Monday, August 28, 2006

Roundup for Aug 28, 2006

A Quicky Roundup of recent interesting posts in the Buddhoblogosphere …

David Brazier [aka, Dharmavidya] writes an assessment of the situation in the Middle East in Dharmavidya Web. He sees Iraq in a civil war with unrestrainable Shia v Sunni violence in Baghdad. The war in Lebanon has weakened America’s position in the area since, in the perception of the Arab public, Israel’s failure to do well is seen as a loss by its sponsor, America. David further writes, “The consequences for the rest of the world are more difficult to predict, but there will be many. All this introduces a significant element of uncertainty into international relations as a whole for the next several years. With the US economic position also weakening relatively in comparison with Europe and Japan, international politics could now become a lot more complicated than it has been.”

Justin Whitaker of American Buddhist Perspective is back from Spain … without Ana. [Apparently he didn’t fold her into his luggage and bring her with him back to Montana.] Now, he has a burgeoning enrollment for the Introduction to Buddhism class he’ll be teaching at the University of Montana in Missoula [as I write, the class is overbooked by five students]… and other humdrum worries in his life of privilege. Ah, Justin.

Shokai of Water Dissolves Water tells us about making Atlanta a bit of a better place. Tanyard Creek is subject to flooding and when that happens trash can get left up in the branches of trees on its banks. Shokai is at the center of a developing community movement of volunteers to fix the situation.

Joshua of Mudita Journal does a roundup of movie previews he found at Apple trailers. Ones that intrigued Joshua include The Prestige with Christian Bale, Hugh Jackman and Scarlett Johansson; We Are Marshall, which appears to be a “sentimental and inspiring” film, starring Will Smith; and Infamous where Truman Capote is obsessed with solving a murder.

Bill of Integral Options Café tells us that Sunday was “Sacrifice Our Wants for Other’s Needs Sunday” -- a time to do something nice for some other human. A nice idea in a world where there is week after week of Glorify Thyself.

Partings and Startings and Kudos and Such

Ryan of Integral Awakening is back from a solitary five-week retreat, readying himself for school and work. He has little to say, but does link to pictures he’s taken. He advises “it's going to get real geeky this fall. REAL geeky.” [And with that last sentence fragment he links to what appears to be a quite interesting new group blogsite, Buddhist Geeks (q.v.). Hmmm.] Five weeks away, but now back in the blogosphere working doubletime, he is.

Corax’s venerated Ow, My Blog has sunk beneath waves of electrons. A future-dated post [for 9/20] appeared on my RSS aggregator, but by the time I tried to read it, alas, the whole blogsite was gone, gone, gone beyond, svaha. Corax was known for his posts in opposition to euthanasia and for the 2004 Christmastime post “The Scrooge Sutra,” which explained Dickens’s The Christmas Carol in Buddhist terms. “Scrooge” was picked up for publication in Zen Unbound and received high praise a year later from Amy Cunningham in her Beliefnet blog, Chattering Minds.

Eric’s brilliant Virtual Zen is on the ‘endangered list.’ [Only one “temporary post” since July. Home page now reads, “Site Temporarily Unavailable.”] Virtual Zen is a first-rate Personal Journal where Eric had been keeping us up-to-date on his busy life and career in Toronto.

Tyson of tysonwilliams.com has hit a milestone: 1000 posts. He tells us, “I am looking forward to another 1000 or maybe 10,000 posts in the near future! Blogging is addictive.…” Rah that, Tyson! Yowza!

Yet more tasty links ... Check out Bill Harryman's Speedlinkin' posts in Integral Options Cafe: August 27, 2006; August 28, 2006.

Wednesday, August 23, 2006

Roundup for Aug 24, 2006

Great posts, comments threats, buzz, and crossblog discussions in the IntegroBuddhoblogosphere on August 23 [and thereabouts] …

Feminism

Matt Dallman’s The Daily Goose links us to an anti-Feminist rant his palindromic wife had in her cleverly named blog, blog. Titled “My Secret Resentment” [and not an Allenesque "Hannah Knives Her Sisters"], the post records Hannah’s resentment with being given the opportunity she is taking to abandon close care of her daughter to further her education and, thus, her career as a filmmaker.

