THE EMAIL SAID, SIMPLY, "HELLO FELLOW TRAVELERS," with a winking emoticon and a link to something called "Big Red Buddha." It could have been anything: a spammy come-on to buy crystals, or some other form of e-flakiness. It happens all the time. But Big Red Buddha is a whole 'nother thing. Just what the Horse had been hoping to see.

Created by "Miso," BRB (now defunct) is a smart, silly, and unafraid new blog. But then, it's more than just a blog; you might have to look at it for a while to figure it out. Think of a fledgling Onion, only for the Buddhist and Buddhist-friendly reader. It's satire, it's parody, it's lovingly irreverent. How could we have not known about this?!?

We had to know more. Thankfully, Miso -- enjoyably frank, funny, and curmudgeonly -- was game.

TWH: How did you come up with the idea for Big Red Buddha?

MISO: [It's inspired by] senryu, actually: a short Japanese verse form. It had the same basic structure as haiku, but was more about people than nature. It was funny, cynical, and a bit sharp-tongued at times. There's not much of that in North American Buddhism, which takes itself very seriously.


Why that name?

Because "Shambhala Sun" and "Tricycle" were already taken. Actually, I have a big statue of Hotei in my home, and he whispered the idea to me one morning. So blame him.


The logo [using Hotei, the "fat Buddha" who is not actually representative of the historical Buddha] seems almost designed to tick off purists. (Not that that's necessarily a bad thing.)

A ticked-off Buddhist is kind of like a "compassionate conservative." I don't run into many of either.


We often run into ticked-off / purist Buddhists. Lucky you.

Okay, I admit to running into a few from time to time. The good news is that ticked-off Buddhists are fairly easy to deal with if you have the proper training:

If you're in a woodland setting, for instance, and are confronted by a ticked-off Buddhist, remember that they are generally shy creatures. Yell, jump up and down, and clap your hands. They'll almost always retreat in confusion. If that doesn't work, it's helpful to remember that we Buddhists are easily distracted. I try to keep a book handy with some exotic teaching by a brand-name Buddhist personality. Just toss it in the direction of a ticked-off Buddhist, and they'll quickly become engrossed in its novelty. Shiny bits of foil may have the same effect. Once the ticked-off Buddhist's attention turns from you, back away slowly. Works like a charm.

[But then] the purist Buddhist is not actually a Buddhist at all, but a member of the Fundamentalist family. Fundamentalists can be venomous, so you have  be careful. The faux Buddhist variety is usually discouraged by a rolled-up newspaper across the snout and a firm "No!" I know this seems cruel, but it's actually the most compassionate response. In extreme cases, you may have to play dead until he or she gets bored and goes elsewhere to spout their opinions. 

(And just FYI, this was the original BRB logo:)

What's your background in Buddhism?

Like most North American Buddhists, my first contact with Buddhism was through Zen. But my practice these days is Theravada. I sit most days, and tend to practice on my own. 


And your background in comedy?

I have been substituting humor for substance most of my adult life.


But seriously: was launching BRB born of a completely fresh impulse, or had you dabbled in comedy before?

I've been involved in Buddhist blogging before, but BRB is a fresh approach. For me, at least.


"Miso." Is that your real name, or a nom de plume? It sounds like it could be a parody Dharma name, like "Tofu Roshi."

Miso is a pen name. Nothing more.


(This is Miso. We think.)

What has the reaction to BRB been like?

Some people find us amusing. We also get our fair share of puzzled or angry email. We published an article called "Dalai Lama Shops Next Incarnation," and you'd have thought we called the Pope a drag queen or something. (That's a good idea for a future article.) But a lot of folks thought the Dalai Lama piece was in very poor taste. His Holiness should always been spoken of in hushed tones, I suppose.

We've also received quite a few notes correcting various errors in our articles, such as the one on Viking Buddhism. We appreciate our readers' willingness to correct us. Preferably in great detail.


So there's room for taboo in Buddhist comedy?

It's comedy that slays a lot of taboos -- because once you laugh at taboo, it loses its power. Don't get me wrong: some stuff should stay taboo -- having cybersex with children, for instance. We need to leave that stuff to the professionals in Congress. But it used to be taboo in the United States to discuss race. How can you make progress on something you can't discuss? Comedy helped break that down. And it's not as if Buddhism doesn't have its own satirical tradition. Buddhism is no respecter of persons, which is one of the things which makes it useful. 


What or who has influenced you in the creation of the BRB style of humor?

We've been compared to the Onion -- though not favorably. Myself, I think this is the era of Real Fake News. Take Jon Stewart, Bill Maher, and Steven Colbert. You get more actual news substance from these three guys than from Charles Gibson, Brian Williams, and Katie Couric. I'd love for BRB to take its rightful place with the news fakers. 


You seem well plugged-in to the blogging world. What are your favorite blogs, and what is it about them?

Well, we list a lot of my personal favorites in our Buddhasphere section on BRB. I think there are two kinds of "Buddhist" blogs. There are blogs about Buddhism, and blogs written by Buddhists. I tend to read the latter: they're often broader and more interesting. Nacho over at Woodmoor Village is a Zen practitioner, but he writes about a lot of different things -- from a Buddhist perspective. Lorianne at Hoarded Ordinaries rarely mentions Buddhism by name, even though she teaches people how to sit. She still has a way of seeing the dharma in nature and our everyday lives. And then you've got great straight-up Buddhist blogs like Think Buddha, which is better written and far more accessible than most of the stuff you see in Tricycle.

Buddhist blogging is an embarrassment of riches these days. Of course, at Big Red Buddha, we're just embarrassing. But that's our karma.


Lastly: how else would you like to see modern Buddhists express themselves? What kind of forum might be missing? (Attending the "Speaking for the Buddha: Buddhism and the Media" conference a couple years back was actually the impetus for creating the Horse; all the "experts" seemed to think that the best thing that Buddhism and the media could do was stay away from each other!)

The cool thing about Buddhism is that we are not required to speak for the Buddha. The dharma is easy to find and speaks for itself -- we couldn't tell a stranger what it means, anyway. The Buddha teaches us to sort it out for ourselves.

Isn't that liberating? We're free -- or we can be, if we wish. Like Al Pacino in Scarface, the world is ours. We're free to go wherever art or technology leads.

Specifically, though, I'm surprised there aren't any Buddhist video bloggers. None that I know, at least. Look at Apple: they're building video cameras into their entire computer line these days. Regular blogging isn't going away, but I think we'll see much more video blogging in the future, and I hope more Buddhists step into that arena.

Right now, we think of our computers as our digital hub. It's where we access web pages, MySpace, YouTube, music, and so on. It's where we get our email and IMs. The next generation of cellphones will begin to liberate these media from their current digital prison. Having been around since the days of dial-up bulletin board systems -- before the Internet as we know it now, with its vast network of tubes -- I can testify to how quickly things change. In ten years, what we are doing at this moment will seem a bit quaint.

We haven't even imagined what's coming. We'll want to be there.



Check out Big Red Buddha here.
You'll find links to all of the blogs Miso discusses in this article on BRB's Buddhasphere page, here.