Well, you knew this was going to happen. Last night’s episode of The Daily Show of course addressed Brit Hume’s comments about Buddhism’s inability to redeem Tiger Woods. Here’s the video of that, followed by video of Don Imus’s response, as well as Howard Stern’s comments.

And The Daily Show will not be alone; other “fundits” are sure to follow. Howard Stern, for his part, was incredulous this morning when discussing Hume’s comments about Buddhism: “This is unbelievable — this guy used to be impartial. [...] [Then, addressing Hume:] “Aren’t you supposed to be a network anchorman?”

Update: Radio host (and Stern nemesis) Don Imus has now weighed in, too. Imus had a pretty thoughtful go at it, and it’s worth noting that this aired on the FOX business channel:

Via AFP:

The Ryohoji temple, built in the late 16th century in a Tokyo suburb, erected a colourful manga-inspired sign at its entrance in June and has since seen visitor numbers perk up — especially young men.

But it went a step further at the weekend, setting up tents and opening up a temporary cafe staffed by bonnet-wearing girls sporting classic frills, one of the recent popular themes among fans of anime and costume role-playing. [...]

it seemed to work, the temple drawing hundreds of visitors on Saturday as the event coincided with a local autumn festival in Hachioji, on the western outskirts of Tokyo.

The Denver Daily News is reporting on the local premiere of “Mantra,” a new Buddhist horror film:

Mantra tells the story of a group of strangers who go to a remote cabin area in the woods for a meditation retreat. While a generous amount of nudity and gore ensues, the film also explores some heady philosophical concepts like love, desire and suffering.

[Filmmaker David] Wimer was inspired to write Mantra after attending a Buddhist retreat in India. He found that the meditations were “mind-altering, scary and weird,” and became enlightened on the connections between Buddhism — which focuses on desire and suffering — and horror films.

More here.

Happy Halloween, everybody.

The Washington Post reports:

If you were a baby copperhead snake in Montgomery County and you wanted to bite someone, you could do a whole lot worse than pick Sam Pettengill.

For starters, there was the place the snake slithered into: Pettengill’s studio apartment at Kunzang Palyul Choling, a Buddhist temple near Poolesville, next to woods by the Potomac River. Animals are loved there.

Then there is Pettengill himself, who was still laid up yesterday at Shady Grove Adventist Hospital. The 36-year-old has been known to buy crickets and worms from bait shops, bring them back to the woods and set them free.

“It’s about accumulating merit,” he said of such acts. [...] He received help from two friends in the prayer room, John Pelletier and Elizabeth Cohn. Pelletier searched “poisonous snakes Maryland” on his iPhone, and the three concluded that it was a Timber rattlesnake.

Before heading to the hospital, Pettengill carried the vase onto the temple grounds to the Enlightenment Stupa, a 36-foot-tall sacred structure. He walked clockwise around the stupa with the snake for about three minutes, offering “prayers for a higher rebirth,” Pettengill recalled.

Read the whole story here. And big thanks to the mighty JB for the heads-up on this one.

In this Paste review for the film Died Young, Stayed Pretty, check out the designer Art Charney, says:

What a cool, unexpected kick this film was. Director Eileen Yaghoobian has gone into the dark minds of poster artists asking how they come up with the strange, often times obscene, ideas for their posters that do more than just sell an event or concert. One of my favorites is for The Von Zippers with a collage of wanted-poster style black & white photos of the famous and infamous, each with a zipper over his or her mouth. The artist, Art Charney, disdainfully opines on each photo ranging from Oprah to Charles Manson. “The Dalai Lama, there’s another guy that should shut the fuck up. Here’s Mr. Niceguy, Tom Hanks. I wish he’d shut the fuck up, don’t you?” It may be underground art but the film gives a cultural thumbs up to an art form that deserves more space in the foreground.

Um? What? Seriously?

And speaking of HHDL and, “Um, what?” moments, His Holiness gets namechecked in the new Eminem song, “Must Be the Ganja”:

your dreams of getting the pill, you are literally getting the drill
spitting at will, me and Dre have just finished splitting a pill
you’re submitting to skill, sitting still, I’m admitting, I’m beginning to feel
like I don’t think anyone’s real,
faced with a dilemma, I can be Dali Llama and become a bin gramma a step beyond a Jeffrey Dahmer

…Um — and I listen to plenty of rap, really, but — what?