Jay Allen Andrew, formerly of The Pagan Bodhisattva, expresses ire with a magazine and two articles it put up and then quickly pulled in his post in The Zero Boss, “Forbes Magazine Pukes Forth Misogyny, Quickly Pulls It.” Writes Jay, “… it was dumb pushing out this crotch-sniffing crapfest to begin with. But it’s infinitely more idiotic to pretend you never pushed it out at all. Whenever you sit on the blogosphere, boys, you leave an ass imprint.”

Jack Shafer wrote of the brouhaha in a Slate magazine piece, “Forbes’ Female Troubles” and can’t understand the fuss in the blogosphere. Writes Shafer, “Some of the sensational findings presented in the Forbes piece appear to be gender-neutral and hence don't bait feminists at all.” He concludes, “it becomes painfully obvious why female careerists are more likely to divorce than non-careerists: They can better afford to get out of an unhappy marriage than their sisters.”

The Stream

James of The Buddhist Blog learns from trees. “We can have faith that we too can bend but not break.”

Troy Worman of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Blogosphere regales a popular Integral & Buddhist blog: “Numinous Nonsense [qv] is Vincent Horn’s blogmandu.”

Clarity provides a definition of happiness in Clarity’s blog: “… helping other people see who they truly are. And not be afraid of themselves.”

F. Kwan writes about her dire loneliness in foot before foot: the photoblog.

On Film

Danny Fisher is soon to head off to India for the rest of the year, but not before he added to an already boffo post, “Buddhism and Film,” in his eponymous blog. Named among Danny’s favorite films are Orson Welles’s The Magnificent Ambersons, Akira Kurosawa's Ikiru, Woody Allen's Crimes and Misdemeanors, Albert Brooks's Defending Your Life, and Harold Ramis's Groundhog Day. But, there are many others he cites that touch on classic Buddhist themes, intentionally or not. Danny also informs us, in the course of things, that dukkha literally means "a bad axel hole." Thus, it is something that makes life a bumpy ride. The long rich post is inspiring an interesting comment thread.

TMcG, in her eponymous blog, writes that she would like to see “Paris Hilton, Jessica Simpson, the Olsen Twins and all of those other horrid pop culture flakes … stuck with some snakes on a plane.”

War

With what he hopes will be his last post on the war in Lebanon, Ajahn Punnadhammo of Bhikkhu’s Blog writes “There is always a much-hyped casus belli which is nothing but a propagandistic smoke-screen” and then steers us to a heavily researched piece by Jason Godesky in The Anthropik Network, titled “Israel’s Water Wars.” Godesky skillfully shows that Israel’s chronic water-shortage problem ties in with political strategies that have led the nation into war.

Speedlinking

Don't forget to check out more bodacious finds in Bill Harryman's speedlinking posts for August 23 and August 24. And while you are in the Integral Options Cafe [qv] blogspace, enjoy all its bounty of goodness -- including posts that direct you to Bill's latest production, a picture and poetry blogzine, Elegant Thorn Review [qv].

Wednesday, August 16, 2006

Next Summer: A Buddhist Mega-Blockbuster Movie

Even though it is yet to be released, you have all probably heard by now of this summer's big, big movie: Snakes on a Plane.

And the reason we have heard of it is because the blogosphere encouraged, developed, created buzz, guaranteed that it not be watered down and saved its name when the studio wanted to change it to something boring. The name of the movie is already a part of our culture. "Snakes on a plane" means 'that's life' or c'est le vie. But, of course, we Buddhists know that "snakes on a plane" means dukkha, since the sence of suffering is readily apparent - since being on a plane filled with snakes cannot be fun.

It is time now for us bloggers to determine next year's big summer blockbuster and I think we should make it a bodhibuster.

Here are twelve candidate names for next year's mega-hit:
  • Monks on a Plane with Snakes or Snakes on a Plane with Monks or Snakes on a Monk with Planes
  • The Theravadan came from Planet Clare
  • Naked Came the Buddhist
  • Militant Buddhists on a Compassion Jihad
  • Indiana Bhikkhu and the Lost Sutra
  • Hello, Dalai: It's so nice to have you back where you belong: in Tibet!
  • The Noonday Sky Blackened by Buddhists Hovering in Meditation Over Cleveland
  • The Good Plague! The contagion that destroys people's egos and can't be stopped! Whereas the Black Plague was spread by rats, the Good Plague is spread by - shudder - Buddhists!
  • The Diamond Sutra is Forever
  • The Heart Sutra is a Lonely Hunter
  • One
  • You Have Me, Bodhi and no Soul
OK, Buddhists. We need your ideas, here! Please offer a title YOU think can excite a huge movie fanbase. THEN, all we have to do is decide on one, blog about it a lot and then blog about it a lot more and then blog about it again. Before you know it, we'll have attracted a healthy group of star actors eager to appear in the film [for scale], a studio will produce it, Martin Scorsese will agree to direct it, Phillip Glass will want to write the score [but we will rise up to prevent that!], and then the film will help to change the world!

