Another Queer Jewish Buddhist

Buddhism as a Brand

The New York Times today reported  that Buddhism may be
dying out in Japan. I am not in a position to be able to determine the accuracy of that report, however I did want to comment on something Kazuma Hayashi, a Buddhist priest, said about the custom of selling posthumous honorific names to families of the recently deceased:

“I know that, originally, that’s not what Buddhism was about,” Mr. Hayashi said of the top name. “But it’s a brand that our customers choose. Some really want it, so that means there’s a strong desire there, and we have to respond to it.”

There is so much wrong with that statement I don't know where to begin. There is the reference to people who come for his services as customers. This may be a problem of translation though. The Japanese okyaku can be translated as either "guest" or "customer," however I suspect customer is indeed what Mr. Hayashi meant.

Then he said that he sells these names because people really want it, there's a strong desire. Uhhh, pardon me, but isn't Buddhism about letting go of desire? Certainly any Zen priest could tell you that. Of course, Buddhism is so debased in Japan there are sects that teach believers that chanting can bring them material wealth. Oh Lord, won't you buy me a Mercedes Benz?

The Buddha did not chant to change the path of the deceased. But of course, just as Christianity picked up local customs and gods and incorporated them into local expressions of the faith, Buddhism radically changed as it moved from northern India through China to Japan. The Japanese in fact see no contradiction be being both Shinto and Buddhist, but then Shinto is a religion and Buddhism, at least as taught by the Buddha, was a way of life, a practice. Not a religion. All the rites and rituals came later. This doesn't really matter though today since it has become a religion for so many. Complete with deities the Buddha wouldn't recognize. But this is a bigger subject.   

Then there is the issue of Buddhism as a brand. This is one of my personal bugaboos. Buddhism is not a brand. The Democratic party is not a brand. A candidate is not a brand. This is the infection of consumerism into religion and politics. And I am afraid my industry, advertising, is probably very guilty in bringing this way of thinking to the world. Still, every time I hear a pundit on CNN  refer to something like "the Kennedy brand" my blood boils (clearly I am not meditating enough).

The posthumous sale of indulgences is what led to schism in the Roman church in the middle ages. It drove people from the church. And clearly it is having a similar effect in Japan in Buddhsim.

Buddhist priests in Japan own the family temple and hand down the job to their sons, since they marry. Another unique wrinkle in Japanese Buddhism. I have nothing against priests marrying. I think the Catholic church would be a happier place if priests were allowed to marry again (as they did, even popes were married, until the early middle ages). But this is simply Buddhism as the family business.

We all seek comfort when someone we love dies. Even more so when a child dies. In Japan, the custom is to purchase a statue of the bodhisatva Jizo, who is said to intercede on behalf of the souls of dead children (and aborted fetuses) in hell. As you can see from this photo from Kamakura's famous Hase Temple, business is booming.

No wonder that Japan people are turning away even as more Americans look to Buddhism as a refuge from consumerist culture and materialism.

Sunday Afternoon at Splash Bar's Wet T-Shirt Contest

Okay, not really Miss Thingyan. These are photos from the annual ThinGyan New Year's Water Festival celebrated by the Burmese community in New York City down on Henry Street on the Lower East Side. Great noodles. Deliciously cold iced orchid tea. And lots of water from super soakers and silver bowls splashed around for good luck in the new year. There was also entertainment — traditional dance troupes and singers from the more than 30 different ethnic groups that make up the Burmese nation. And while most of the men were in those sexy sarongs called longyi, this young man had to endure the heat, and dance, in this traditional fashion statement.

There was also a fund raiser raffle to raise money for the victims of Hurricane Nargis. The day turned out to be a GLYNY Again mini-mini reunion, since I went to the festival with John Chiafalo, the 4th Chair of Gay Youth in the early 70s, and Mark K., who is the GLYNY Again archivist (which is not so different from the position he held in GLYNY in the mid 80s).