Thanks to reader Arielle K who writes:

“I was recently looking through my meetup.com listings and found a group referring to Shamballa Basic^TM. It looks like they’re a new-age group co-opting the Shambhala name to sell a skill-set a man thought up in 2000 for $3-400 a pop. They make references to karma, reincarnation, “Mahatma” (sanskrit), “Antakarana” (Hindu), and claim to have roots in the “Trans-Himalayan eosteric tradition.” Now, I don’t know a lot about the historical regional beliefs of Tibet and the Himalayas, but something feels very wrong about this. Has anyone sounded the alarm on these guys yet? Are they too small-time to get anyone’s hackles up? Or have the new-agers been doing this with “Oriental” mystical forces for so long people don’t bat an eye anymore? I, for one, am creeped out.

And Arielle sends another link, here. It seems that “Shambhalla” was once related to Reiki (and has some astrological leanings), but nothing much can be derived to answer Arielle’s questions. There are various websites but parsing them, with their references to Mayan culture and the occult roots of Nazism, isn’t very easy. Some language on this page says things like “What IS Shamballa? No less than the collective consciousness of the Ascended and Galactic Masters” and promises that “[i]n a Shamballa workshop, you will experience meditations designed to help you to clear away all of the old emotional debris you have been carrying around through lifetimes. Then you will be filled with the energies of Shamballa, and connected to the source of those energies, so that you may call upon them whenever you will.”

Hmmm. Anyone know more?

I always like to hear about retreats and such specifically geared to young people. So here are the latest.

Dharma Realm Buddhist Young Adults’ 11th Annual Spring Conference — “Freedom From Fear: Looking Within for Stability and Clarity In Uncertain Times”
Date: April 11-12, 2009
Location: Berkeley Buddhist Monastery, 2304 McKinley Ave, Berkeley

As the world lurches from one crisis to the next, the ongoing instability has caused people to reevaluate many aspects of their lives. What do we really value? What makes us happy? How do we maintain our mental and spiritual well-being while the world around us changes so quickly? The Dharma Realm Buddhist Young Adults (DRBY) invites you to explore these questions with us at our 11th Annual Spring Conference. Register here.

MAYA: Mindful Awareness for Young Adults
Ongoing.
MAYA offers mindfulness retreats in California and Virginia for young adults ages 14 to 30 throughout the U.S. and Canada. Very cool; they’re really going for it. Check out their Calendar, here.

Good news if you live in any of those states: Jaimal Yogis, author of Saltwater Buddha, is coming to a bookstore near you. You can get the dates here. (In case you missed the video about the book, you’ll find it here.)

In related news: the mighty Tim McNeill of Wisdom Publications (publisher of Saltwater Buddha, and a couple hundred other fantastic Dharma-books) is the star of a new profile in the book-industry publication, Publishers Weekly. Tim is my old boss and my friend, and so I can say first-hand that this is a guy with enormous character and commitment to the Dharma. So if you want to “better know” one of the fine people to whom the future of Buddhist publishing has been entrusted, check out the profile. (I’ll admit a teensy bit of bias here, but I do believe it’s worth knowing who the people at Wisdom are — not least of all because they know who we are. Tim has taken real care to surround himself with younger people of all traditions and interests, and I think this, along with his own energy and knowledge, is a big part of why Wisdom publishes such bang-up editions of everything from classical Buddhist texts to, well, Saltwater Buddha.)

Now playing in Denver — it’s highly bizarre, and I think I like it. So much so, that I’m gonna pretty much run their whole description here:

The Ten Buddhist Tales is a sweeping exploration of humanity’s struggle against the cruel absurdity of life, and our potential for salvation. Also, sausage.

A thrill-seeking Guru enlists the help of the Bearded Lady and her deranged theatre troupe to expand Buddhism for a western audience. As the Guru wallows deliciously deeper into their psychoses, the theatre freaks attain their own epiphanies, and find their ducks. Eschewing character development, plot, and sense, the Ten Buddhist Tales is unlike any other show you’ve ever seen in Denver.

Actors wear pants most of the time.

Tickets are $10 for the general public, $20 for charitable Catholics. Free for Bhutanese prostitutes.

Man, talk about irreverent. Though, as this article quotes one of the play’s authors: “…although we live in an absurd, meaningless, junk-filled culture, there is something real in Buddhism, there are real epiphanies and human connections to be found in life. And although sense cannot be made, it can be sensed. In that vein, I’ve tried to keep the show an experience more than an explanation, in the hopes that some truth comes out of one’s own reactions to the junk and beauty, rather than from my personal judgments or pronouncements.”

Ah, if only I was in Denver. If you are, get your tickets here.