You may have seen a post on Gawker today about how the ”UC Davis Pepper Spray Cop Is Now a Meme.” Now, by way of Occupy Lulz on Facebook (and the Facebook friend who brought the below to my attention), comes this, um, arresting contribution to the meme:
The “Pepper Spraying Cop” continues his beat across the internet. You’ll find some of his many tragicomic manifestations at his new, dedicated Tumblr, which includes a few more run-ins with religion, Eastern and Western.
The Pittsburgh band White Wives has released their new video, “Hungry Ghosts” — something many Buddhists will know about, but which the great music site Consequence of Sound is covering, too:
Small mouths, bloated bellies, thin necks. No, this is not a description of our high school prom dates but of the fabled hungry ghost, a supernatural being often filled with more desire than one could possibly consume. Completely driven by unfulfilled cravings, they want nothing more than satisfaction that’s never quite enough. Sound familiar? Pittsburgh-based White Wives dive head first into this age-old yet always relevant theme in their video for “Hungry Ghost”, a garage-punk/alt-rock anthem that serves as the third track off their debut LP, Happeners.
Here’s the video — and head over to CoS for more info and White Wives tour dates.
White Wives – Hungry Ghost from Cluster 1 on Vimeo.
It’s the oddest thing — just the other day I was reading online about the NBA logo, and how it’s modeled after the player-turned-front-office-great Jerry West.
And so just now a co-worker brings me the October 24, 2011 issue of Sports Illustrated and points out this paragraph:
The logo, created in 1969 and modeled on a photo of Jerry, was apt in a way that the NBA couldn’t have dreamed: a white, ghostlike figure, frozen forever on the run. But a Buddhist artist would have sketched that phantom a different way. The Hungry Ghosts of Buddhism have pinhole mouths, long necks so thin that they can’t swallow and absurdly bloated bellies — forever starving but unable to ear, forever seeking gratification from old needs never met. The fate of most of the gods.
That’s an accurate-enough written rendering of the mythical Hungry Ghosts — but what on earth it’s doing in a story about Jerry West is beyond me. The article does paint West as one of “the gods” of the court, but I don’t get the “if a Buddhist artist sketched the logo” part here. That’s totally out of thin air, isn’t it?
Somebody, enlighten me!
(Perhaps The Lakers Forward Formerly Known as Ron Artest has the answer?)
If “Dharma-Burgers” are incidents of Buddhism and/or Buddhist ideas colliding with mass culture, then certainly “Buddhify,” featured on the great Lifehacker site today, qualifies:
There’s not anything so new, in and of itself, about there being a meditation app. So why might Buddhify be notable? (more…)
Last night, Chef Jose Andres joined Coco to talk rum and other concoctions. While we’re told by the Conan’s Facebook page that “Buddha” appears in the segment, that’s not quite right. It’d be more accurate to say that it’s Hotei, aka, the “fat Buddha,” or the “happy Buddha” who makes the cameo here, at around the 5:20 mark. Also appearing are lots of disembodied replicas of his body parts — all made of Jell-O.
This is not the first time Hotei and rum have made a pop-culture appearance together; see the entry for Pyrat rum on this page of the Dharma-Burger archives. But it’s almost certainly the oddest.
“One time I read all of Siddhartha at a traffic stop.” — Chris Traeger, Parks And Recreation‘s performance-obsessed state auditor
The latest entry from the ever-expanding realm of metal/Buddhism crossovers is the cover and title of the new EP by the great doom/drone band, Queen Elephantine:
The Tibetan-thangka-style art is one thing, but it doesn’t really get more metal than “Garland of Skulls,” does it?* (Queen Elphantine has dabbled in imagery from world religions and cultures, what with album titles like Surya and Kailash, and song titles like “Search for the Deathless State.” And you can download their record, Yatra (as in the Hindu term for “pilgrimage”) for free here.)
Hear the slow, dirgy, powerful track, “Potency,” from Garland of Skulls, here.
(See here for another recent — and recommended — Buddhism/metal crossover.)
