Another fun, busy week in the Buddhoblogosphere, kids! Topics that delight include maitri, Buddhist practice, Nichirin Buddhism, meditation, kittens, a baby, coffee, bees, vegans, Norwegians, poets, Dad, hats, Vegas, fear, money, baseball, Kukai, puffery, Azoth, meat, "Blogging as Spiritual Practice", Trader Joe's, yet more coffee and mayonaisse. Mix it all together, cook it with cream, serve in on skewers and you got Blogmandu.
Practice Helps
Clarity of Clarity’s blog is giving a talk on maitri and shares with readers a bulleted list of notes he amassed.
amanziblog’s amanzi knows that it was and is his Buddhist practice that allows him to be who he is today and appreciate his hard worklife: “The hours I have spent ‘practicing’ (whether I knew I was doing it or not), have enabled me to be who I am today, to do the work I do today, to approach life as I do today. And I am happy to have put in those hours, no matter how deep my confusion or delusion may have been at any point.”
Rev. Ryuei of Ryuei's Blah Blah Blaaaggghhh! tells us how he sees the role of study, faith and practice in Nichiren Buddhism.
Rev. Mugo of Moving Mountains links to a new blog find for B’du, Thole Man, and a recent post by its writer, Norman, “Does Meditation Help?” Here are a couple of the post’s great lines: “The stillness of meditation can be likened to a stone lying on the beach but below the tidal margin. The waves constantly crash over it but when the waves recede, it is still there, a stone.”
Buddhists’ Lives
beesucker of Authentic Personality’s Peaches had kittens! Aren’t they tiny and cute.
Speaking of tiny and cute -- only quite incredibly human, this time – baby Ethan brings joy to moments in the life of Robert of Beginner’s Mind. “…there are times when just curled up on Mommy or Daddy's chest fills all my present requirements. I don't have to have or do anything else, this is just fine as it is, thank you very much.”
Zataod of Zen and the Art of Dreaming is getting a major headache from a first day of leeching caffeine from his system. That morning, he dreamt of bees. [I guess he’s trying to lose his buzz.]
A busy bee is what Mark of Writing to Reach You tells us he is. His life so far this spring? “work hard, play hard”
Carlos Rull in carlosrull.com tells us when he first became a vegan. As guest at a celebration in the Philippines, he was given the honor of slitting the throat of the primary item for the feast. “I couldn’t do it!” he writes, “The pig was squealing and crying the whole time!”
Update from last week: Things turn out well for Nerdine of my world at the moment and the Norwegian Tibet Committee board elections.
Let them read cake: Blogisattva Award-winning Dave of Via Negativa has ambitions to be a more widely read poet. “I want to be able to speak to the concerns of so-called ordinary people - at least, those among them [Note he calls “ordinary people” them, not us. Dave, you snob!] who like to ponder the age-old questions about love, death, the place of humans in the cosmos, the nature of our relationship with the numinous, and [giving a genteel wave of his hand] so forth.”
“I've been getting emails from my Dad lately, which is a little disconcerting because he passed away last month.” writes Shokai of Water Disolves Water. And then there’s the interesting matter of the picture of his father in the Lanikai Canoe Club t-shirt.
Cliff of This is this waxes heady about chapeaus in a post called “Hats All for Now.” “If a friend below the age of 60 comes up to you and you've never seen [him] in a hat before, I bet you think, ‘Oh, look, it's Steve. In a hat.’” writes Cliff. But Cliff, well under 60 himself, buys a cap, which makes a keen fashion statement, but Cliff doesn’t want to be keen. Cliff parts from us with these breezy words: “Take care everyone, I'm going away for a while to watch the wind get lost.” Hat’s entertainment!
Justin of American Buddhist Perspective is on the road. His post on Tuesday was from Las Vegas. Unless he leaves there with only his skivvies and toothbrush and has to walk home to Montana, he is traveling to LA and then up the Left Coast, luxuriating in the land’s advanced spiritual sensibilities and modern conveniences. Ahhh, California – the ultimate paradise.
Interesting Topics
A Musing Taoist's Qalmlea explores Fear. “They say that it's not the pain that bothers us so much as the fear of the pain. But even then it's not so much the fear as the avoidance of the fear.”
Either a lender or a borrower be. amanzi of amanziblog has started a group called ‘Buddhist Lenders’ at prosper.com. So, if you’re a middle-way man (or woman) wanting to avoid the middleman charges of corporate financial institutions, write amanzi or visit his group site.
Robert of Beginner’s Mind is looking for Joe Torre-wannabes for a Yahoo Fantasy Baseball league he hopes to start. C'mon, play ball! And bring your own steroids.
Jayarava has been discussing his very favorite historical Buddhist in two of his blogs, The Jayarava Rave and Bricolage. In Rave, Jayarava tells us that in the year 804, Kukai was a bit of a Japanese outlaw when he managed, by pluck, luck and charm, to get to China and, from there, get posted to one of its great temples which had a huge library in the capital city of Chung-an. In no time, Kukai returned to Japan with “a boatload of new scriptures, images and artifacts, but also with a new language and script, and with a new form of Buddhism.” All this helped to transform Japan. In Bricolage, Jayarava writes about a virtual rendition of the ancient city of Chung-an at the National Unitversity of Singapore and a film about Kukai.
