Friday, March 4, 2011

Arj Barker Sickest Buddhist

http://www.yogadork.com/news/viral-yoga-arj-barker-sickest-buddhist-in-the-ass-shram-parody-video/
I found this video from the article - but its also on you tube.

Questions 2&3 Buddhism



2. This video is a perfect example of a stereotype. The man who made this video is Arj Barker who is an actor on the show Flight of the Conchords. He made this video about Buddhists and what they spend their time doing all day – the article I found on it said, “Arj Barker has got your heap of piping hot fashion Buddhist stereotyped on a platter”. In the video he is suppose to be portrayed as the sickest Buddhist in all his krunk and kombucha glory as the lines say in the song.  This is not necessarily a bad stereotype but it’s definitely not accurate. In this song he talks about how all the ladies want to meditate with him and how his clothes smell like incense. Also he jokes about being krunked up on kombucha, which actually has fermented alcohol in it. But with lots of antioxidants it’s actually raw and extremely good for you. Unfortunately Lindsay Lohan got a DUI last year for drinking too much kombucha and it got taken off the she for a while. I think that may have been were the drunk kombucha stereotype came from.  It really stinks were the media focuses so severely on famous people because half the time they are complete idiots.
3.Brad Warner talks about in chapter 5 if Buddhism really exists in the west. He goes on to say, “In the time I’d been away in Japan, though, Buddhism had become all the rage in America. But the stuff I’d been reading on the Internet and in magazines, and the things I’d been hearing from Americans who came to my Zen classes in Tokyo, had me wondering just what it was that they were calling ‘Buddhism’ back in my homeland”(26).  He said that most of the time it really was unrelated to what he had been studying and practicing for the past two decades. The idea of drugs he says was a stereotype that Americans gotten from who knows where. The media also had a wrong depiction of the typical Buddhist, which can stray people from how they really are.  It seems the stereotypes Brad talks about in this book are very similar to the ones made in the video. For example how the drug stereotype relates to the alcohol stereotype. Brad also talks about how some Buddhists are scams and is claiming to be Buddhist teachers but really aren’t.  This is very interesting to me because the whole idea of being a Buddhist is to not have an ego and be help and teach the ways of Buddhism but if people are faking this and using it for the wrong reasons is really disturbing!  I’m really enjoying Brads book and I can’t wait to read what else he had to say about his teachings and experiences.