Roundup for Feb 5 - 11, 2006

Another great week in the Buddhaland of Blogs. Big topics this week include having an opinion and those Danish cartoon. Also, because of the rocketting blogosphere, a new regular feature: A weekly blog harvest.

The Not-So-Funny Cartoons

Kelvin Wong in Salt * Wet * Fish makes the following point with regard to the cartoons in the Danish newspaper controversy:

When the Talibans bombed the groin of the Buddha statue in Bamiyan and subsequently destroyed it [, did] the Buddhist community threaten to kill any arabs or Muslims they see? Where is the Muslim community to criticise this blasphemous act towards the Buddhists when that happened? Doesn’t it sound hypocritical that the greater Muslim community has been silent when insults towards other religions like the Jews and Buddhist were happening?

In Dave Bonta's blog Via Negativa, there is a frequently appearing cartoon, Words on the Street, which shows Diogenes with his placard. [The cartoon above appears here in accordance with Dave's Creative Commons license.]

Mumon of Notes in Samsara in a post on the topic last week wrote, “I've said it before, if I can't ridicule my religion, or yours, or none at all, it's not my religious freedom.”

This week, he jumped on political pundit Charles Krautheimer for his call for more courage from American media in the furor. Writes Mumon, “It's quite apparent as to why a CNN or a Washington Post might not publish ‘those cartoons.’ They've got potential hostages in places of the world, and it's bad PR for them to say, ‘We're not going to publish those cartoons, because of our potential hostages.’”

Dan of Notes From Along The Way writes, “… as irresponsible as it may have been to reprint the cartoons, I find any sympathy I had for those offended washed away in the violence being committed. This is not the way to make people understand your offense or get your message across. It's also, I'm afraid, quite hypocritical - Muslim press is often filled with anti-Jewish mockery, after all.”

Trey Smith of The Rambling Taoist is perhaps ignorant of the venomousness of much of the Arab press. He writes, “If an Arab newspaper had published cartoons depicting Jesus in a less than positive manner, there would be the same kind of furor, only that the critics and supporters would switch roles. ... Truth and perception are relative.”

tinythinker of peaceful turmoil tries to find a way back to calmer waters. “It isn't about not having the right to be offended, it is about what is and isn't acceptable in responsing to such offenses, and this is the real point of departure between certain manifestations of Islamic culture and the West. I applaud those on both sides of the issue who have urged respect and restraint, especially those Muslims who have called for calm and reason. This issue will be a test case for the future of relations between the West and Muslim nations, and it isn't a test we can afford to fail.”

Stripping Meditation of “Buddhism”

Sam Harris is the author of The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason. In the December issue of Atlantic Magazine a quote from his book says wonderful things about Buddhism in an article by Paul Bloom called “Is God an Accident?”-- “it is the most complete methodology we have for discovering the intrinsic freedom of consciousness, unencumbered by any dogma.” In stark contrast are these words of Harris's in his Huffington Post blog:

Needless to say, any truths uncovered about the human mind through meditation cannot be “Buddhist.” And if meditation ever becomes widely adopted as a tool of science, it will be quickly stripped of its Buddhist roots. There are, after all, very good reasons we don't talk about “Christian physics” or “Muslim algebra.” Physics and algebra are genuine domains of human inquiry, and as such, they transcend the cultural conditions out of which they arose. Today, anyone emphasizing the religious roots of these intellectual disciplines would stand convicted of not understanding them at all. In the same way, if we ever develop a scientific account of the contemplative path, speaking of “Buddhist” meditation will be synonymous with a failure to assimilate the changes that will have occurred in our understanding of the human mind.

[Update 2/25/06: William of Integral Options Cafe discusses his "own private war" against Sam Harris and his effort to take religion out of Buddhism in a 2/25/06 post.]

Relinquish All Views?

In Mike Cross’s The Middle Way a post begins with these lines:

I pay homage to Gautama
To he who out of compassion
Taught the true Dharma
As the relinquishing of all views

Intrepid translator that he is, Mike chased down the source of the quote, the last verse in Nagarguna’s Mulamadhyamakakarika [MMK]. And from here, he lurches into a frequent recent theme, the bitter taste of a translation project that went awry. With some irony, he concludes his post with a verse of repentance for a translation of his of the MMK that will not be.

Without apparent cross-fertilization, there were posts in different blogs this week that focused on opinions/views and the merit and demerits of not having them.

