Happy birthday, Inquiring Mind! The Bay Area journal is throwing a daylong 25th anniversary party / benefit at Spirit Rock on July 21st, according to the Berkeley Daily Planet. There’ll be music, auctions, a lot of great guests, and all kinds of stuff, so if you’re in Marin County, swing by and help celebrate a great publication.

germany.gifSeems like the Dalai Lama is more popular than the Pope in Germany. And the Pope’s a hometown boy, too. I bet the Dalai Lama is more popular than most people, most places. Scientology is illegal in Germany. I wonder what they think of The Secret?

For you Buddhist Celebrity watchers out there, Jet Li makes some oblique references to his Buddhist beliefs in an interview about his upcoming movie with Jackie Chan. (Jet says Jackie is a very nice guy, and even fetched some bug spray when mosquitoes attacked the production.)

Bangladesh is donating a Buddha-hair relic to Sri Lanka. Bangladesh of course has a very small Buddhist community. In other relic-related news, experts say the Buddha’s Tooth in Singapore is more likely from a cow. Oh well. But if we listened to these “experts” all the time, where would we be? We’d all be walking tightropes about what we can eat and say and do, and there’s a new expert born every day.

In the blog world, Terry at More coffee, less dukkha (the best-named blog, topped only by That was Zen, This is Tao) listens to Philip Glass’s Satyagraha, and Indranet talks about dualism. Something about Indranet, I don’t know if it’s the tone or the layout or what, is very calming. Check it out, you’ll see.

– Philip Ryan, Webmaster