Friday, August 11, 2006

Roundup for Aug 11, 2006

Ah, rapture. The Buddhoblogosphere rolls onward.

The Stream

Vince of Numinous Nonsense is on his way to being as fit as Schwartzenegger was at his age or as Ken Wilber was at age 50. I am unclear on what Vince’s intent is here. To be a hunk? Does Emily know?

whiskey has advice for beginning mystics in whiskey river.

Bob of Dust has brain rage about brain rape. His wife may not want to hang out with him anymore. Writes Bob, “it would be nice if we all came to deeper understanding of just how we ‘came to believe’ the things we believe.”

Oslo-resident Nerdine of My world at the moment is embracing her boredom and comes up with an idea.

Tyson of tysonwilliams.com delivers the bad news that Greenland’s icecap meltdown is speeding up. If completely melted, the ocean would rise 21 feet. Yipes!

Daihoji of Zen writes about terror, terror threats and wars. His suggestion? “So here's what to do. Nothing. Doing nothing is always best.”

F. Kwan of foot before foot: the photoblog writes humorously about the UK Pakistani terrorist plot that was foiled. But then adds, “… it's finally stopped me. I understand that things are different now. I once wanted to travel more than anything on earth. Now I understand that it is most likely I never will again.”


Partings, Startings, Kudos and Such

Sorry to report that Soen Joon Sunim’s blog One Robe, One Bowl seems to have vanished abruptly. Her last post on August 2 had begun, “Nose to the grindstone: that's me these days. I'm churning through two different level Korean proficiency tests (scoring in the high 90s for level one, I'm looking for things I need to review; scoring in the low 80s on level two, I'm looking for things I need to know) and finally shoving through the back 2/3rds of my Korean textbook/workbook.”

I would suppose that the nun decided that the blog was taking up time needed for other things, or was otherwise interfering with her commitments. But, boy, the blog was outstanding. One post in April, “A note on death,” was sublime.

There is great good news, however. Kit Baskin, of PaperFrog [q.v.] fame, has returned to Buddhist blogging with more minimal. It has only just begun, but it is outstanding so far in its clean and crisp design features. This is one for the RSS aggregator, y’all. Writes Kit in his second post, “I’ll probably add some things as we go along, but the presentation is in line with my growing interest in minimalism. It’s something we could use more (or less) in our cluttered lives.”


More Tasty Blog-Link Festivals of Interest to Buddhists…

Will of thinkBuddha offers Some Interesting Reading…, today, an every-Friday linkfest relating to The Scribe, a group of shall-we-say elite religion-interested blogs. The drill, called The Scribe Jamboree, expected of good The Scribers, is to offer up five favored posts from the group each week. Among Will’s selections is one from Green Clouds and a blog Gareth of Green Clouds has turned B’du Reporter onto recently, Arbitrary Marks. Two of Will’s selections take differing sides on the ‘karma question.’ Check it out.

While B’du has been remiss in posting every day, Bill of Integral Options Café has been nobly and ably keeping up his wee-hours speedlinking regimen: Check out Speedlinking 8/8, Speedlinking 8/9, Speedlinking 8/10, Speedlinking 8/11 and Speedlinking 8/12. That Bill. He’s a locomotive. His finds are primo, y’all. If you haven’t turned on and turned in to speedlinking, you oughta.

Meantime, Ian of Jinajik has some recent finds. Check out the Tibetan Tantric Manuscripts from Dunhuang, a book due out in October, published by Brill’s. The manuscripts are considered to have “revolutionized the study of Asian religions.” Also, two posts on Naïve Vajrayana Art (1) & (2). AND, an index of Sambhasa 25: Nagoya Studies in Indian Culture and Buddhism.

Mark of Zen Filter offers a newspaper article about Three Treasures Zen Community in San Diego.

And finally, Jayarava of Bricolage offers a link to a website that allows you to be an online action painter, a keyboard Pollock.

