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Thread: Zen/Buddhist brand names

  1. #16
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    thong & more!

    Zen thong


    And this one, you just gotta click the link and see: Tenga 3D Zen WARNING: NSFW
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  2. #17
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    I'm not going to be able to best the products in the previous post

    But I'll still add to this thread. Here's an Indian Zen smart phone.

    Festive season at R 7999 with Zen UltraTab A900
    Dailybhaskar.com | Nov 07, 2012, 15:41PM IST



    Zen mobiles, the Indian company known for selling phones with better battery life and good sound quality has released another tablet device this week. The new Zen Ultra Tab A900 is the latest in the series, which is now available at a decent price of Rs 7999. At this price it makes a perfect gift to your child this festive season, which will not make a big dent in your pocket.

    The tablet is a 9 inch device with a TFT capacitive multi touch display screen. The screen supports 800 by 480 pixel resolution. The weight is on a high side, it is about 513 grams. The internal memory of the phone is 4 GB and the RAM is 512 MB. In case you need you can always expand the memory Expandable Memory up to 32GB

    The tablet runs the Android 4.0 Ice cream sandwich operating system on a 1.5 GHz Cortex A9 processor. It has got a 1.3 megapixel front camera and supports multiple forms of image formats, audio and audio-visual files.

    The connectivity is provided through 3G dongle or data card, Wi-Fi, Ethernet support and USB. You get more than 30 pre installed customized apps with the tablet to add to the fun of the festive season. The battery is the most exciting part- a 4000 mAh Battery which is very good for a continuous 8 hours of Internet surfing and 4 hours of video playback when using earphones.
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  3. #18
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    The Zen Hotel

    This is on the peninsula, not far from my home (so I'd never stay there).

    The Zen Hotel
    Gene Ching
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  4. #19
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    ttt 4 2014 (just in time!)

    I forgot about this thread. Then, just the other day, I saw a license plate frame that said Zen Auto and my mind was confabulated with potential Zen vehicle puns.

    Then I read this article:

    Startups fighting over the word 'zen’
    By Kristen V. Brown
    Updated 2:25 pm, Friday, December 19, 2014


    Photo: Paul Chinn
    We looked at come of the largest public offerings in the past 12 months. Zendesk's new office building is seen in San Francisco, Calif. on Tuesday, July 8, 2014. The new offices at 1019 Market Street adds additional space for as many as 460 employees with 250 already occupying the 7-story building. **MANDATORY CREDIT FOR PHOTOG AND SF CHRONICLE/NO SALES-MAGS OUT-TV OUT**


    Zen is having a moment, in the tech world at least. For starters, there is Zenefits, the benefits startup; Zenfolio for photo hosting; and ZenPayroll for, well, payroll.

    So many startups now include the word “zen” in their name that Zendesk, the cloud customer support company, felt forced to do something decidedly un-zen about it. The 7-year-old San Francisco company has filed nearly three dozen proceedings with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to block other tech companies from using the word “zen.”

    There may not be enough zen to go around.

    The tech world is known for its bizarre naming trends — as affordable URLs and untrademarked names have dwindled in supply, dropped vowels (Tumblr), odd suffixes (Storify) and bizarre compound words (Pinterest) have proliferated.

    Zen, meanwhile, manages to communicate a lot with just three letters.

    “It’s just a beautiful, small word,” said David Placek, founder of the naming company Lexicon Branding. “It has great structure, it’s easy to pronounce and it easily communicates a great metaphor, especially when you’re talking about companies that do things like payroll or accounting.”

    Joshua Reeves, the CEO of ZenPayroll, said that the company was looking for a name that communicated the company’s goals of making payroll a simple, “peaceful” process for small businesses, rather than the headache it more often is.

    In his new book “Startupland,” Zendesk CEO Mikkel Svane describes how the company’s founders settled on its name.

    “Our philosophy was to be elegant and bring peace of mind to customer support in an enlightened way,” he wrote. “Zen was enlightenment — Zendesk.”

    That, and the domain name would cost them only $1,000.

    Zen, of course, refers to a school of Buddhism formalized in China during the sixth century.