* Note: I have dibs on the band name SkülCüp.
For a while now I’ve wondered about the band Yob. (Their name refers to a classic Warner Brothers cartoon; I distinctly remember being a teenager in bands and seeing the cartoon and thinking, Good band name.)
Anyway…: Yob has just gotten back at it after some inactivity. Hearing that, I recalled their last album; it was called The Great Cessation. Was it possible they could be talking about nirvana there? “The great cessation” is in fact one translation of the term parinirvana, the “final nirvana, which occurs upon the death of the body of someone who has attained complete awakening.” (Yes, I cribbed that from Wikipedia but it works for my purposes here.)
Yob’s new album (shown here) is called Atma. About the title, the great heavy music blog The Obelisk writes that it “refers to the Buddhist concept of the complete, spiritual self.” Now, that’s not a Buddhist concept, really — Buddhism usually emphasizes anatta, or not-self — but still: Hmmm. And in addition to a title track, there’s another song on the album called “Upon The Sight Of The Other Shore.” That sounds like it could be reference to the “other shore” referred to in the closing lines of the shorter version of The Heart Sutra, about which Barbara O’Brien writes:
The last words in the shorter version of the sutra are “Gaté Gaté Paragaté Parasamgaté Bodhi Svaha!” The basic translation, as I understand it, is “gone (or ferried) with everyone to the other shore right now!”
A little more Googling about Yob and Buddhism turns up a quick reference in a Rebel Extravaganza interview with vocalist and guitarist Mike Scheidt, in which he responds to the interviewer’s question about the use of the word bardo in the song “Ball of Molten Lead” from 2004′s The Illusion of Motion LP:
I’m surprised that one jumped out at you, man! A bardo is a term used in Buddhism. A bardo is a segment of life. The Tibetan Book Of The Dead goes into it, the bardos of life… the stages of life and death. More in depth, when you get into the places where the book deals with learning how to die. We go through time periods of trying to understand and remember who we are outside of this life.
And the band has a track called “Asleep in Samsara” on 2002′s “Elaborations of Carbon.”
Is all this a coincidence? And more important: does it matter?
I’m not saying that Scheidt is a Buddhist or that YOB is in some way a “Buddhist band.”* (And either way, they get points for clearly not trying to cash in on Buddhism’s cultural cachet. They’re hardly hitting us over the head with the references here.) They probably wouldn’t want to be identified as a Buddhist band, even if they were. And I’m not saying they are. All I am saying is this:
1) Metal can be a lot smarter than some would ever think.
2) Buddhism can be way more metal-confluent than some would ever think. (It can also be way more punk- or hip-hop- or baseball- or business- or whatever-confluent than some would ever think, too.)
3) It’s refreshing when a really good band makes great music whose lyrical content is not only not insulting, but somehow in line with the kinds of things that concern you.
4) YOB is one such really good band.
If you like your metal on the heavy, doomy side, you should check’m out on their MySpace page, which includes the first track from Atma, “Prepare the Ground.”
And if you get a little something extra out of Yob’s music, well hey.
* PS: Since this post was written, I’ve seen Scheidt refer to himself as being influenced by many Eastern religions (which would make sense) but that he identifies particularly with Hindu thought (which would account for his interest in exploring the concept behind Atma‘s title.)
In covering the new ad from the candy-maker Cadbury, AdWeek writes: “Injecting goofball shenanigans into a quasi-mystical setting yields an East-West disconnect that’s ultimately so crass and vapid, it’s painful to watch.” That’ll surely seem about right to some people. What do you say?
I’ve got to hand it to Lady Gaga. Not only is she, when it comes to fashion, rather like the Honey Badger — but she really goes out there to find and create harmony for those among us who feel a bit more “on our own” than others. Her song, “Born This Way,” is all about accepting people despite, and because of, their differences, and now she’s guest-edited the ubiquitous free newspaper, The Metro, with an eye towards acting “as a nurturing and compassionate force to those in need.”
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.