Afterward we were good and soaked...well just a little sprinkled...we headed uptown for another ethnic celebration by an exotic culture. Yes, it was the Bastille Day celebration on East 60th Street, where there were many delicious desserts, including this handsome young fellow in a balloon version of a revolutionary tricorner:

Ah, New York City. Why would one want to live anywhere else in the world?

Sunday Morning Cartoon: Thank You Masked Man

I remember the first time I read this monologue in The Essential Lenny Bruce. Everyone has been memorialized George Carlin these last weeks, but he would never have existed had it not been for Bruce, who went to jail for saying things Carlin made millions with. This cartoon version of his take on The Lone Ranger is one of my favorites.

Male Pornographic Advertising in Singapore?

Ogilvy & Mather in Singapore has created a campaign for Lorgan’s — a furniture store specializing in retro styles from the last century: 1930s through 70s. The store’s website is great fun, and I love love love their Sputnik lamp (we had one over our dining room table around 1965! But it’s the ad campaign — and Singapore — that needs discussion. Visually they show all the goods Lorgan’s sells, and all the ads focus on the 60s. A time that has a reputation for free love. That was really the 70s in the U.S. but let’s not quibble. The people in the ads aren’t there — as in Japanese pornography the shapes are missing, but the empty space they leave leaves little to the imagination. You can see the others, which are all heterosexual couplings (and threesomes) at Adsoftheworld.

What interests me though is the graphic (in both senses of the word) representation of man-on-man action in the ad above. Singapore is not exactly known as a permissive society. While not as conservative as the Islamic law in Malaysia, Singapore is hardly Thailand. Homosexual acts are still illegal there (though rarely prosecuted). And there are public decency laws. I would hazard a guess that certainly the ad above violates section 377 of the penal code, which states:

Any male person who, in public or private, commits, or abets the commission of, or procures or attempts to procure the commission by any male person of, any act of gross indecency with another male person, shall be punished with imprisonment for a term which may extend to 2 years.

On top of that, Singapore has rather harsh laws around the possession of pornography. Remember, this is the city/state that enforced a sentence of caning for a teen aged boy, Michael Fay, just a few years ago for graffiti painting.

So the question is, are these ads really running or is this just spec work posted to the adsoftheworld site to garner attention for O&M Singapore? This is not an unknown strategy for an agency that wishes to up their creative reputation. However, as we saw at Cannes last month, entering work for a client that never ran (or for that matter that the client never saw) can get you in a lot of trouble. In the credits for the ad, they say it was published in April. Is there anyone in Singapore who can verify this?

To rephrase Rosser Reeves: Anybody can be creative, but can you sell it to the client. And then, of course, does it sell to consumers? That’s why I don’t like to see lots of public service spec work in portfolios. If you can’t do a compelling ad for starving children you don’t belong in the business. The real question is, can you do a compelling ad for Tide?

I hope O&M did the Lorgan’s site. It was terrific. I want a Sputnik lamp again!!! I won't say what I might want in any of the print ads however. Of course, my previous post about Chinese army ballet dancers might give you an idea.

It's raining men. Chinese men. Hallelujah.

Well, actually, the photos that follow this are rather disturbing — it's a series of photos the Boston's Globe's blog called The Big Picture published showing the Chinese Army doing anti-terrorism exercises in preparation for the Olympic Games. These pictures scare me. (Though the photos on the Segway are both hilarious and terrifying at the same time.)

Mind you, it is indeed raining Chinese men. Remember, the one child policy and the preference for male children has led to a wild imbalance in the male/female ratio in China. So there are literally millions of men who will not find a wife. That's a lot of frustrated men in the armed forces — which to me seems like  a recipe for worldwide military disaster.

Where is the international homosexual conspiracy to convert when you need it?