    But ever since ’60s hippie culture popularized the term in the U.S., it has widely been used to refer to more than just a religious practice. Longtime NBA coach and executive Phil Jackson is often referred to by his nickname, the “Zen Master.”

    Hard to pin down

    “There are so many associations now. It’s hard to really pin down exactly what zen means today,” said James Robson, a Buddhism scholar at Harvard University. “Each generation kind of fills the word with its own meaning.”

    “The tech company appropriation of zen is just the most recent iteration of a phenomena that has been going on for a very long time.”

    Nancy Friedman, a branding consultant who chronicles zen company names on Pinterest, pointed out that business jargon is filled with religious language, like the word “brand evangelist.”

    Tech lingo is particularly laden with “zen” references. Take the term “zenmail,” a once-buzzy word for e-mails that include only a subject line. Or Zen Coding, a widely used Web programming plug-in.

    “Zen has been used in tech for a long time,” said Friedman. “It seems like people in the West feel OK appropriating Eastern religion without the fear of seeming sacrilegious.”

    There are presently 724 live trademarks containing the word “zen” registered with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

    For Zendesk, ideas associated with zen are now deeply ingrained in the company’s culture and branding. The company mascot is a laughing Buddha, dubbed “The Mentor,” who wears a telephone headset. In its old Market Street headquarters, Asian-inspired green lotus leaves hung over employees’ desks.

    The company says it has reason to be protective of its name.

    “We first established the Zendesk brand in 2007, and it’s been tremendously valuable for us,” the company said in a statement to The Chronicle. “We have obviously noticed the proliferation of Zen names in business technology and services and it does concern us because of the likelihood that it will create confusion among customers and prospective customers.”

    Trademark protections

    It is not unusual for brands to aggressively protect trademarks — recently the fast-food chain Chick-fil-A tried to stop a Vermont kale enthusiast from registering the phrase “Eat More Kale,” claiming it was too similar to its trademarked “Eat Mor Chikin” slogan.

    Zendesk claims that it only seeks to obstruct other companies from adding zen to their name when it could “create a genuine likelihood of confusion with our well-known brand.”

    During the past few years, it has filed proceedings against ZenPayroll, ZenCash, Zenware, Zenbillings, Zendo and Zendeals, among others.

    Mark Lemley, a trademark expert at Stanford Law School, said that as a business-to-business company, Zendesk could have a hard time proving its customers might genuinely accidentally purchase ZenPayroll’s software for payroll instead of its own customer service software.

    “It will have a hard time opposing marks that share only the word zen in common (like, say, Zenefits),” he said.

    In some cases, the companies Zendesk has sought to block have just given up, like the startup Zenbillings, which renamed itself Simplero because it lacked funding to pay trademark attorneys to plead its case.

    Zendesk recently sought to obstruct one trademark and cancel another owned by ZenCash, an invoice management startup. ZenCash is even one of Zendesk’s customers.

    “We don’t do anything competitive with them,” said CEO Brandon Cotter. “Zendesk is bullying all of the zen companies. Which is a little ironic.”

    Then again, zen may not be so great of a company name, after all.

    “I’m not so sure it’s really good to use in a name anymore,” said Placek, the naming expert. “There is so much zen clutter.”

    Kristen V. Brown is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: kbrown@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @kristenvbrown
    It was all very 'zen' (yea, just be thankful I didn't go for those vehicle puns...)
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  5. #20
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    Remember, your enlightenment is not authentic unless you masturbate with the zen fleshlight™.

    Yeesh, no really I'm seriously of the mind that many marketeers are just mentally ill. lol
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  6. #21
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    Slightly OT

    ...but oh so worthy of this here thread.

    Kyoto confectioner selling hemp-infused Buddha head chocolates
    Casey Baseel10 hours ago



    If you’ve got such a powerful sweet tooth that you worship chocolate, these might be just the treats for you.

    Being located in Kyoto, Japan’s center of traditional culture, you might imagine chocolate specialist Cacao Magic’s offerings to have an elegant air to them. You’d be right, too, as the confectioner’s sweets are designed to be a treat for the eyes as well as the palate.