Technorati tags: , , , ,

Monday, August 07, 2006

Roundup for Aug 7, 2006

Another day and yet more great posts spring from the Buddhoblogosphere. Hurray! ...

David Brazier, author of one of my very favorite zen books, Zen Therapy, is fearful re the future of the dollar. He writes in Dharmavidya Web, “For the US to get out of deficit would require unthinkable economic and political shifts here but for it not to do so is like being on a slippery slope. Sooner or later balance will be lost and all will come crashing down.”

Phra Prasong stamps out little clay Buddha images, Noah tells us and shows us in Yuttadhammo. “What a neat idea - a Buddha in your pocket. Just make sure it's a shirt pocket, not a butt pocket!”

In a long rambling post that hangs together beautifully, Paul, A Blue-Eyed Buddhist, writes about Highway 99, zips past Green Lake, and ends up thinking about nuclear weapons, and in the midst of this section, the war in Lebanon. He returns to Highway 99 at the end and it is as if his post were a round trip, an enso. Here is the last bit of it:
Is it ever justifiable to use a nuke? What if you’re not using it on a city, but on a military base? What if you give a 3 day warning ahead of time? What if the bad guys use several against you?

These are hard questions. Perhaps I’m not a good Buddhist, because the answers to some of them don’t snap immediately into my head. In fact, I wonder about them, and struggle with them.

These are things I was thinking about while driving back down highway 99 tonight.
Dave of Via Negativa writes about nukes, too. A poem about the blast over Nagasaki, “On the Birthday of Death.”

Tuesday 8/8 is primary election day in Connecticut. The last sentence in Mumon’s Notes in Samsara post relates his sentiments starkly: “I never liked Joe Lieberman.”

Will of thinkBuddha writes about the challenge of putting together ideas for his PhD thesis that meet his interests. Ethics and stories become his focus, and the merging of East and West. Here, he writes about seminal thoughts:
Through the practice of the dharma, through meditation, reflection, the reading of the Buddhist texts, my sense of life and of my own place within it shifted. The old frameworks of thought within which I was operating seemed no longer adequate. … the frameworks handed down through the traditions of Buddhism, although I was fascinated and… moved by them, seemed to be inadequate as a way of allowing me to think through the questions that were raised by practice. They were too alien, they rested upon metaphysical premises that I could not accept, they were too Buddhist.
As if in response to Will, above, Tyson of tysonwilliams.com quotes the Dalai Lama on our relationship with our practice. Here’s a snippet: “To investigate the teaching critically is fully encouraged in the same way that medical students are encouraged to apply their theories to real life and thus to witness their validity.”

Robert of Beginner’s Mind finds a really really great quote from Alan Alda, no less.

Bill LaLonde of Oaksong’s Nemeton is way too easy to please. But, wait a second. I’m pretty damn happy about his post. Hmmm.

Here’s a pop quiz you may take before reading Bill of Integral Options Café’s answers to his book meme.

What one book changed Bill’s life?
  1. The Atman Project by Ken Wilber
  2. The Story of O by Pauline Reage
  3. Nicholas Nickelby by Charles Dickens
  4. The Puppy who wanted a Boy by Jane Thayer and Lisa McCue
What one book has Bill read more than once?
  1. The first four books of the five-part trilogy The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
  2. The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
  3. One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish by Dr. Seuss
  4. Tinker, Taylor, Soldier, Spy by John leCarre
What one book would Bill want on a desert island?
  1. The Perfect Storm
  2. Complete Works of Shakespeare
  3. Complete Works of Umberto Eco
  4. Dune
What one book most made Bill laugh?
  1. Coyote Blue by Christopher Moore
  2. Picture This by Joseph Heller
  3. Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Bastard By Al Franken
  4. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson
What one book does Bill wish had never been written?
  1. My Pet Goat
  2. Mein Kampf by Adolph Hitler
  3. Over the River and Through the Trees by Ernest Hemingway
  4. [Bill chooses not to name one]
What one book does Bill wish he had written?
  1. Liberalism: The religion of the Godless by Bill Harryman
  2. Ulysses by Bill Harryman
  3. Mystic River by Bill Harryman
  4. Sex, Ecology and Spirituality by Bill Harryman
More Tasty Roundup-Type Stuff
  • Speedlinking 8/7/06 by William Harryman of Integral Options Cafe Another bountiful linkfest, with a long paper on proportional response and the best Talking Head taking us to Jesus Camp.
  • Speedlinking 8/8/06 by William Harryman of Integral Options Cafe Should be up by about 5:15am PT on 8/8.
  • Mark of Zen Filter offers us a heapin' helpin' of Zen Cake. Delicious but weird.
Technorati tags: , ,

