You may recall that Fairey recently portrayed Aung San Suu Kyi as well.

Done to celebrate His Holiness’s 75th birthday, Compassion is available from Fairey’s website, and net proceeds will be split between Tibet House and LA Friends of Tibet. (The Dalai Lama’s birthday is on July 6.)

Of the piece, Fairey says:

“I’ve always had great admiration for His Holiness and his non-violent approach to the plight of the Tibetan people. When I was approached with the opportunity to work with this beautiful image as a sanctioned source and create a work that evokes the Dalai Lama’s presence as I feel it, I was thrilled. I hope His Holiness remains a presence of compassion in the world for many birthdays to come!”

Compassion goes on sale at “a random time” today, here. Only 500 will be available, so hurry. UPDATE: all 500 copies have already sold out as of early this afternoon.

Another small update: You might also like seeing this Burmese monk from the Obey archives.

Thanks to Born Infinite for the tip.

…From the website JustJaredJR:

“Miley Cyrus sported loveDBM’s cute Buddha bracelet during her recent Wonder World 2009 Tour. JJJ fell in love with the bracelet so much that we’re giving THREE readers a chance to win one!”

If any of this means something to you, fill me in. (Miley can’t be a Buddhist — this is just Buddha-bling — right?) Or click here if you wanna try and win one.

With the news that the complete run of The Larry Sanders Show is coming to DVD this September, now seems like fine time to re-present this appreciation of the show from The Worst Horse archives.

This piece was written before the news (2008, to be exact), and so it presents a view of the Show (and its creator-star, Garry Shandling) based on the previously released Not Just the Best of the Larry Sanders Show DVD set.] But all the main points about Larry and Garry apply. So enjoy.

For better or worse, many of us have got our favorite Dharma books and trinkets. Well, I’ve got a new one: the four-disc DVD-set, Not Just the Best of the Larry Sanders Show.

If you’re surprised that some DVDs could become so instantly near and dear as, say, an inscribed book from a teacher or the Manjushri statue that a dear friend gave me (and which is watching me from its perch next to my monitor), that makes two of us. But hear me out.

For those who don’t know: The Larry Sanders Show was one of the funniest, smartest shows ever on TV, period. (You only have to Google to see how widely-shared that opinion is.) The brainchild of the genius comedian Garry Shandling, Larry was a send-up of late-night TV, tracking the life and death of a Tonight-style show and its host, the neurotic but lovable — and very funny — Larry Sanders. But Larry and his staff of competitive LA producers, handlers, and lackeys were, above all, human. All that neurosis and competition make for some cringe-worthy comedy, sure. But there’s a lot of innocence to it all somehow. And once you’ve finished watching the final episode (the last of 23 included in the set) you just might be a little choked up. These fictional — and, again, very funny — people are somehow very real.

That’s by design. Authenticity — being true to the way people actually think, act, and treat each other — plays a major role in the show. “It’s like taking a Buddhist temple bell,” Shandling says, “an authentic, two-thousand year old Buddhist temple bell, and ringing it and going, ‘Can you tell me why that rings so purely?’ [It's] because it’s the real thing.”

“All these people in show business are human beings,” Shandling says.

Shandling, it turns out, is all about The Real Thing. The comedian started the show to, in his words, “discover more, Who am I?” (Director Todd Holland backs this up, saying that “Garry’s obsession is to truly expose the truth about himself.”)

All of this is in line with what might be a surprising element of Shandling’s psychological makeup. He’s not just some whiny comedian. He’s a searcher, on a journey to find The Real Thing, and the Real Garry Shandling, in what might seem one of the most unlikely places — Hollywood. He’s a Worst Horse.

It’s in the DVD’s extras that you’ll find the most enlightening moments about the key player on both sides of the camera: in candid visits with his guest-star friends, Shandling reveals an appealingly meditative side. A longtime mindfulness practitioner in Thich Nhat Hanh’s tradition, the comedian used these get-togethers not just to catch up with the people he loves, but to make that love plain.

He’s humble when it comes to talking about his practice — it’s not “Hey, look at me.” It’s “Hey, can you help me look at myself?” On Disc One, in talking to former flame Sharon Stone, he offers that he’s keeping up his practice, just before telling her how important she remains to him. On Disc Four, he shows his friend and neighbor Tom Petty his previously private Dharma-tattoo, an enso (or “Zen circle”) inked onto the back of the comedian’s neck to remind him of his work towards, as he says, “ego-emptiness.” And while Shandling laments the camera’s presence at least a couple of times, it’s also clear that he’s trying to be open, to be willing to say and hear things about himself — no matter how intimate. By most accounts, including his own, this is new. His practice is becoming truly integrated with his life.