James of The Buddhist Blog writes, in response to some other of Buddha’s words, “one can not find liberation from spouting off a bunch of flowery, philosophical speech.” In another post, he quotes Lama Zopa Rinpoche: “Leave the mind in its natural, undisturbed state. Don't follow thoughts of ‘This is a problem, that is a problem!’”

Jeb of Wondering on the Way begins a post “In a recent Dharma talk, a monk talked about ‘not having opinions’ as if they were some disease of the mind to be avoided whenever possible.” Jeb goes on to discuss the difficulties of opinions and the relief of not feeling compelled to have opinions on nearly everything. He begins his concluding summation paragraph with these words, “’Do not cherish opinions.’ That seems much sounder advice. That I can see. People, including myself, have a tendency to define themselves by their opinions, and then hold fast to them because either they love the image they’ve created, or they experience discomfort about who they are if they let them go.”

Gareth of Green Clouds wrote in a post a few weeks ago, “the thoughts I collect and the stories I create have very real effects on the actions I take, the things I say and do to the people around me. … The collision between fantasies and reality causes suffering, often because of the vast difference between the two, and sometimes because I’m paying more attention to the former instead of the latter.” More recently, in a post that was subsequently deleted, he wrote, "R. A. Wilson has some understanding of emptiness, or appears to. In one of his texts he suggests changing your mind for a while, taking a walk in someone else’s shoes…subscribe to a neo-fascist magazine, try and agree with them, he suggests."

The Burgeoning Blogosphere

Vincent Horn of Numinous Nonsense posts on the exponential growth of the Blogosphere and has a graphic that shows the number of existant weblogs doubling every 5 ½ months!

With this in mind, Blogmandu feels it must quickly add to its “closely watched” blogs or it will be left in the flame-spray of the fast-climbing rocketship that is the Buddhoblogosphere. Here are some new blogs [to B’du, at least] that merit attention:

• The Invisible Cat: A great find! Johnny Newt blogs from Zenkoji Temple in Nagano, Japan. He describes himself as “A simple man looking for the path he is standing on.” The blog, started last September, is written very ably with Johnny's thoughts on his life, Zenkoji Temple, and differences between Japan and America. I thank kim of this life [formerly, this zen life] for this B’du find, snatched from her blogroll.
• Creating Peace: Bonnie’s ‘big picture,’ mostly political, compassion-oriented blog deserves our attention. The blog has been up since August with a very modest three to five posts per month. The blog won’t be winning any design awards soon – no offense, Bonnie, but what color is that? – but her thoughtful posts are insightful fun reading.
• The Goodness Blog: A five-person multiblog that shares short posts of good news of different sorts. Up since October, it hasn’t been very active as yet. One of the contributors is kimberly/kim/haiku, well known to readers of B’du for her robust, much- heralded personal blog this life [formerly, this zen life].
• Togo of Grand Smials: This blog has me flummoxed -- but I sometimes consider that to be a good thing. I'm just not sure if this is one of those times. hfx_ben has a lot going on in this LiveJournal blog of multi-dimensions. Interesting it is, certainly.
• Mind and Reality: Indo Tibetan mind science in the 21st Century. A sweet, scholarly blog with lots of kindly links. Lay friendly with attractive design. Blogged by Christopher D. Kelly, who is now completing a PhD in Indo-Tibetan Buddhism at Columbia.

Roundup for Jan 29 - Feb 4, 2006

The always-helpful BuddhaBlogosphere is there for us again this week with information on how to direct a play, a technique for meditation and acting, a rant against a word that's no good, how a taoist fries an egg, Sausage the Poor Fish's medical condition, a workday like a hill, the Mahaparinirvana Sutra, the Spiral of politics, the lessening of swagger in a current president and the increase in fluff of an ex-president. And more.

The Stream

Gareth of smart and compassionate Green Clouds is in rehearsals on a new play he is directing. He is finding that his Zen is informing his work. He writes, “A few days ago I’d been wondering how to ground my directing in my practice, now I know the answer: Get out of the way.”

In an long post with lots of interesting comments, Mike Cross of The Middle Way tells us about the F.M. Alexander Technique for meditation. Valuable stuff to consider, O Meditators. One great comment by our friend Gareth who blogs Green Clouds relates the technique to acting, which draws a terrific response from Mike.

A great post tells a personal story in Mark’s Writing to Reach You. I don’t want to spoil it, so I will only say it begins with this delicious sentence: “Sometimes when we probe reality, it's a greater teacher than we think.” And ends with these words: “… today has been a fundamental turning point in my personal and spiritual development in this lifetime.”