Jigdral Dawa writes a long, helpful post about battling puffery in The Pagan Bodhisattva.
Our now-novelist friend Moose, The Contemporary Taoist, tells us about Azoth, the One Thing.
George of Sentient Developments writes about the end of meat as we now know it. “The science of tissue engineering and the development of in vitro meat may one day, hopefully, result in the end of livestock,” he writes. “In vitro meat, referred to by some as laboratory-grown meat, is animal flesh that has never been part of a complete, living animal.
“…scientists can grow frog and mouse meat in the lab, and are now working on pork, beef and chicken. Their goal is to develop an industrial version of the process in five years. It will be at that point that we can say a viable threat exists to the ongoing presence of animal farming. And at the very least it will certainly make the presence of livestock that much less justifiable.”
Blogging as Spiritual Practice (con’d from last week)
Jigdral Dawa of The Pagan Bodhisattva joins the conversation on Blogging as Spiritual Practice, writing…
One person's insights aren't as important as the network of insights. In other words, we can all be teachers - from the most enlightened among us down to the rankest spiritual amateur. This is the social dimension of spirituality taken to a new, exhilarating level.Perhaps that's what Coolmel - er, C4 is feeling in his recent "rush" of blogging. Let's hope for all of our sakes that it is. …While Jigdral spots the verdant plain in Blogistan, Vincent and C4 may have ventured off to the silliness of a bog and high, windy mountain.
Christianity inevitably brought on its opposite, Satanism; Blogging-Flow Spirituality now has its. Vincent of the well-titled blog Numinous Nonsense sits in a white pool of malaise*. “…the ephemeral, transient, and constantly fluxing nature of blogxistence has got me down.” he writes.
Sinking even deeper into the angsty, sticky pond, Vince writes, “I’m surrendering to the lack of inherent meaning that not even this blog can solve. If anything it’s a salve, a temporary resolution to a problem that can’t be solved. Or rather, a problem that can be solved only via death of the blogger.” THEN, in his very next post, feeling a tad perkier, Vincent shows off that he is a whiz at speedy typing. That Vince!
Meantime, the Mel Man, or ~C4Chaos, as he now prefers to be called, screams his creedo -- as if it were an exploding yellow roman candle -- into the black inkless firmament of cyberspace. Fifty years ago, similar words might have been forthcoming from a goateed fellow named Maynard, accompanied by bongo drums in a coffee bar. Today, tapped out on a keyboard in a Starbucks, no doubt, come stirring phases, that much better to mix the cream. [I have taken the liberty of repositioning Ceefour’s words from his post in C4Chaos.com to better suit the appearance of the blank-verse poetry that it is.]
I have no grand illusions
of claiming that blogging
can catapult anyone into
awakening.
I have already stated my belief
when it comes to enlightenment!
My path is via SERENDIPITY
and NOT
sitting
in LOTUS under a FREAKIN’ TREE!
I respect your path,
and I bow down to the Buddha-nature in you,
but I tried it
and it
DOES NOT
work for me. Dig?Recommendations
beesucker of Authentic Personality recommends a Yoga Blog, told from a teacher’s perspective.
~C4Chaos of ~C4Chaos.com [formerly coolmel of coolmel.com] recommends that instead of saying perspective we say beer-goggles.
Sooo. Let me try that first item in this section again: beesucker of Authentic Personality recommends a Yoga Blog, told from a teacher’s beer-goggles.
Chase of Cut to the Chase writes, “What a wonderful discovery: I was elated when I found The Buddha Project. It’s a collection of photographs of Buddha that people submit. I can’t wait to take some of my own.”
In a second post, Cut to the Chase’s Chase is also keen on Trader Joe’s.
Amadeus of DharmaVision finds a Buddha that lights up when stuck in your car’s cigarette lighter. He writes that it would be especially helpful for the B’du reporter.
Ian of Jinajik links us to the Dharmapedia, or RangjungYesheWiki, a wikipedia that strives to aid in the translation of the Tibetan Buddhist canon to English.
Find the human bean. [A riddle, puzzle, bit of fun. A tool for analyzing the development of the right side of your brain. A post by Terry of More coffee, less dukkha.]
Quote of the Week
Posted by Jigdral Dawa in The Pagan Bodhisattva this week. Your errant B’du reporter will try to take this one to heart.
Focus, not on the rudenesses of others,
not on what they've done or left undone,
but on what you have & haven't done yourself.
- The Dhammapada, Verse 50 (tr. Thanissaro Bikkhu)
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* I sometimes confuse this word with mayonnaise.
Technorati Tags: Buddhism, Zen, blogging, blog carnival, blangha
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You can contact Blogmandu Reporter at this address: tarmstrong /att\ zenunbound \periedd/ com Be advised that I have plenty of vitamins, porn, Viagra, and money given to me by relatives of dead Nigerian royalty. Please don't write me about any of that.