Now I have to admit it — I have in fact cavorted with a member of the Red Army. Well, the Red Army Ballet Troupe. One day walking down MacDougal Street in NYC I met the attractive eyes of Jin Xing, a choreographer, dancer and colonel in the Chinese Army's famous ballet corps (shown here at left pre-op). Later — after our own pas de deux — I learned that he had been in Japan earlier that year where he had a met a friend of mine there who it seemed no matter who I met when I lived in Tokyo, he had met the guy already. And it was still happening after I'd moved back to NYC! Well...in any case, Jin Xing went on to become rather famous as China's first MTF transexual. Personally, I think it was a pity. While many sex changes are for deep internal reasons, I believe this is not so different than what happens in Iran today, where gay men prefer to endure sex change operations (which is acceptable) rather than be identified as gay — and thus subject to death under Islamic law. I seem to have wandered far afield...

So getting back to the men on the field above, I suspect that very few of them would turn up at The Web Bar in New York should they find themselves magically transported here (or part of an invasion). But I have to say, that might well be a solution for many of China's population and social problems. And who knows, I might get a boyfriend out of it. Not.

The Divine Androgyne: Sex and Gender on the Gay Brain and the BBC

In many spiritual traditions, the inner union of male and female is one of the ways of knowing the Divine. Jung wrote about this union as a way towards psychological wholeness. For men this does not mean becoming feminized (which is a major fear in the gynophobic American culture) but integrating qualities we label masculine and feminine, such as logic and intuition.

As a gay man with an interest in both spirituality and Jungian psychology this subject has always interested me. In some cultures queer people are said to embody both male and female qualities in a way that brings them closer to the world of spirit. Of course, in our monotheistic culture, born of the Israelite religion that denied the Divine Feminine (Asherah/Shekhina)even while it was worshiped in the Temple, queer people are a threat — thus the spiritual world we are said to connect with is demonic.

In the world of brain science, Time magazine reported recently that Swedish scientists have concluded from brain scans of 90 gay and straight men and women  that “the size of the two symmetrical halves of the brains of gay men more closely resembled those of straight women than they did straight men.”

While I have no idea of the size of my brain I discovered yesterday that the BBC web site that, along with a number of other tests on their site they offer one called Your Sex I.D. It takes about 35 minutes to complete on line. And based on your responses they can tell you where your brain fits on the male/female continuum. Much to my surprise, I was exactly in the middle. Except I can’t say that I am enjoying the spiritual benefits of inner union. The test itself was fascinating though, and I’d be curious to see how large numbers of gay men do on it.

It is true that I find myself attracted to one of the Buddhist saints who is depicted as both male and female (though not at the same time!). Avalokiteshvara is depicted as a young man in India and Nepal — but as Buddhism moved east, in China and Japan he became a she, and is known as Kuan Yin or Kannon.

And of course, in Kabbalistic Judaism, Adam Kadmon, the original created human was an androgyne — based on the phrase in Bereshit translated as “male and female created [he] them.” Diagrams of this first human superimpose the sephirot over the body — sephirot that include Yesod, often connected to the male genitalia, and Malchut, connected to the female genitalia. However this is merely metaphoric externalization of what is really about an inner state.

Brain scientists have investigated how meditation affects communication between the left and right hemispheres.

A research team investigating the effects of meditation on the brain with the collaboration of the Dalai Llama, showed that meditators had a significant increase in activation in the left pre-frontal regions of their brain, associated with a reduction in the amount of anxiety they reported.

So why aren’t gay men more like the Buddha? I would argue that many gay men in fact are — from those who volunteer their time at places like God’s Love We Deliver to those who become church choir directors we bring our gifts of creativity and compassion to society in many ways. However as a minority that has been demonized, in a culture where a man who exhibits qualities that are ascribed to women is denigrated, there is no question that many of us take on the negatives of both genders — an aggressive bitchiness for example, used as a defense.

I pray for a world where all people, male - female - intersexed - trans - are not merely free to develop their gifts, but a world where those gifts are welcomed and nurtured. Keyn Yehi Ratzon. So may it be.

Phallic Symbols & Advertising: The Fish Are Jumping

Draftfcb is running a terrific new ad campaign for Aquaphor healing ointment that features some very eye catching visuals. Each ad features a rather dramatic tattoo on some rather appealing flesh. The headline, "Keep It Alive," speaks to the target on several levels. Of course, it's about keeping your skin smooth and supple. But it also speaks directly to that demographic of the population that's busy getting their skin inked. After getting a tattoo, caring for your skin as it heals is important, and Aquaphor is the perfect product to use in this case. All of the tattoos are of living creatures, which also adds a layer of meaning to the headline.