There are a couple more outward indicators of the Dharma’s influence in Shandling’s life strewn throughout the discs. For example, in a reunion in his real-life living room with the show’s two comedic iron-men — Rip Torn, who played Arthur, Larry’s producer and protector; and Jeffrey Tambor, who, as Sanders’s on-screen sidekick Hank Kingsley, brought the nonsensical catchphrase “Hey now!” into the pop-culture vernacular — we catch a glimpse of Buddhist prayer flags. But it’s in the reflective words of the cast and crew that we get a more concrete sense of how Garry’s drive to get at The Real Thing informs not only his life, but those around them. Tambor, for example, captures this in describing how he was able to make his performance as Hank ring true, no matter how outrageous the scene. When he reveals that “the secret to everything [is,] don’t think,” it’s not a big leap to infer that he’s probably learned how to do this from his friend Garry.

The DVD’s capping phrase comes in its final extra, a short visit with the monk Hann Nguyen, titled “The Journey Continues.” “The true [only] enemy,” as Nguyen tells Garry, “is ignorance.” Then, the screen quickly fades to black. It’s hardly the “last word” that you might expect from a retrospective of one of TV’s most notoriously snarky comedies.

But then, as Garry Shandling clearly knows: if you’ve got a sense of humor, you can find Dharma just about anywhere.

Well, Lost, my favorite current TV show just got, um, favoriter.

Don’t know how I missed this initially, but one of the newly-returned show’s newest characters, a Japanese guy who is “Master” of the mysterious, rebirth-granting temple recently found by the Losties, is named Dogen. As in “Eihei Dogen,” founder of the Japanese Soto school of Zen Buddhism.

This is probably not insignificant, not on a show whose characters are named things like “John Locke,” “C.S. Lewis,” and “Daniel Faraday.” Also, of course, the whole thing centers around an enigmatic organization called “The Dharma Initiative.”

My eyes will be on the show and on Hiroyuki Sanada, who plays Dogen, for more. The second episode of the season is on tonight. Get caught up with last week’s premiere here.

But now, in a new interview with the New Yorker’s Vulture blog, Sanada denies a Buddhist connection:

Dogen translates roughly to “the temple of eternal peace.” Also, Dogen was a thirteenth-century Buddhist teacher. Any significance to your character?

Yeah, he’s not a Buddhist. Dogen’s name is inspired by a famous Buddhist in Japan a long time ago. He’s not a Buddhist, per se; it’s just a name. And also he has another real name from growing up in Japan.

This quote from a new ABC News post gives a sense of Brown’s Buddhist background and how it informs his work:

“I’ve done a lot of things. I’ve lived in Mexico for several months. I’ve lived all over South America. What else have I done? I took Linda Ronstadt to Africa once. I went to Calcutta and worked in an orphanage with Mother Theresa. I went to Japan and practiced zen meditation for six months.

“The essence of that is you meditate not on all of your achievements but on the essential emptiness,” Brown said. “That is pretty big for a politician. There are no politicians with a sense of their own personal emptiness — even though most of them are rather empty.”

“I’ve heard tales about people being struck by satori in a supermarket aisle, but I never expected it to happen to me. While strolling through the local food discounter, mulling over the mystical experiences of the weekend, I suddenly found the fruits of years of zazen practice right within reach: Satori! I grabbed four packs, so I can have satori each day for the rest of the week. ”

Of course there’s the near-obligatory weed reference, this one on a t-shirt, via herspiral: “Here’s something we found online…yikes…”

…and another bit of faux-dharmic financial marketing, via reader Michael D:

“I love your site, and so I have a ‘Dharma-Burger’ I just found for you. Their cringe-worthy commercial came on TV yesterday, and so I looked up their site– pretty interesting way to market this!”

Other readers also sent in word of Zendough’s existence. Arielle K, for her part, describes Zendough as:

…More Dharma Burger in one place than I have ever seen:

“By offering you insight and wisdom about your credit reports and score, debt standing, and identity theft risk, the path to achieve your goals and master your finances will be smoother…  gain wisdom and confidence and proactively manage your finances… zendough.com can …help you achieve financial peace of mind. …Learn more about taking the first steps down the path to financial enlightenment at www.achievezendough.com“

Reader Jim B wrote of Zendough: “I actually had to look twice to make sure it wasn’t a parody — sadly, I think it’s real.”

…But reader Guttorm G writes with some darker stuff:

“Thanks for your wonderful site. Of course I’ve heard of socially engaged Buddhism, but it’s normally on the activists’ side. The Copenhagen police, known for their brutality, used this uniform when imprisoning activists during the climate cop15.”

[Though clearly not Buddhist, the emblem here does resemble the Wheel of Dharma.]

Guttorm goes on to write: “I was [recently] studying in Kyoto and I went to one of the 5 main Rinzai Zen temples (as well as a world heritage site), Tenryu-Ji. I’m attaching a picture of what I saw. I’m not sure whether to laugh or cry, but its certainly not what i expected”:

Laugh or cry? I don’t know. But if, somehow, Tenryu-Ji is seeing at least a little bit of money from this, that would help. …Nescafe ads at Zen temples — a sign of something terrible, or just a sign of the times?

More to come, and thanks.