    You may also expect Cacao Magic to produce some uniquely Japanese chocolates, and again you’d be right. While most of its candies take the orthodox forms of hearts, squares, and discs, you’ll also find something called the amasumi butsuda in the product lineup. “Butsuda” means “head of the Buddha,” and that’s exactly what they look like, as you can see in the photo above.

    But butsuda is only half of the name, and thus half of the story, of amasumi butsuda. “Sumi” means “charcoal,” and while they may not be such a common seasoning in Western cuisine, it’s not an entirely unprecedented flavoring in Japan.

    What is unusual though, even by Japanese standards, is the “ama” portion of amasumi” which means “hemp.”

    Yes, mixed in with the chocolate used to make amasumi butsuda is a measure of hemp charcoal. Given the stringent anti-drug stance taken by both Japanese law and culture at large, it’s unlikely that eating amasumi butsuda will cause any of the narcotic effects associated with other uses of the herb.

    ▼ It’s also worth noting that Cacao Magic is neither a head shop nor specifically courting the stoner crowd, as the rest of its extensive catalogue of chocolates is entirely hemp-free.


    Instead, Cacao Magic simply states that the special ingredient adds “a deep flavor” to the dark chocolate from which the tiny heads are shaped.

    If you’re interested in finding out just what exactly that deep flavor is, Cacao Magic is currently taking preorders for amasumi butsuda through its website here, with prices starting at 1,500 yen (US$12.50) for a pack of three.

    Source: Hachima Kiko
    Images: Cacao Magic (edited by RocketNews24)
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  7. #22
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    Slightly OT

    I just had to post this somewhere here today. There is a 'vehicle' pun to be made here.

    Zen-sational: Toyota creates Buddhism-inspired wooden car
    Last Updated: 05/04/2016
    Toyota has unveiled a unique new concept ahead of this year's Milan Design Week, an electric roadster manufactured entirely of wood and inspired by Zen philosophy.
    Ryan McElroy



    Although these days carbon fibre and lightweight aluminium are the de rigeur materials for carmakers, Toyota is to unveil a new concept car made only of wood.

    The Japanese manufacturer has built its unique concept, called the Setsuna and due to debut at the upcoming Milan Design Week, from 86 hand-crafted panels of cedar mounted on a birch frame.

    Built using a traditional Japanese joinery technique known as ‘okuriari’, the car uses no nails or screws and instead relies on perfectly carved joints to maintain its structural integrity.



    28mph top speed

    Crafted to look like an old open-top roadster, the Setsuna is powered by six electric batteries, which give it a range of up to 16 miles and a top speed of a rather placid 28mph.

    However, speed wasn’t the object of the concept’s design according to Kenji Tsuji, the Setsuna’s lead designer; instead, it’s supposed to make its driver feel more connected to the car.

    He said: “When we created the Setsuna, we envisaged a family pouring its love into it over generations so that the car gains an irreplaceable value.



    Unique hand-crafted design

    “Continuous development is possible in the form of bonds between the car and the family, like the growth rings of a tree.”

    Durable but prone to change over time, the wooden car concept is meant to demonstrate the developing relationships between people, their cars and each other, Toyota added.

    The name itself, Setsuna, is designed to express the Buddhist concept of time and is intended to remind its owner to live every moment to its fullest potential.



    Zen-inspired concept

    Even the dash-mounted dial counts time in hours, days and years up to 100 years in the future, designed as a Zen exercise to encourage the driver to value the experience of driving rather than just clocking up the miles.

    Unfortunately, as cool as it is, the Setsuna has been built exclusively for Milan Design Week and is not authorised for road use, so don’t expect to see one parked in your driveway any time soon.
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  8. #23
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    even motorcycles are zen

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    This is a zen motorcycle.
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  9. #24
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    Oh WTH? A bidet? srsly?

    Zen Bidet



    Clean never felt so fresh!
    Never mind bringing Xmas back. I want to see a toilet plunger brand called "Christ".

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  10. #25
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    Quote Originally Posted by GeneChing View Post
    Never mind bringing Xmas back. I want to see a toilet plunger brand called "Christ".

    "Christ! My arse is clean!" Christ™ Bidets, flush the sin away!


    couldn't find the plungers man.
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  11. #26
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    Zen Berry Hard Cider

    Zen Berry? WTH?

