibet House (NYC) at (212) 807-0563, between 10AM and 5PM, Monday through Friday. More info of course on the TH site, here.

After first writing up this item, I decided to start playing recordings by the great artist, Iggy, himself. Some after-listening thoughts:

First off, I have to give kudos to Tibet House for booking Iggy. And Iggy for supporting Tibet House. (It goes without saying that anyone who supports a fine cause has earned their kudos, of course. And Tibet House surely qualifies as a fine cause.)

But why is Iggy cool? Well, as a writer of music (albeit a private and “unconventional” — read: bad – one)  I would say this:

If I could write one song as good as, say, “Gimme Danger,” I’d be… well… I’d be Iggy Pop. And there really can be only one Iggy Pop.

I mean, who else could write (and sing) the phrases “that’s like hypnotizing chickens” and “I’m just a modern guy; of course I’ve had it in the ear before”? And not only that, he put them back to back. (Those are lyrics from “Lust for Life.” Don’t let those horrible cruise commercials ruin that song for you. The song is brilliant. And darkly so. And, okay, those lyrics may not thrill you, but trust me, it’s about context. And Iggy had it. “Lust for Life” wasn’t key to the soundtrack of 1996’s Trainspotting for nothing.)

Also, as a guy who calls himself a Buddhist (and who advocates meditation for everyone, in pretty much whatever form works for you), I want to hear why Iggy is playing this show. Maybe it’s just that he’s available and said, “Sure,” because he’s an affable and enthusiastic and good guy. Maybe it’s something else, more specifically related to meditation or Buddhism.

Either way, I’d like to know — this is an actual artist, a lifer. And he knows a thing or two about perseverance through suffering. That’s the type of person I consider worth following, whatever the reason he’ll be performing at Tibet House in February. So I’ve got a message in to Tibet House to see what they say.

Anyway, that’s besides the point. The real point is: Iggy is big-time, enduring Great. Nice get, Tibet House. Iggy rules.

Via

Borrowing the Zen practices of minimalism and focus, [St. Louis Tea Part movement co-founder Bill] Hennessy helps conservatives channel their anger and concern into positive steps toward reclaiming liberty.

“After the 2008 elections, I realized that shouting alone was useless. I also realized that we on the right were fighting too many battles at once. So I started to write myself a letter, and that letter turned into this book.”

Zen Conservative, the new book by St. Louis Tea Party leader Bill Hennessy, targets the millions of Americans who are fed up with government growth, regulatory intrusion, and unfathomable borrowing and spending in Washington, DC. But rather than just ratcheting up the volume, Hennessy’s “Zen Conservatism” aims toward effectiveness. The book advances the 5-2-1 method Hennessy has used to help the St. Louis Tea Party stay focused, engaged, and effective in issues like the proposed takeover of healthcare, the cap and trade tax scheme, and the undue influence of Andy Stern’s SEIU union.

Well, this sure isn’t my cup of tea. But if it’s yours, here’s the website.

The Potala Palace.

Roll over the Bing homepage screen (while it’s there) to learn factoids about sand mandalas and Tibetan Buddhists’ “awesome hats.”

EMBED-Oh My God Trailer – Watch more free videos

Thanks as ever, Konchog.

And while we’re talking Tibetan Buddhism on video, I have to give props to my “alma mater” at Wisdom Publications, who are sponsoring PBS’s showings of Vajra Sky Over Tibet, and even have a nifty little “ad” that will run with it:

Well done!

For listings of when Vajra Sky Over Tibet will be playing, visit the Wisdom blog. It’s playing on Boston’s WGBH this Sunday at 5:30. My calendar is marked.