If you saw Real Time With Bill Maher Friday night, or read the written version of his closing “New Rules” segment — which is more what this post is about — you might think this is about Tiger Woods, just like you might have thought it was just Woods (and, “sex addiction”) that Maher was talking about. But this is about Buddhism, and it’s about how people perceive and talk about it.

I’ve been getting some guff from people for covering the Tiger Woods/Buddhism affair on Shambhala SunSpace, here, and elsewhere. People think it’s “tabloidy” to cover it, that it’s all about celebrity. My argument, though, is that if the Buddhist media isn’t covering it, other media, who don’t necessarily understand Buddhism very well, will be framing the discussion of Buddhism. And that’s what Maher did with his “New Rule.”

And, as with the whole “Tiger Woods and/or Brit Hume” discussion, the reason it’s important to talk about such things is because, if we don’t, then the mistaken ideas that are put forth by media figures (well-meaning or not) are sure to remain out there, and to then be mistaken as not-incorrect by others.

I should say: I have a lot of admiration for Maher. I feel like his politics often represent my own, I think he’s uncommonly inventive and funny, I think he’s generally well-informed, and I admire his bravery; the man comes out and says things that people often just aren’t brave enough to say. (He’s also a damned good stand-up.) But some of the things he’s now said/wrote about Buddhism — much like what Howard Stern said the other day — are just plain off, satire or not, and should be addressed.

Or at least that’s how I see it. My question is, what about you?

Here are some excerpts of what Maher said. To be fair, you should really read all of what he said, for complete context, but here’s the ending, the part I wanted to address, for reference:

[Buddhism] really is outdated in some ways — the “Life sucks, and then you die” philosophy was useful when Buddha came up with it around 500 B.C., because back then life pretty much sucked, and then you died – but now we have medicine, and plenty of food, and iPhones, and James Cameron movies – our life isn’t all about suffering anymore. And when we do suffer, instead of accepting it we try to alleviate it.

Tiger said, “Buddhism teaches that a craving for things outside ourselves” makes us unhappy, which confirms something I’ve long suspected about Eastern religions: they’re a crock, too.

Craving for things outside ourselves is what makes life life — I don’t want to learn to not want, that’s what people in prison have to do. Buddhism teaches suffering is inevitable. The only thing that’s inevitable is that if you have fake boobs and hair extensions, Tiger Woods will try to fuck you.

And reincarnation? Really? If that were real, wouldn’t there be some proof by now? A raccoon spelling out in acorns, “My name is Herb Zoller and I’m an accountant.” …something?

People are always debating, is Buddhism a religion or a philosophy: it’s a religion. You’re a religion if you do something as weird as when the Buddhist monks scrutinize two-year-olds to find the reincarnation of the dude who just died, and then choose one of the toddlers as the sacred Lama: “His poop is royal!” Sorry, but thinking you can look at a babbling, barely-housebroken, uneducated being and say, “That’s our leader” doesn’t make you enlightened. It makes you a Sarah Palin supporter.

Again, as with what Stern said the other day — beyond also being the work of a professional humorist-slash-curmudgeon — there’s some fair reasoning to what Maher is saying here. On paper, from a non-Buddhist’s point of view, these are valid questions and points. But if you’re a Buddhist — and I’m not talking about being “offended” here — you just know that a lot of what Maher’s talking about is off the mark.

I won’t address it all here, but for example: whatever you do or don’t think about reincarnation, many Buddhists would agree that the more important hallmark of Buddhism is its capacity to help us to discover our capacity for re-birth, to help us wake to the way the world is in this moment, with an enhanced — less conditioned, more connected — clarity. Some Buddhists might place a strong emphasis on literal reincarnation, but all, I’d venture to say, are much more concerned with this very life we have now.

That’s a much more important point. Isn’t it?

And yes, the “medicine, food, iPhones, and James Cameron movies” that Maher holds up as examples of how we suffer less these days are very much part of many of our lives these days. Sounds like progress, for sure. But honestly, aren’t the latter two items in this list (as examples) more emblematic of how we escape from the down and dirty — but incredibly valuable — business of looking reality in the face? Don’t get me wrong; I love my gadgets and I love a good film. But how often do we dive into interfacing with these as ways to distant ourselves from others — and from the unsatisfactoriness we perceive in ourselves?

What Maher is missing, to my mind, is that what the Buddha — and so many who have learned from his example — discovered is that there is much to be gained from appreciating all of the aspects of life: the medicine, the movies, the difficult times, the quiet times. Because when the power goes out and you’re left without your iPhone or a movie-world to escape to, it’s a fine, fine thing to be able to be just as happy as you were before everything went black.

It’s not about “Life sucks and then you die.” It’s about, in the Buddha’s words, “suffering and the end of suffering.” And that’s always worth talking about.

Right?

Or am I losing my sense of humor?

Let me know. Thanks.

[By the way: as with many posts here on The Worst Horse, you'll also find this post on Shambhala SunSpace, where a bunch of other comments have come in.]

More info here.

Via the great GOOD magazine, in collabro with Column Five.