Russell Brand heads to American TV for the first time with his own FX late-night series, "Brand X" (premieres Thursday, June 28 at 11 p.m. ET). T... Read more: Charlie Sheen, Brand X With Russell Brand, Dalai Lama, Fx, Slideexpand, Russell Brand Fx, Anger Management, Russell Brand, TV Canada, Video, Late Night Tv, Mel Gibson, Stand-Up Comedy, Buddhism, Spirituality, TV ...

Don't look now, but something important just happened on Mad Men. A major character, someone with real talent in the field, just rejected advertising. Someone who happens to be ad guru Don Draper's bright and shiny new wife. Read more: Lsd, Culture News, Matthew Weiner, Tibetan Buddhism, Psychedelic Drugs, Pop Art, Don Draper, Paul McCartney, Zen Buddhism, John Lennon, Beat...

As surely everyone knows, a few days ago President Barack Obama released to the press the long form copy of his birth certificate. The long form had the same information as the short form, which he had released years ago, and reiterated the same truth. Anyone who comprehends that Hawaii is in fact a state in the United States of America knows that same truth -- Barack Obama is a natural b...

Japan, heretofore a land unto itself, soothed by a unique combination of geographic isolation and Zen-Buddhist equanimity, has discovered the world can be kind. If the nation's leaders take this opportunity to encourage citizens to "open up," to emerge from their spiritual shell, Japan will become more confident, more productive and forward leaning. If not, she will retreat even deeper ...

Andrew Bowen, 28, of Lumberton, N.C., is spending the 12 months of 2011 being "spiritually promiscuous," he says with a wry sense of humor. Each month he immerses himself in a different religion, adopting its rites and rituals, learning from its prayers and scriptures, meeting with its believers and sharing what he learns with the world. Bowen calls this yearlong effort "Project Conversi...

Dear Radio Diary: I didn't want to jinx it, so I haven't written about this until now. But seeing as we've just been signed on for another year, here's the scoop: For the past 8 months, I've been producing and co-hosting an hour-long "radio party" that airs on radio stations in LA and Denver and podcast. The show's name is Boomer Alley Radio. The host - aka "my boss" - aka the person...

This interview is part of a series of conversations with faith-inspired activists, based on interviews led by Katherine Marshall for the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs at Georgetown University and the World Faiths Development Dialogue. The full interview can be found here. Since founding Buddhism for Development 20 years ago, Heng Monychenda has trained hundreds of...

"Applied Buddhism" is a surprising label for a school of psychotherapy, but according to the founder of Hakomi this tag fits. Take a man trained in natural science, expose him to eastern religions and to West Coast therapy and, in the hands of Ron Kurtz, the result was Hakomi. Kurtz died recently, after surviving a serious heart attack. "If I get the opportunity," said Kurtz not long ag...

Most martial artists are familiar with the extraordinary powers of the Shaolin monks. They train in the use of 36 weapons, and each monk picks two animal movements and styles to specialize in. (See my previous article "The Transformative Powers of Kung Fu.") When I first watched the mesmerizing DVD "Shaolin: Wheel of Life," I got goosebumps. The monks seemed to be beings of pure spiritu...

In an age when the word "reality" has become synonymous with nasty behaviors on TV shows and "truth" seems impossibly divided between political cults, perhaps we could find a better sense of both in what we lightly call "myth." The tales of the gods and goddesses that we have told ourselves since humanity's first light may seem irrelevant in today's world except as bed-time stories, but t...

One need not journey to the mountains of Afghanistan or Pakistan to discover evil. We have our own home-grown variety of dangerous extremism here in Florida. The Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville, whose pastor Terry Jones has written a book called Islam is of the Devil, believes he is called by God to defeat non-Christians in general, and Muslims in specific. Terry Jones has...

Critical theorist Slavoj Zizek has an interestingly harsh critique of Western Buddhism and the meditation tools it employs. Framing his critique in Marxist terms, he argues that Buddhism is the perfect spiritual tradition to be co-opted by our self-absorbed, destructive, and consumeristic society. For him, Buddhism represents the perfect ideology for passive acquiescence to the world as ...

"You have to know when to kick ass and when to kiss ass." That Tweetable maxim was Leonard Stern's principal advice to me during the six years I worked for him at Village Voice Media. Stern's mega-fortune began with Hartz Mountain, the pet products company he reportedly helped build by pressing supermarket managers to place his wares on the lower shelves "so the dogs can see them." Hi...

Religion comes into conflict with science when it is defined by unprovable claims that can be dismissed as superstitions, and when it treats as historical facts stories that read like legends and myths to non-believers. Other aspects of religion -- what I would consider the deeper and more significant elements -- are not only compatible with science but enrich its findings. The best evi...

Six years ago, the most compelling series in the history of television began after a plane crash when Jack Shepherd opened his eye in a bamboo forest on a Pacific island to see a dog called 'Vincent' running towards him. On Sunday, this most compulsive series in television history ended with Jack Shepherd closing his eye in the same bamboo forest with Vincent next to him on the island. ...

Thich Nhat Hanh (pronounced Tick-Naught-Han), is a Vietnamese Buddhist monk, author, teacher and peace activist. His efforts to generate peace and reconciliation moved Martin Luther King, Jr. to nominate him for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1967 and to call him "an apostle of peace and nonviolence". Nhat Hanh currently lives in Plum Village, a Buddhist meditation practice center and mona...

Last night PBS aired The Buddha, a new TV special about the sage's life, impact, and particular relevance to our own bewildering times of violent change and spiritual confusion. By filmmaker David Grubin, the documentary features the work of some of the world's greatest artists and sculptors, who across two millennia have depicted the Buddha's life through art rich in beauty and complexit...

Last night PBS aired The Buddha, a new TV special about the sage's life, impact, and particular relevance to our own bewildering times of violent change and spiritual confusion. By filmmaker David Grubin, the documentary features the work of some of the world's greatest artists and sculptors, who across two millennia have depicted the Buddha's life through art rich in beauty and complexit...

No, this is not about Beck, Hannity and O'Reilly getting busted by a celestial truth squad. It's about karma on Fox TV. The broadcast network just unveiled Past Life, a one-hour series -- with American Idol as a lead-in, no less -- whose premise hinges on reincarnation. Inspired by a suspense novel by M.J. Rose, the show's main characters are scientists who use insights gleaned from p...