I love all the ads in the series, but the one below in particular adds yet another level of meaning. Given that the main ingredient of Aquaphor is petrolatum (known best by the brand name Vaseline) and given the position of the product and the fish, well...yes, and sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. Sure.

A Gay Collection

This lovely little book from 1948 is titled The Bed Side Tales: A Gay Collection. The witty cover, shows a man in bed with a woman tarted up for more athletic bedtime activities — except that he is blind to her supposed charms, lost in a book.

There can be no question that this cover, by Peter Arno, is a wink. While the word "gay" still had not entered the popular language (although it had come to have its homosexual connotation by the 1920s) certainly a cartoonist for the New Yorker would have certainly been aware of what he was doing when he created this book cover.

The stories are a wild collection of fiction from a wide selection of writers from the first half of the 20th Century. Names everyone will recognize: Hemmingway, Dorothy Parker,  S J Perelman, Damon Runyon, H L Mencken and John Steinbeck to name a few. And then some who are less remembered or forgotten: Clarence Day,  Oscar Levant, Corey Ford, Paul Gallico, and Erskine Caldwell.

It's a shame not many people remember Oscar Levant. I remember watching him on Jack Paar. He was unafraid to say caustically funny things on the air:

"Everyone in Hollywood is gay, except Gabby Hayes — and that's because he is a transvestite."

and

"I knew Doris Day before she was a virgin."

But best of all, as a fellow hypochondriac I loved his epitaph:

"I told them I was ill."

I collect New Yorker covers (not those framed reproductions sold on the street, or through the New Yorker Cartoon Bank but actual covers from the magazine's early years. If you follow the link be sure to check out his cover from Roosevelt's 1933 inauguration, it's hilarious.

I still take issue with the fact that subscriber's copies of the New Yorker have an address label that can no longer be peeled off without taking the artwork with it (anyone at Conde Nast listening?). And of course, news stand copies have the dreaded bar code. I have one cover by Arno from the politcal conventions of 1948 . And now, thanks t my friend John in Providence, I have this delightful not-so-little volume with an Arno cover and many funny stories.

Size Queens And Patriots

On the 4th of July, the NY Times reported on the peculiar phenomenon of giant American flags at sporting events. On I95 there is a huge American flag that is tattered and brown that flies over a car dealership. It is so big the wind has to be pretty strong for it to wave. The Times quoted one manufacturer:

"'People go ape when they see it,' said Jim Alexander, a retired Coast Guard commander who runs Superflag, the company that basically invented the industry and once held the world record for the largest flag, which temporarily hung on the Hoover Dam. It was 255 by 505 feet"

Go ape. That is a telling phrase. Lose one's humanity. Behave like an animal. It's no surprise many of these flags are displayed at football games or NASCAR events.

Don't get me wrong. I love this country. But I continue to be appalled at people who put more importance on the symbols and little to no importance on the ideals (or for that matter the Constitution or Bill of Rights).

All this seemed even weirder when I was visiting my old friend John in Providence the weekend they held their Pride Celebration. Knitting Nation, a group founded by a RISD prof, Liz Collins, brought together dozens of knitters to create the country's largest rainbow flag. John and I wandered down to Waterplace Park to watch the people at their machines go at it like a looking-glass version of a New England Mill.

Each colored segment was unrolled on a knoll and sewn to the others as the segments kept coming out of the machines. As this went on, different people read letters, web postings, articles and memoirs of what this symbol meant to them. Love it or hate it. Listening to all those voices was fascinating.

Of course, I don't think Jim Alexander and the NASCAR patriots would take too kindly to knowing that a queer flag was bigger than his. Then again, perhaps this is their misdirected and sublimated size queen thinking. I just want to know who's making all the flag poles.