    Streetwise: Point Brewery rolls out Zen Berry for Ciderboys
    Nathan Vine, USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin Published 8:33 a.m. CT Oct. 19, 2017 | Updated 8:40 a.m. CT Oct. 19, 2017




    (Photo: Courtesy of Stevens Point Brewery)

    STEVENS POINT - The Stevens Point Brewery has released Zen Berry as the newest offering from Ciderboys, its line of hard ciders.

    Available in six packs of 12-ounce bottles and on draft, Zen Berry is a limited edition release that will be available through Nov. 30 or as supplies last, according to the Ciderboys’ website.

    According to a release, Zen Berry “combines the sweetness of apple cider with the fruity tartness of boysenberry, a hybrid of raspberry, European blackberry, and American dewberry first developed in California in the 1920s.”

    The Ciderboys’ lineup includes year-round offerings First Press, Strawberry Magic and British Dry. Seasonal offerings include Grand Mimosa, Cranberry Road, Raspberry Smash, Pineapple Hula, Peach County, and Mad Bark.

    For more information about the Ciderboys, please visit www.ciderboys.com or call 1-800-369-4911.

    See something? Say something. Bug reporter Nathan Vine with news at 715-345-2252 or nvine@gannett.com; on Twitter: @NathanAVine.
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  12. #27
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    Generation ZEN

    Not really a brand per se. More of a label. A crappy label at that. Zen is calm, but not relaxed in a easy way.

    Chinese 'Generation Zen' millennials choosing smartphones over communist values


    Chinese millennials are said to be shunning Communist party values CREDIT: JOHANNES EISELE/ AFP
    Jamie Fullerton, xiamen
    3 JANUARY 2018 • 4:13PM

    China’s ruling communist party is concerned that swathes of politically apathetic millennials, branded the ‘Zen-generation’, are sauntering through life in a passive and unpatriotic way - raising doubts about their loyalty to the Chinese Communist Party.

    In the past few months the buzzphrase ‘Zen-generation’, based on the Buddhist notion of a relaxed, Zen attitude, has gone viral online. It is used to describe young Chinese who choose easy, often low-paid careers ahead of challenging, higher-paid roles and eschew the often demanding social pressures of Chinese society.

    They are generally born after 1990 and are defined by having a blasé attitude to jobs, politics, and pretty much anything else in life.

    With the Chinese Communist Party (CPC) currently on a drive to shore up party loyalty, one of its media outlets, Youth.cn, has dubbed this trend a “total tragedy”. As well as a lack of political loyalty, the state-controlled newspaper The Global Times added that there was concern that such attitudes could hold back Chinese society in the long term.

    Members of ‘Zen-generation’, according to the newspaper, “are seemingly fine with anything that happens to them. They are not inspired by any patriotic drive or the Party's political catchphrases. They are simply indifferent.

    “In other words, there are few things they care about. Be it missing the bus, getting turned down for a promotion or failing to find a spouse, they simply shrug and move on.”

    The Global Times quoted a 23 year-old graduate named Xiaoyue, who identified as a Zen-generation member, as saying her attitude to life "is a bit different from pessimism.”

    She added: "I feel it tiring to compete with others or strive, for whatever it may be in life. We just don't have big ambitions; we don't want to be number one. We are happy with an average life, and we are optimistic.”

    Xiaoyue said she turned down a well-paid position in favour of an easier life in the civil service, and stayed single to avoid "troublesome" relationships, according to the paper.

    In response to the phrase going viral, Youth.cn, the mouthpiece of China’s Communist Youth League, ran an article with the headline "So-called 'Zen-generation' are a total tragedy for youth.”

    The website said: "Only when the young have ambitions and are responsible can a nation have prospects." It added that young people should "pursue their dreams with sweat and to always fight for their family and their country."

    Many members of ‘Zen-generation’ embrace the term, buying clothes with the phrase written on them. Some believe their lifestyles are reactions to the salary-obsessed mentality that instilled in much of Chinese society, and its cutthroat graduate jobs market.

    The Global Times said: “Some say this new trend is a passive reaction against the rapid reforms, changes and developments of modern-day Chinese society, which has made many young adults feel ‘helpless’ and ‘left behind’. Rather than fight against it, these Buddha-like youngsters resignedly accept their lot in life.”