Cliff of this is this likes the words mullosk, pink, time, stand, whimsy and steep – but tells us this only to set up a long diatribe on the word he doesn’t like in a post titled “A Word I Don’t Like.” His complaints seem valid, albeit moot since ‘the word’ still comes in handy from time to time. [Ha, ha, ha. I crack myself up.]

Shokai in Water Dissolves Water confronts the mortality of a loved one vacationing in Hawaii. One hell of a vacation, eh? Nirvana is nowhere. Nirvana is everywhere. And in a nameless post – yes, it’s titled ‘’ – Shokai shows us yin yang in many varieties, including stovetop.

It is always satisfying to get in on a good thing at its launch. Dan, a thirtysomething Taoist and Zen student, has just begun Notes From Along The Way. You will immediately be impressed by the amazing design and by his good, kind welcoming words. His first official post is an assessment of Bush’s address to the nation.. Says Dan, “It was like eating re-re-heated leftovers. A cut-and-paste of SOTU speeches past. Well, with one glaring exception - not nearly as much swagger.”

Justin’s highly intelligent Ordinary Extraordinary is a new find for me. This week the blog lives up to its name. There is a post about Dogen; followed by a post about Nagarjuna; and then comes the truly troubling medical condition of Sausage the fish. It is a post about Justin’s Zen retreat weekend that delighted the most. His teacher, Godo Guy Mercier, seems wonderful in all respects. An account of Mercier’s of “the personal history of an individual human being” that Justin paraphrases as a seven-item list is profound and a bit of a crack up. It starts off Genesis-like with “in the beginning there was emptiness.”


Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.

Terry of More Coffee, less dukkha says his workday mornings are challenges, but by the p.m., he's coastin'.

Political Memes

William of Integral Options Café posts a three-part series, “WHO OWNS GOD?,” which is a terrific introduction-plus to the memes of Spiral Dynamics and Integral Politics. Part I discusses the American political divide and introduces the memes used in Spiral Dynamics and Integral Psychology. Part II dives into the memes, further explaining each and how they interact in political terms. In Part III William talks about what is really going on in America’s culture wars and how the conflict can be healed. The graphics provided in each part are wonderful and helpful.

Bill Clinton is One of Us!

Both Vincent in his Numinous Nonsense (until recently named VincentHorn.com) in a post titled “Bill Clinton and Integral Consciousness” and coolmel in his multiple-Vinny-awards-winning blog www.coolmel.com, in a post titled “Bill Clinton at the World Economic Forum” wrote with vigor and excitement about Bill Clinton's words at the World Economic Conference in Switzerland at the end of January. Here are two key lines, included in quotes of Clinton posted at both blogs:

if I can use a kind of touchy-feely word, that American philosopher Ken Wilber wrote a whole book about, called A Theory of Everything. He said, you know, the problem is the world needs to be more integrated but it requires a consciousness that’s way up here, and an ability to see beyond the differences among us.

This is very exciting for all of us interested in Integral Psychology, including the many of us who consider ourselves Integral Buddhists. Hopefully one day soon, in time to save the world, the rubric ‘touchy-feely’ will not deter world leaders while they are in power from utilizing the high wisdom of our day [and the ages] to find peace.

Visit Vincent’s and/or coolmel’s posts for their excited assessments, links to the World Economic Forum webspace, and to text and video of Clinton’s words. Coolmel links, also, to Ken Wilber’s prime website and his book Clinton mentioned, A Theory of Everything, at amazon.com. Vincent and Coolmel disagree in one aspect of their assessments: Coolmel said it was all “Very Fluffy,” while Vincent held back, giving it “fluffy potential.” Your Blogmandu reporter does not know the meaning of the Integral street slang word “fluffy,” but in context it has to mean something akin to “Far Out!.” [2/13/06 UPDATE: Fluffy defined.]

The bhikkhu's back

Ajahn Punnadhammo of Bhikkhu Blog [You can find it HERE.] is back from his World Abbot’s Meeting in Thailand and he tells us about his experience in a post called “Thailand Trip.” He also continues his sterling defense of consciousness as not being an evolution-concocted computer of some sort in a post titled “Consciousness and Intelligence.” [Note: Bhikkhu Blog has no permalinks, so you will have to scroll down in the center frame to find posts.]

In his third post, “Posting Policy,” he instructs readers about feedback sent to him for posting in a sidebar.