Sunday, August 06, 2006

Roundup for Aug 6, 2006


A list of some interest
Top Ten Buddhism-tagged blogs, per Technorati *
rankblog namein-
links
1WoodMoor Village71
2tIntegral Options Café70
2tthinkBuddha70
4Tibet Will Be Free64
5tThe Buddist Blog62
5tZip Zap Zop62
7Metacentricities57
8Zencast49
9tlotus in the mud48
9tPaper Frog48
* After eliminating sites with 8 or more tags when no more that 25% are, in a broad sense, Buddhism-related.
Good stuff, flowing like a distinct and flavorful non-alcoholic red wine, comes to us from the Buddhoblogosphere ...

Streamin’

Limit the Buddhism and make room for shrooms. Daniel of The Hyperaware Consciousness writes about the awesome effect of psilocybin as confirmed from yet another study – this time one conducted by Johns Hopkins.

Life of Brian: All right. I’m the last person on earth who would want to promote zaadz – and paid agent ~C4Chaos of the same-name blog is the first person. But Ceefour’s picture of his zaadz T-shirt is pretty cool. It looks like the Michelangelo ceiling with the Zaadz God passing on the spark of life to mankind through his Z-stroke finger. Wait a minute. Actually, it's intentionally that way and scary as hell.

George of Sentient Developments looks at a new book called The Female Brain. Here’s the opening paragraph of the flap description George provides:
Every brain begins as a female brain. It only becomes male eight weeks after conception, when excess testosterone shrinks the communications center, reduces the hearing cortex, and makes the part of the brain that processes sex twice as large.
The Thunder Bay bhikkhu is on a rampage about a piece in the New York Post that says the Israelis are “too nice to win” their war. One historical declaration the article makes is that firebombing Dresden and using atom bombs against Japan was necessary for the Allies to win WWII. Retorts Ajahn Punnadhammo in Bhikkhu’s Blog, “The war in Europe was pretty much won when Dresden was firebombed ... And as for Hiroshima, John Denson makes the case better than I can, in this excellent essay on the Hiroshima Myth.”

Xiao of That Was Zen, This Is Tao – A Haiblog is excited and elequant as hell, writing about life in New York City. Here’s a chunk from her post:

Every day is an incredible adventure. A chance encounter to meet someone new or someone from my past. Some people I will never see again. Others I will see the next day. Some plan to die in New York and others are here for a quick trip. All of these people, people, people, doing amazing things, living their lives, discovering themselves and the world each and every moment, whether they know it or not.

morgonnels in his eponymous blog tells us he’s been reading The Perfection of Wisdom in Twenty-Five Thousand Lines. He mostly focuses on one interesting element from the book, the last item in a list of the “nine unlovely perceptions,” Great Pathetic Joy. You read that right. Not Great Sympathetic Joy, but Pathetic. morgonnels does some investigating and finds this definition: “According to Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, pathetic comes from the Greek pathetos, meaning ‘liable to suffer.’” And from there, he comes to believe he has found the meaning of this Joy, most curious.

hitchhiker72 offers a two-part account on the difficulties in pursuing an education, that puts her at the door of completing work on a Ph.D, in posts “Salute to Sisyphus, Part I” and “Salute to Sisyphus, Part II” in her blog A Question of Mindfulness. It’s a fascinating story, well delivered. What began as an academic challenge to “find herself” became a daunting hydra-headed struggle. hitchhiker72 writes, “I sometimes felt like a bag lady rummaging for scraps, I cannot really know whether the outcome would have been different or whether a more plotted route would have resulted in a difference in my thinking. That I was left to meander along on my own meant I found paths that might otherwise have remained hidden.”

More Tasty Roundup-Type Stuff
  • Speedlinking 8/6/06 by William Harryman of Integral Options Cafe A bountiful linkfest. If you don't eat your English walnuts, make sure your hamsters eat theirs. Oh, and stay away from Gagdad Bob. It's a tarpit, I'm telling you.
  • Speedlinking 8/7/06 by William Harryman of Integral Options Cafe Should be up by about 5:15am PT on 8/7.
  • Zen Filter and Jinajik were quiet. Zzzzzzzz.
Technorati tags: , , ,

Saturday, August 05, 2006

Roundup for Aug 5, 2006

Good stuff, as always, is flowing through from the blogosphere ...

