So now Andrew Sullivan, who has touched on meditation in his videoblog before, is now going on at some length about Buddhism in a new installment.

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.

The Daily Beast’s Andrew Sullivan has joined a long list of successful (and notably creative) people who have started up with Transcendental Meditation TM — for example, David Lynch (and musical accomplice Angelo Badalamenti), Paul McCartney, Clint Eastwood, Ellen DeGeneres, Jerry Seinfeld, Howard Stern (and about 90 percent of his staff, if I understand correctly), Paul McCartney, David Lynch, Laura Dern, Russell Brand, and so on. Some people perceive TM as sort of culty but it seems to be mainstreaming itself quite easily — as the work of the David Lynch Institute, which is bringing TM to kids’ schools, and elsewhere, makes clear. Sullivan also expresses sympathies with Buddhism here.

Thanks, yet again, to Konchog Norbu for the heads-up.

Slight Heavy Metal Update: After posting this, another TM advocate of note came to light: songwriter Mike Hill, whose band Tombs released its album Path of Totality this year. That album is, hands-down, one of the best of 2011 (well, sez me) and like Yob’s Atma LP (also released this year, and perhaps THE best release of the year), is informed by meditation. In this case, the meditation is TM, inspired, as Decibel magazine writes, “by David Lynch’s book, Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity.” Though it should be said that Hill tells Decibel that his “personal regimen includes not only meditation, but yoga, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, and the ingestion of natural psychedelics.”

See also the Horse’s piece about Yob’s Atma: “Metal for Buddhists? Buddhism for metalheads? Who cares? It rocks.”

Thanks to friend Konchog Norbu for pointing out this Mercedes-Benz ad from a couple years back. I kinda thought I’d posted it here, but no.

First there was the Muppet Show’s Animal meditating with James Coburn. Now there’s this, also by way of Brad Warner’s Facebook page.
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Kinda an extra-mishmashy set of ideas, but hey.

Nice find via Brad Warner’s Facebook page: James Coburn tries to teach Animal to meditate. Or at least to relax, relax, relax.

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.

Considering that meditation has played an ongoing and meaningful role in the Occupy protests — note for example the related coverage my colleagues and I have been posting on the Shambhala Sun blog — it will be interesting to see how Buddhists respond to this Conan segment from Thursday night, in which Triumph the Insult Comic Dog takes on Occupy Wall Street and a meditator gets in his line of fire. …You’ve been warned. But will you laugh anyway?

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…)

Barn Owl, one of my very favorite musical acts these days, played a show hosted by the SFZC. Watch, listen, enjoy. It’s two great tastes that taste great together!

Barn Owl from auraloptic on Vimeo.

Another act that played SFZC was Date Palms. Click here for that.

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.