Back story, etc, via Gawker.

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.

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.

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

I dunno.

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

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.

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.”