Streamin’

Jai of Blog Blog Woof Woof offers the thoughts of Ajahn Chah, which begin with this sentence: “The source of all good, evil, weal and harm lies with actions, speech and thoughts.”

Odd things can summon a mystic moment or even full-bore enlightenment: the sparkle of light on a pewter dish, the deep sound of a bell. Moose, The Contemporary Taoist has a mystic moment when he dumps a forkful of beans on his clothes. He writes, “Mystic Moments are hard to describe. … A ‘moment of clarity’ where the normal appears Divine; the small appears enormous; the subtle becomes obvious; the truth becomes apparent; the God in all common things becomes easy to see.”

Oliver, a martial arts expert and boxer at Oxford University in England, posted an entry “I’m afraid of Americans. I’m afraid of the World” in his recently minted blog Oxol. Here’s a spiffy snippit, that like the whole of his post, does not connect up to the title quite like you might suppose:
It struck me that the problems I’ve been having with annatta (the not-self doctrine) could be a result of a fundamental flaw in my conception of its purpose. My own conceptions of identity have revolved around the Western notion of a self, however, as the teaching of the Buddha is intended as a practical path to reaching enlightenment, that there is no self is not necessarily an ontological declaration. It’s simply not a relevant consideration, for if one was to reach enlightenment, processes of thought like whether there is a self or not would not enter into their thought because their perception of the world would be radically different.
Nagarjuna comes out against terrorism, big time, in a post in Naked Reflections titled “Thar He Blows.”

Eric of the blog Eric Grey writes about attachment. His post begins, “Today a relative of my partner was killed when the experimental home-made plane he was piloting crashed into a golf course.”

BuddhoBlogBuzz: Morgan Spurlock and 30 Days

There is definitely a Buzzz going on in my corner of the blogosphere re Morgan Spurlock – of Super Size Me fame – and his documentary TV series on the FX network, 30 Days. I write “in my corner” because most of the buzz eminates from near where I live in metropolitan Sacramento.

I wrote an essay in the group political blog Thoughts Chase Thoughts a few days ago called “Morgan Spurlock and the 2nd Tier.” My partner at TCT, Nagarjuna, followed with his very very excellent post, “Altered Realities” in his blog Naked Reflections that included comments on many of the series's episodes. Re the first episode where Spurlock and his girlfriend tried to survive on minimum wage, Nagarjuna writes, "I acquired newfound empathy for those who are caught in this kind of lifestyle of having to literally count every penny and being thrown into emotional as well as financial turmoil by the slightest unbudgeted expense"

A comment posted by John Smulo in the TCT thread led to the knowledge of two recent posts by John in his SmuloSpace blog focusing on 30 Days: 30 Days of Purpose and 30 Days Outsourced. Seems Nagarjuna was already aware of John – there being a comment written by Nagarjuna posted to the 30 Days Outsourced comment thread when I first got there.

Here’s a bit from John’s 30 Days of Purpose post that I could say is true for myself:
What inspires me most about this show is that it chronicles human beings with strong opinions and self-imposed separations living life with people coming from a contrary place.
John finds Biblical connections in what Spurlock is doing in his series, whereas Nagarjuna and I see Buddhism-related inspiration. Likely, we are all right.

Pennsylvanian Carolyn Kellogg who blogs Pinky’s Paperhaus has a recent entry about her friend, the camera guy who filmed Spurlock during his jailtime stay, which is this season of 30 Days grand finale. Interesting blog stuff! [Carolyn/Pinky, btw, has a post w/podcast from yesterday about her appearance on NPR. WTG, Pinky.]

There is also a very recent post giving us an atheist’s take on 30 Days. vjack in Atheist Revolution writes, “an atheist moving in with a family of evangelical Christians. Interesting idea, but I think they might have it backwards. … a show in which an atheist becomes more accepting of conservative Christian beliefs (my prediction) would be a big mistake. Why? Oh, just because these beliefs happen to be false.” The post generated a lot of comment, mostly in full support of vjack’s sentiments.