    Of equal concern to the party is these people not engaging with the CPC’s varied attempts to advertise communist ideals to China’s younger generations. In the last year the party has used rap videos, matchmaking events and concerts by hologram-rendered virtual pop stars to promote itself.

    However, the growth of party membership figures has been slowing. In 2015, 965,000 members joined the party, the lowest growth figure since 2012, making the total amount around 89 million.

    The decline in growth cannot simply be put down to a lack of interest, however. President Xi Jinping, who took power in 2012, has overseen a huge crackdown corruption that has seen many officials purged from the party. He has also asked for the party to only keep “quality” members.
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  13. #28
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    Zen/Buddhist brand names

    This article got me thinking about our old Zen/Buddhist brand names thread. The photo in the article is NOT the Vegas bar and sushi joint, but classic beloved watering hole in SF Chinatown. Haven't been there in years. Fond memories of that place. Any of the SF members here know what I'm talking about.

    For that reason alone, I'm launching a new Buddha Bar thread.

    Does Buddhism Need a Blasphemy “Army”?
    An organization that combats “profane” depictions of the Buddha raises questions about disrespect, appropriation, and policing others’ behavior.
    By Matthew Gindin JUL 03, 2018


    A Buddha Bar in San Francisco. Photo by Thomas Hawk | https://tricy.cl/2u0Hpc8

    When I was a monk in the Thai Forest tradition, I took a meditative camping trip to the mesas of Southwestern Utah along with a group of mostly Thai monks. This occasioned a drive through Las Vegas, where we passed a billboard advertising a sushi restaurant called Buddha Bar, whose ad campaign featured an image of the Buddha along with lingerie-clad waitresses offering trays of drinks. “Ai!” cried one of the Thai monks, followed by several other exclamations of discomfort and indignation. It wasn’t the presence of the erotic that disturbed us (nude or erotic imagery can be found in Thai temples, too), but rather the use of Buddhist imagery for such crass commercial purposes.

    In the Thai tradition, Buddha images, along with other embodiments of the dharma like stupas, relics, and sacred texts, are treated with the utmost respect. They are always placed highest in the room. One does not point one’s feet toward them. And one should never sit on them, put their images on secular clothing, or use them for commercial purposes. Yet such “profane” uses of sacred Buddhist objects or imagery have become common in North America and Europe. And Asian Buddhists have noticed.

    The Knowing Buddha Organization (KBO) was formed in Thailand in 2012 to combat global disrespect toward Buddhist imagery. The KBO—which boasted 5,000 members in 2016, according to a study by religious studies scholar Michael Jerryson—has been rapidly growing and is now even receiving support from the Thai government. The group has pressured manufacturers in France and the Netherlands to remove decorative Buddha images from toilets and caused Maxim magazine to cancel a photo shoot in the US that featured buddhas. They have also created an online guide to avoid showing disrespecting to Buddha images, making such suggestions as greeting one with a wai (hands pressed together in respect), not placing Buddha images on the lower part of the body or in the low parts of a room, not decorating mundane objects with them, not featuring them in tattoos, and not selling them as merchandise.

    “We speak out to protect Buddhism by giving correct knowledge on proper treatments [sic] to Buddha images and symbols,” reads the KBO website. “In recent years, Buddha images and statues have been used as ‘Buddhist Art’ for decorations—such as furniture, rather than as a remembrance of his compassion with respect and gratitude.”

    But are such concerns with the way people treat Buddha statues Buddhist? In the Brahma Net Sutta (DN 1), the Buddha says, “Monks, if others were to speak in dispraise of me, in dispraise of the dhamma, or in dispraise of the sangha, neither hatred nor antagonism nor displeasure of mind would be proper. If others were to speak in dispraise of me . . . and at that you would be upset and angered, that would be an obstruction for you yourselves.”

    In other words, being upset about or monitoring others’ respect toward the Triple Gem can interfere with our practice.

