Looks promising:

Back story, etc, via Gawker.

Watch this video published yesterday by RightWingWatch.org:

I have two reactions to this. My first is, Who in hell does Pat Robertson think he is?

The second is, Who in hell does Pat Robertson think Buddhists are?

He seems to think we’re the enemy.

Well, we’re not the enemy, Pat. Buddhists are concerned with eliminating suffering, and deepening and harnessing our compassion. For ourselves, and for others. Including you.

Or at least we’re trying. And those statues of ours? All they are to us, really, are reminders of that. Those statues help us to think about and re-engage with our motivation to eliminate suffering, and to deepen and harness our compassion.

You can destroy them, but it won’t change a thing.

There’s been a lot of hubbub about Mad Men‘s use of the Beatles’ “Tomorrow Never Knows” on the show; Producer Matthew Weiner and Co. paid $250,000 for the usage. Yes, that’s a crazy-stupid lot of money. But then again, it shows just how much the Tibetan Book of the Dead — upon which the song was based — and its influence were part of the mid-late 60′s zeitgeist. In fact, this was the show’s second reference to the Tibetan Book of the Dead in two weeks. (Earlier, the show depicted ad-exec Roger Sterling, his wife, and other well-to-do New Yorkers taking an LSD trip under the guidance of none other than Dr. Timothy Leary, whose book The Psychedelic Experience quickly gained fame as an acid-trip roadmap, based on the TBotD.

But as the LA Times‘ Show Tracker blog points out, this was not the first time the song had appeared on TV. It actually showed up in an animated Beatles cartoon, which you can watch here, below. But do check out Show Tracker for more.

The scifi/futurism site io9 is reporting on the coming premiere of Phoo Action, “a new BBC pilot adapted by Doctor Who director Euros Lyn from a semi-forgotten strip by Tank Girl co-creator Jamie Hewlett. Influenced by the sixties Batman TV show, the odd Buddhist-futurist series just might be the next cult hit or, if nothing else, an interesting televisual oddity.” Here’s the trailer:
:

And for more, be sure to check out io9′s post.

Showed you this screenshot from the Total Recall remake back in September; now, here’s the trailer, for you completists.

I dunno.

“We don’t worship Buddha,” says pastor Dennis Terry, introducing Rick Santorum while preaching to the choir in the newly posted video below. Well, that’s not something most Buddhists say they do, either — at least not many Western Buddhists; rather, it’s more often the case that we look at the historical Buddha as an example of a real human being who proved that liberation from suffering was possible. What’s your reaction to this pastor’s argument that non-Christians should “get out” of America?

(Note Rick Santorum clapping toward the end of the video.)

Did you see this thing? I thought it was pretty painful. But click here to see for yourself if you haven’t yet. That is, if you don’t mind potentially squandering a few minutes of precious life.

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.