Last Sunday's New York Times Magazine featured an interview with Columbia religion professor, Dalai Lama friend, and famous person spawner Robert Thurman. Thurman, who was the first American ordained as a Tibetan monk (and a Harvard man himself), is on university leave this year but normally teaches classes on Buddhism.

At first, the interview seems to be standard fare -- thank you, New York Times, for hard-hitting journalism along the lines of:

As a Buddhist, how do you reconcile your pacifism with the roles your daughter Uma has played in films like Quentin Tarantino’s bloody “Kill Bill”?

But then something really fascinating and bizarre emerges. Follow the jump for an image that will sear itself into your brain.

What do you think about when you meditate? Usually, some form of trying to excavate any kind of negative thing cycling in the mind and turn it toward the positive. For example, when I am annoyed with Dick Cheney, I meditate on how Dick Cheney was my mother in a previous life and nursed me at his breast.

You mean you fantasize about being breast-fed by Dick Cheney? It’s a fantasy of releasing fear and developing affection. It’s a way of coming back to feeling grateful toward him and seeing his positive side, finding the mother in Dick Cheney.

Life is suffering indeed.

UPDATE: Looks like The Bwog got an intrepid reader to Photoshop a picture of Thurman suckling at Dick Cheney's teat. If you would like to have nightmares forevermore, you can see it here. (Also, why have we never noticed the resemblance between Dick Cheney and Bill Gates?)

Robert Thurman in the Magazine of Record [The Bwog]
Uma Thurman [IMDb]
Questions for Robert Thurman: Seeing the Light [New York Times]