Please refrain from using non-ascii standard characters such as "curly quotes" and non-breaking spaces, long hyphens etc. Most browsers don't handle these silly things well and it's a real pain to search for and delete them. In future, I may just ignore posts that don't have the courtesy to come in a web-friendly format. Remember the old saying - real men don't use curly quotes.

I think the kind bhikkhu is a little behind the times. But then the kind bhikkhu has a blog without permalinks, a comments function, linkbacks, trackbacks, an RSS feed, archives, a blogroll, tags, a tag-emphasis graphic or a Tuesday self-portrait regimen. As for his last sentence, I could swear I saw curly quotes in the postcards Jack and Ennis exchanged, so it’s wrong, too. [Wait a minute... The bhikkhu’s joshing us, you think?]

Z rebuts Physicalism

In his post, “Mainly Propaganda,” Zenmar of Dark Zen in his blog The Buddhist quotes a college textbook in current use that describes Buddhism in physicalist terms. Z rebuts this notion with evidence, including citing the Mahaparinirvana Sutra where the final teaching of the Buddha is described as the ‘great atman’ which is synonymous with Buddha-nature.

Roundup for Jan 22 - 28, 2006

It's a great week in the Buddhablogosphere with a strange Amazon tribe, a carnival, dreams, enthusiasm, the land of the Thinnies, the Vinny awards, Buddha's thoughts on true love, a Woody Allen movie and Brad being Brad.

I know what I want to believe, but I have to be honest …

Both beesucker of Authentic Personality and kimberly of this zen life take note of a New York Times article about how the brains of political partisans work. Here’s the core finding which beesucker quotes: “With their minds made up, brain activity ceased in the areas that deal with negative emotions such as disgust. But activity spiked in the circuits involved in reward, a response similar to what addicts experience when they get a fix.”

The article goes on to tell us, “It is possible to override these biases, Dr. Westen [the lead author of the study] said, ‘but you have to engage in ruthless self reflection, to say, All right, I know what I want to believe, but I have to be honest.’”

Says kimberly in her post: “relating it to zen, it seems that the more one practices noticing beliefs as they arise, the more one enables the brain to be flexible and not get stuck. so i see: i am holding a very strong belief. my task is to engage the energy of mindfulness and start to look for signs of the ‘opposing belief’ in my personal situation. to try to see ‘evidence to the contrary’ of how i am perceiving things.”

A Carnival’s in Town

Will is the barker and his blog thinkBuddha is the main tent as Will & blog host the Progressive Faith Blog Conference Carnival this weekend. A carnival, in the sense used here, is a blog digest [like Blogmandu], only one that ‘travels’ – setting up tent as a post in different blogs from week to week. Blogmandu, being stationary, is more like a county fair, I guess.

Will tells us that ProgFaithBlogCon “is an attempt to bring together bloggers of various religious affiliations who share an agenda that could more or less be called ‘progressive.’”

Buddhist blogs found listed on the PFBC website’s blogroll are Eternal Peace, Hoarded Ordinaries, thinkBuddha and WoodMoor Village. Dave Bonta's Buddhism-flavored blog Via Negativa, though not on the 'roll, is regularly featured. All of the above, except Hoarded Ordinaries, are participants in this week's carnival.


Right Enthusiasm

An old interview of Ngak'chang Rinpoche about enthusiam gets the attention of beesucker of Authentic Personality. In the Q&A beesucker cites, there are these cool words of the rinpoche: “ If someone is enthusiastic, you could enter into their enthusiasm – even though the subject of their enthusiasm might not resemble anything about which you might be enthusiastic. One can be enthusiastic simply because someone else is enthusiastic – because that, in itself, is delightful.”

Says beesucker his/her-self about it all: “if someone were to put on a movie that we weren’t particularly interested in, we might just get up and walk out of the room. [To me, this seems] like going in the wrong direction. [The right direction, it seems to me is] what Zen Master Seung Sahn calls ‘together action’. That we can act in harmony with those around us and get some bliss out of that - as opposed to constantly striving to be entertained by what we feel is ‘worthy’ of our time.”

Opportunities

Zataod invites you to dream. Zen and the Art of Dreaming wants to amass a group of dreamers [that is, sleep dreamers, not fanciful idealists] for a blog that collects the plots/stories/images of dreams. Zataod writes, “I've found in the past that sharing dreams can be a interesting and rewarding experience, and I've found the members of a dream group can feed off each other in terms of the vitality of their dream life.”