In a recent MySpace post, Arnold, a kendo expert in San Jose, writes, "The beauty of this show is that we get to see not a conversion, but a transformation in the thinking of the person going through the 30 days experience. Additionally, it creates a catalyst for us viewers to think about the topic as well as to contemplate and appreciate our lives."

More, More Tasty Roundup-Type Stuff
  • Speedlinking 8/5/06 by William Harryman of Integral Options Cafe A bodacious collection. Philosophical and Integral. Nada on politics, today.
  • Speedlinking 8/6/06 by William Harryman of Integral Options Cafe Should be up by about 5:15am on 8/6.
  • Zen Filter and Jinajik were quiet. Zzzzzzzz.
Technorati tags: , , , , ,

Friday, August 04, 2006

Roundup for Aug 4, 2006

Many interesting posts in the ether today. Here are a handful of them...

The Stream

Shokai opens the Zen Center. Some arrive late; some arrive very late; sometimes, for a while, no one shows up at all. In his blog, Water Dissolves Water, he writes, “Human interactions are always chaotic and messy, and rarely do they conform to a schedule. We should sit and we should share the dharma with others who want it, and we shouldn't be concerned if the audience is large or small, early or late, attentive or bored, passive or aggressive.”

Hardcore Zen’s Brad Warner is putting together his documentary Cleveland's Screaming. “The process of artistic creation is a little like Zen. Or maybe a lot like it. The problems your piece has are always obvious and the solutions to them are equally so.”

Zenmar launches into a discussion of mysticism in his blog The Buddhist. “[T]here is a huge divide between those who seek ultimate reality and those who fervently believe in some kind of uber-being who, if they obey his rules, will be saved from their ignorance.

Chase of Cut to the Chase is happy about something congress did today. “The bill passed was the (revised) PETS Act. … Now if a natural disaster happens, local AND state plans have to include provisions for our furry kids.”

~C4Chaos of the eponymous blog likes the recent Nicolas Cage movie Lords of War, but it is his serendipitous find, relating to the film, a quote in Rigpa, that got my attention. Here’s the last of it:

The desperate situation of the planet is slowly waking people up to the necessity for transformation on a global scale.

Enlightenment is real, and there are enlightened masters still on the earth. When you actually meet one, you will be shaken and moved in the depths of your heart and you will realize that all the words, such as illumination and wisdom, that you thought were only ideas are in fact true.
A Limitted Discussion Starter

Nacho's first effort at putting up a featured post to stir a wealth of discussion is meeting limitted success.

While the WoodMoor Village post, about people of color, has stayed at the top of his posting flow on the main page of his busy blog, it generated only two comments in six days before Nacho churped in with a response to the responses. Two other comments followed; so now there are a total of five.

Nacho's post seems not to have been a good one to encourage discussion. It is a hard slog -- 2200 words of muddily written turgid prose. Nacho sees conspiracies, hates oppressive whites and then compains and complains. His proffered subsitute for the phrase people of color, that he finds so damnable, is one of the following phrases, to be used for persons like himself: "Third World people" or "the excluded." Nacho is a college professor in Oregon. Or, perhaps I should say, 'Third World Nacho, the excluded, suffers the deprivation of being well-paid as an incompetent college professor in Oregon.'

Here a cutting from "Buddhist people of color?"
The language of “people of color” that has been deployed in Buddhist communities (and everywhere else) in order to address issues related to discrimination, racism, and inclusivity, poorly serves us. It strikes me as odd, at best, to rely on a phrase that reaffirms and reinforces what has been dominant ideology, by putting us right smack in the traditional U.S. society color/skin dichotomy. This chromatic skin color language reduces the complexity of the issues at stake in various ways, and promotes the dissemination and retrenchment of the color dichotomy. Ultimately, the phrase "people of color" limits the myriad ways in which the oppressed can describe and imagine their oppression, by reducing discriminatory practices under the umbrella of "color." In my estimation, the language of “people of color” makes us pay too steep a price politically, strategically, and personally.

Thursday, August 03, 2006

Roundup for Aug 3, 2006

The first of an every-once-in-a-while daily roundup for the summer.

OK, I can’t stand it. There is too much that is winsome and juicy going on in the oceanic Buddhoblogosphere to keep my 10-gallon Roundup hat in the mudroom for the rest of the summer, so I’m pulling it down from the hook, booting up my computer, climbing on my keyboard stallion and roping some posts, again. EEEE-ha!