    In addition to concerns over the obstacles that our anger can create, the KBO’s campaigns may strike some people as uncomfortably reminiscent of violent protests over cartoons of Mohammed or Hindu riots in India against perceptions of Muslims disrespecting sacred sites or religious rules. Although KBO is explicitly nonviolent, at their annual thousand-strong marches down Khaosan Road in Bangkok, they identify themselves as a “Dharma Army” (kawngtaptham)—which is likely to provoke unease in some observers.

    On the other hand, it is admittedly curious that in a time when there is a passionate debate about cultural appropriation and someone can get mobbed online for wearing a Chinese dress to a prom, no concern over the insensitive appropriation of Buddhist imagery seems to have arisen in the public sphere. There may be several factors behind this: a more laissez-faire attitude toward religious imagery in the largely secular West, an ignorance of the vocabulary of respect with which traditional Buddhists treat such images, or a perception that Buddhists would be easygoing about such things.

    Although customs about what constitutes respect and disrespect will differ among cultures and lineages, traditions around the world believe in the importance of showing respect for the Triple Gem—the Buddha, the dharma [Buddhist teachings], and the sangha [the community of practitioners]. In this view, disrespect of the Triple Gem has negative spiritual consequences—it creates bad karma. In most cases, however, Buddhists trust the law of karma to work out the consequences of disrespect, and don’t police others’ respect themselves.

    Nothing in the Brahma Net Sutta mitigates against the KBO’s campaign to educate people in how to respect Buddhist sentiments and avoid cultural appropriation and insensitivity, although it also suggests such activities carry dangers for those pursuing them. The sutta reminds us that such activities should always be carried out without anger or ill-feeling, and in ways that don’t pose obstacles to our actual practice of the dharma. According to the study by the religious studies scholar Jerryson, Acharavadee Wongsakon, the Thai entrepreneur who founded KBO, made the following reassuring statement at a 2016 march: “With a campaign of over a thousand people, this army does not possess guns or swords. It has no malice or any hidden ill-intent.”

    Nevertheless, the secretariat of KBO in 2016, Sayan Chueyuksorn, remarked to Jerryson that he agreed with Sri Lanka’s deportation of tourists for having Buddha tattoos as well as Myanmar’s jailing a bar owner and manager for featuring a Buddha wearing headphones, saying that KBO hoped and expected Thai laws to move in that direction. Faced with the prospect of people facing the real world violence of jail time or deportation for conceptual violence against mere symbols, it would seem wiser for Buddhists to lean err on the side of tolerance as a prophylaxis against sliding into strong-arming others in the name of Buddha.

    The last time I was in Vegas, no longer a monk but passing through with my wife and son, Buddha Bar and its like-minded confrere, Little Buddha Restaurant, were both gone. The Buddha warned us not to speculate over the specific workings of karma, so I’ll refrain, but the law of impermanence was clearly manifest.


    Matthew Gindin is a journalist and meditation teacher in Vancouver, British Columbia. A former monk in the Thai Forest tradition, he is the author of Everyone in Love: The Beautiful Theology of Rav Yehuda Ashlag.
    Gene Ching
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  14. #29
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    I almost never get offended at exploitation or appropriation anymore.
    Most times, it's bemusing, sometimes it's hilarious, otherwise, no matter what, it's temporary.
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  15. #30
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    Zen Party Mix

    Quote Originally Posted by David Jamieson View Post
    I almost never get offended at exploitation or appropriation anymore.
    Most times, it's bemusing, sometimes it's hilarious, otherwise, no matter what, it's temporary.
    Don't get me wrong with this. I'm not offended. I'm more amused. But being Buddhist myself, I do like to point out the inequality by swapping these zen/buddhist brand names with christian/jew/muslim names.

    Right now, I'm indulging in some Zen Party Mix for my office desk snack. It's not bad really, except for the title that sounds like the worse meditation music mix ever.

    ZEN PARTY MIX



    The perfect blend of nuts and crackers combine to make a great snack mix with our Zen Party Mix. Tasty sesame sticks along with roasted peanuts, chili crackers, paprika, garlic powder, onion powder, and tamari roasted almonds all combine to make a light and healthy snack mix perfect for all types of parties. They are also great after a long day on the trail and enjoying the campfire. Kosher Parve (no Dairy).
    But I must confess, it's good marketing. I only got this because of the name. And I might even get it again.
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