Meantime, Will of thinkBuddha wants excellent haiku and appropriate photographs for the first in a series of high-quality literary pamphlets. See details in Will’s post, “Haiku Wanted!”

Life without distinct numbers and colors

A post by Jayarava in Bricolage tells us about an amazing Amazonian tribe that lives without words for numbers and distinct colors. An article in J. Crow’s that Jayarava links to is astonishing. It tells us that linguists and anthropologists are flabbergasted by the tribe’s strangeness.

The existence of the tribe is causing some experts to re-evaluate the accepted idea of a universal language instinct. A discarded concept, the Whorfian thesis, that hypothesizes that “language determine[s] the nature and content of how you think” is seeing new light.

Why is this important to a Buddhist? Well, of interest relating to all of this is a poem by W. S. Merwin in whiskey river this week, about forgetting how to add, forgetting the alphabet, forgetting a lot else and which ends with these two lines:

forgetting it all until everything
is continuous and whole again

A tributary from whiskey river …

Another vibrant quote has been netted from the deep tawny waters of whiskey river:

For most of us, there is only the unattended
Moment, the moment in and out of time,
The distraction fit, lost in a shaft of sunlight.
- T S Eliot

More lines from the poem are presented and a biographer’s thoughts about Eliot’s interest in mysticism are explored in a post following up on whiskey’s find in Yaddha, Yaddha, Yaddha, a blogged department of Zen Unbound.

Two Types of Online Folks

Chris, the Cycling Platypus: the happy cycling buddhist, finds that there are two distinct types of online personas. He is definitely of the first type, which he estimates as 90 to 99% of the population, who are “good people.” “actually very nice,” “real friends,” “easy going,” “that pretty much just roll along with life and are happy with the world.” The rest are “the rude people,” who “make snide comments,” “who aren’t really happy,” and “come online to vent … anger and frustration.”

It’s the perennial problem: US would be perfectly happy if only we could do something about THEM.

Gull-lover’s Travels: To the land of the Thinnies

From a recent post in foot before foot: the photo blog, keyboarded by F. Kwan:

I have been lifting weights for about a week and I can already see some changes. … It's so wonderful in this contrary life when something works the way it should. A mostly vegetarian diet, moderate exercise and weight training work. I have proven it over and over again. Now I just hope I can keep the weight off.

I am entering into an entirely new world: the unchartered territory of the Thinnies. It is a place I have never been in all my years on this earth. It is a true bildungsreise, a journey of growth and development.

F. Kwan also posted wonderful pictures of birds and trees this week, but no gulls. They probably don’t get to the middle of Texas this time of year. Her remarkable photos include a defiant robin, a regal cardinal, and spidery-stemmed trees. And the really cool car, titled “bildungsreise” [education+journey in German], is wonderful, too. Oh, best of all the beautiful smile hovering above the sexy torso.

Enlightenment is a stupid word anyway

Over at Hardcore Zen, Brad is being Brad: “Enlightenment is a stupid word anyway. I hate even saying it, it sounds so pretentious and flowery. The concept of Enlightened Beings is like something from a bad fantasy novel. If you want to believe in stuff like that, go right on ahead. You will not get my support.”

Recommendations, Ho!

In a thinkBuddha post, Will enthusiastically recommends the new Woody Allen film Match Point. “It is an impressive, and deeply serious film, unafraid to tackle large themes: the role of luck in human life, ethics, justice and betrayal.”

Following fulsome remarks about the movie, the long post segues into thoughtful ideas about the meaning of karma, and the problems it present.

Vincent Horn of the same-name blog announced his Blog Awards for the recently concluded year. Winners of the Vinny are …

• Best New Blog - Boulder Anti-Apathy Cluster
• Most Geeky Blog - Coolmel
• Most Fluffy Blog - Indistinct Union
• Best Group Blog - Generation Sit
• The Bodhisattva Blog - Steve Pavlina
• Best Non-dual blog - Mystery of Existence
• Weblog of the Year - Coolmel

It’s a wonderful assortment of excellent blogs, worthy of a read – even if every one isn’t Buddhism related.

