Buddha Sighting! – The Daily Show

So as I was watching a Daily Show clip my friend posted on Facebook, I realized that the next clip on the video player included Jack’s Mannequin (official website), a band I liked back in high school.  Jack’s Mannequin has recently come out with a new album called The Glass Passenger as well as a DVD called Dear Jack. The DVD is a documentary that focuses on Andrew McMahon’s, the lead singer, battle with leukemia.

What I found interesting with Jack’s Mannequin’s performance on The Daily Show is that on top of the piano, there is a miniature statue of the Buddha. It’s in plain sight and I wished Jon Stewart asked about it, but it was never pointed out.

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If Only God Made Buddha Statues (Part 1)

All of the statues, beads, incense, and other collected Buddhist miscellania I’ve received over the years has been given to me by friends or monastics. For this I am extremely grateful, not only for their kindness and generosity, but because if I wanted to go out and find these things myself I would have no idea where to go.

I assume a tall mountain with wispy clouds, mythical creatures who ask questions in threes, and switch-triggered rotating walls. This is where these things come from, right?

It was when I was given my very first Buddha statue that I began to have a glimmer of understanding – it was bought in Long Beach, California and given to me by a wonderful woman who had only just met me.

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Norton Simon and the Buddha Torso

Inspired by the always delightful DharmaRealm podcast which discussed the oddity of seeing Buddha statues in museums in a recent episode

A year or so ago, when I went to the Norton Simon museum for a completely non-Buddhist reason and found a basement full of Buddhist art, I had three main questions:

• Should I be bowing or not bowing? Is it disrespectful to bow to a Buddha image that is not in a place of honor?
• Does it get any cooler than seeing that Buddha from Wikipedia?
• What should I make of the Buddha Torso?
  

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