Now, I hope I hope I hope I hope I hope I hope that Bill of the IOC [q.v.] and WH’s Blog [q.v.] keeps up his speedlinking regimen. AND, that tinythinker of peaceful turmoil [q.v.] and Justin of American Buddhist Perspective [q.v.] wade in with some more roundups. AND, I hear, via the IOC, that Jay Andrew Allen is speedlinkin’ at The Zero Boss[q.v.]. There’s plenty ‘o room in the pool, a course; and I am but a mere bug in the shadow of these noble, sturdy men. [What? No ladies as yet? You just know you should be speed-roundup-linkin’, too.]

AND, I must express my gratitude to Mark of Zen Filter [q.v.] and Ian of Jinajik [q.v.] for their ongoing ropings of outstanding webfinds. Here, too, are establishments that fill my plate and stein with the grub and grog of wonders and pleasures that I consume with glee and gusto!

Indeed, it is from the very deliciousness of the finds of all these Blogo-meta-buddhs that has me salivatin’ for the fresh meat* of gamey blogpost. Mmmmmm, tasty wild blogpost; there is nothin’ so fine.

So, let us release the ox and have the Blogmandu rodeo commence …


Streamin'

Noah of Yuttadhammo: Truth is Within shows us one of his samanera. "This one eats in the evening and can't sit still for more than one inbreath at a time. He's really cute, though."

Our conservative Buddhist friend, Joshua, of Mudita Journal tells us of the website Life is Zen. It's motto is “Mindful Marketing for Your Right Livelihood.” Writes Joshua, "Now how can you not like a slogan like that?"

Mathew Dallman in his The Daily Goose finds himself agreeing with George Will and tells us American liberalism is dead. "[I]ts truths have been swallowed by certain elements/circles of the American conservative movement."

tsykoduk of The Roost writes about an interesting talk on the O'Reily Factor. [Hey! Wait a minute! With the citations on the two paragraphs above this one, that's three conservative posts on three different Buddhist blogs in one day!?]

The Bhikkhu apologizes ... for blogging so much about the Lebanon war. Explains Ajahn Punnadhammo in Bhikkhu's Blog, "Our world seems to be spiralling down into a new barbarism with only the ethic of 'might makes right.'"

Bill LaLonde informs us in Oaksong's Nemeton that our brains "may be under the control of tiny critters that live in cat shit."

nagarjuna posts brilliantly on episodes of Morgan Spurlock's FX network show, 30 Days, in his blog Naked Reflections and finds himself agreeing with some other guy that "Spurlock shows Buddhistic benevolence and skillful means in using his talents to foster interpersonal and intercultural empathy." [The words quoted here are nagarjuna's. Envious other guy writes that well in his dreams.]

Tyson of tysonwilliams.com quotes Sogyal Rinpoche. Here's a taste: "the ground of the ordinary mind prevents us from breaking through to the skylike nature of our mind, even if we can still have glimpses of it." And in a second post, Tyson quotes Buddhist Channel on the topic of Buddhism after the Dalai Lama has left the world stage.


Partings and Startings and Kudos and Such

Paper Frog has now, officially, left the pond! Kit has promised he'll be back in some new forms soon, and will keep the frog alive in his pocket; for now, we must do without.

The Daily Scribe [q.v.], "an evolving compendium of quality religious writing by bloggers," has been honored with the addition of Gareth's Green Clouds [q.v.] as part of its membership. GC joins Will's thinkBuddha [q.v.] as the two representatives of Buddhism in the Scribe's registry. Says Gareth in his latest post, "it’s a collective I’m happy to be a part of." Another Scribe-honored blog, Arbitrary Marks, has a fine recent post Gareth recommends, titled "Buddhist Apples and Christian Oranges."

An outstanding new Buddhist blog of great marvels y'all should be uber alerted to is Enso It Goes [q.v.], the clever production of clever Dukkha Earl. Here's D.E.'s latest, a jiggly post. Earl's earlier pearl of a blog, Sifting Samsara, was carried off by the wind, into the setting sun, about a year ago.


*This is a vegetarian blogsite, y’all. Meat as in nutmeat and 'Meat me in St. Louie, Louie,' not animal flesh, a course.

[Note. A Daily Blogmandu Roundup is a short post of both very very fresh finds in the Buddhoblogosphere and recent (and sometimes a little less fresh) sightings of wonders relating to Buddhist and integral bloggery.]