| DharmaPop: The Buddhadharma in Pop Culture Compiled by Zombie Hotflash | |
| Hi, this page used to appear as part of the Buddhist Temple of Chicago’s web site. I’ve decided to use it as my first index page on the Zombie Hotflash site to have something there. Eventually, it will be just another page on the ZHf site. It all started with a guitar pick... I can’t recall why I was on the back steps. I don’t use them much, but in the summer of 1998, there I was when I saw something lying two steps below the landing outside my door. Turns out it was a guitar pick with the words “Morcheeba” and “Big Calm” on it and a picture of a seated Buddha statue. I put it back on the step, thinking it was left by one of the neighbor kids, and then I thought better of it and brought it into the kitchen and set it on the counter in order to ask my daughter about it later. Naturally, I forgot it.  A few days later, I saw it again when she was still in the house and I asked her, “Is this your guitar pick?” “No,” she said, “I think it came out of a potato chip bag, or something. I saw it on the steps, too. Probably one of the kids left it.” “Is it any good?” “Probably not. I wouldn’t use it.” “What’s Morcheeba, and why does it have a Buddha on it?” “Beats me.” End of conversation. I thought to myself, “I ought to look this up.” And, of course, I promptly forgot about it. A couple weeks passed and then I saw a reference to Morcheeba in the music section of the Reader, and it dimly sounded in my inner ear, “That’s the band with the Buddha on the guitar pick. Aha! Must look into that.” You know what’s next. I don’t think I’m senile. I’ve just accumulated too much stuff over the last 48 years, mentally and materially, to keep track of the new stuff coming in. I’m not very good at throwing old stuff out. |
Hiko
Ikeda sends this reverse sighting: the world’s tallest Buddha statue
(~400 ft) in Ushiku City, ~50 miles from Tokyo.
This statue is near a high-tension power line. Imagine the dialog between a Buddha this big and Godzilla. Just think over-size Naga princess.* The source for this sighting is in Japanese, but even if you can’t read the text, there are quite a few interesting pix. |
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“What’s Morcheeba, and why does it have a Buddha on it?” | *The Naga princess, in the Lotus Sutra, a child sea serpent
of Indian myth, gave the Buddha a gem and became a Bodhisattva and then a
Buddha almost instantaneously, something that was supposedly impossible
for a female or a child to do, much less in a single lifetime. When the
sutra came to China and Japan, she was recast as a dragon, a better known
myth there. If I understand correctly, Godzilla was originally a female
dragon.
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| Spurred by this and other pop culture references to Buddhism--I
built this page for you to contribute your DharmaPop sightings, thinking,
“I’m so clever; nobody’s doing this sort of thing.” WRONG! In 1997,
Algonquin Books published Dinty Moore’s book, The Accidental Buddhist,
which, says Mr. Moore, “ends up looking at much more than just pop
culture, and is in fact a record of my own spiritual journey, but pop
culture references to Buddhism were the impetus.” If you have an instance of a Buddhist reference in pop culture, drop me a line with the details. It doesn’t have to be recent. Please include your editorial comments about it. I may edit your remarks, but I will try to preserve the spirit in which you offer them. If your sighting is on the web, be sure to send me the URL(s), as well. Here’s what I learned about Morcheeba. They’re a British trio whose music is hard to categorize. I said “acid jazz” in an earlier version of this paragraph, but it doesn’t cover their wide range of influences. Thanks to Dawn Kinishi of Kokyo Taiko for lending me her Morcheeba CDs. The Buddha on the guitar pick is a small portion of the CD cover of Big Calm. I still don’t know why it’s there. What’s your take on it? |
Here’s another view of the same statue. I’m sorry, I’m having a Blue Öyster Cult flashback. (ms) |
| Lyrics to “Tomorrow
Never Knows,” the Beatles’ musical setting of the Tibetan Book of the
Dead.
This koan from Nadia Oehlsen, who is leery of celebrity Buddhists: “If a tree falls in the rainforest and Sting doesn’t record a song about it, does it make a sound?” There was an unintentionally hilarious moment in a story on National Public Radio's Morning Edition 7/13/2001 on mosquito breeding grounds, i.e. pools of stagnant water. Reporter John Nielsen referred to such places as Nirvana for mosquitos. "Nirvana" means extinction, as in "extinction of cravings." It is not the same thing as the hedonistic, or even Christian, conception of paradise. click here and follow up on the A-V links and listener comment links. |
News from Basho’s pond: Frogs Get Enlightened
is a track on a CD that “paints the frog enlightenment process.”
“Frogs get enlightened not by a kiss from a princess, but by sitting very
still for a long time, and then suddenly hop, hop, hop. This music
paints the frog enlightenment process, how they feel, and what they do
afterwards: sit very still for a very long time, and then hop, hop,
hop. No, they do not turn into rabbits, although rabbits also hop. An
enlightened frog is, after all, still a frog.” The composer
tells us the frogs experience deep satori at 6:28.
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Please accept my apologies for what may now appear to be in abjectly bad taste. When Hiko sent me the pictures of this standing Buddha statue in Japan, I took his word for it that it was the world’s tallest. It may well now be, technicalities aside. If I’m not mistaken, this is a statue of Amida Buddha, and the ones that were destroyed by the Taliban in Afghanistan in March of 2001 were of Shakyamuni (a.k.a. Gautama) Buddha.
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| A Zen clown has created a whole CD of Absolute Silence. | Harold Ramis,
director of many Hollywood comedies and alumnus of Second City cites the
Buddhist and Asian influences on his style of directing in this Chicago
Sun-Times article. |
| Let’s talk about gathas (Sanskrit, Pali
=“hymns”). Many Buddhist temples use gathas to convey particular ideas,
such as that of life not dying, even though individuals pass away. The
Buddhist Temple of Chicago has a collection of gathas in English and
Japanese. Some of the English ones are adapted from Protestant Christian
hymnals, keeping the tunes and altering the lyrics. Much of this music has
a Victorian feel to it. I’ve often wondered what it would be like to use
more recent pop tunes with identifiably Buddhistic themes. We’d probably
owe ASCAP and BMI a bundle. However, I thought it would be
fun to gather a list of
tunes with your help. I’ve started with | |
| Got a Dharmapop sighting? Send it to me. Don’t forget to include relevant URLs and your comments. | |
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