And here are the awards of ebuddha of Integral Practice, which we’ll dub the eBuddhys:

• Best New Blog - Integral Options Cafe
• Best Integral Politics and Social Commentary Blog - Joe Perez
• Best Integral Techie Blog - Coolmel
• Best Integral Theory Ken Wilber blog - Indistinct Union
• Best Integral Theory Non-Ken Wilber blog - SELF (Savitri Era Learning Forum) blog
• Best Multimedia Integral Blog - Mark Davis Lippman
• Best Art Integral Blog - Matthew Dallman
• Best Non-Dual Blog - Mystery of Existence
• Best Individual Writing Integral Blog - (1) enthusiastic stylings of Stuart Davis, (2) the passionately sober Vince, (3) the resonant writings of Syntegral, (4) the wry intellect of The Human Bean

A post this week by Moose in his The Contemporary Taoist praises Vinny-winner Steve Pavlina’s post “How to Build a High-Traffic Web Site (or Blog).” Moose was inspired by the piece. [In what is perhaps a result of that inspiration, Moose promises perspiration in revitalizing The Contemporary Taoist, which has been laggard of late.]

James, The Buddhist Blog blogger was eager to read Old Path, White Clouds some weeks ago [See this prior B’du Roundup.] Now that he’s into it, it is clear he likes it. He likes it! He likes it! In a sumptuous quote from the book, beautifully graced with a magnificent painting by James’s comrade artist Katherine Skaggs, Buddha explains true love.

Roundup for Jan 15 - 21, 2006

I had Great Expections for this week. And my expectations were met. It was the best of intellectual weeks and it was the worst of intellectual weeks -- with a call for more beautiful, personal, narrative blogging.

But beware, the posts I found may have fallen out of the date range I set for this roundup by a few handfuls of hours. "What the Dickens?" you say. So be it. I'm an artful dodger.

On with The Stream, already in progress, flowing as streams do ...

The whole of Jiki Sen Peg Syverson’s post “swimming with the fishes” in Zen Odyssey will explain this excerpt:

… our thoughts and emotions, which dart here and there, swim together in schools, and compel our attention. But we need to be aware of the medium from which the thoughts arise and in which they are held, or we will drown in our own lives.

William of Integral Options Café uses Lawrence Kohlberg’s stages of moral development to begin an exploration of spiritually-advanced intimate relationships. He then proceeds to do the same using the stages of Spiral Dynamics. Interesting (and convincing) stuff this exploration of Will’s. Further, this is only Part 1. More must be acomin'.

All of William's posts this week were extraordinary. One was called “Equanimity and Compassion.” Here’s a paragraph:

Equanimity is the act of aligning ourselves with that movement of Spirit, that drive, the Eros of evolution. When we are aligned with Eros, when we feel compassion for all beings, when we are no longer attached to the pettiness of ego, we are free in the truest sense of the word.

Vincent Horn in his eponymous blog does something unusual for him: He shares a quote he likes. It’s a good one, explaining the “form is emptiness; emptiness, form” conundrum. Here it is:

Avalokita looked deeply into the five skandhas of form, feelings, perceptions, mental formations, and consciousness, and he discovered that none of them can be by itself alone. Each can only inter-be with all the others. So he tells us that form is empty. Form is empty of a separate self, but it is full of everything in the cosmos.
– Thich Nhat Hanh in The Heart of Understanding

In a post titled “What’s wrong with Suffering?” Amadeus of Dharma Vision writes, “The only thing we can do is control our actions and speech and treat others in the same way in which we would like to be treated. This may not stop suffering, but it may just make life a little more bearable for those we are in this life with.”

John of Inveterate Bystander posted a terrific essay on Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem which shows the limits of logic and seems clearly to disprove the idea that a computer could ever have the qualities of humans [or, I might add, other sentient beings]. The essay then beautifully veers off into quantum mechanics, Bell’s Theorem, Schrodinger [without his cat] and ancient Sanskrit teachings of the Vedanta. Here’s a snip:

It's just that we are part of the system trying to find out what we are. That's where Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem comes into play. We are what we are looking for, as St Francis of Assisi is alleged to have said. Or, the eye cannot see itself, nor can consciousness.

Why Blog?

Michael of One foot in front of the other begins his post “Yoo-hoooo … we’re all in here!” with the sentiment that the Buddhist blogs he’s been frequenting are a near-complete waste of time. “Dogen … said that calling someone a ‘Buddhist scholar’ was a supreme insult. I think I'm beginning to understand why.” he writes. But in the last line in his post he says “Mea culpa. Rather than being above this criticism, I’m right in the thick of it myself.”

Sean of Wandering the Pathless Land, in a post titled “Back to Narrative” questions himself about where his writing (including blogging) is going. He writes, “[The blogs I love] to read are always ones that provide insightful stories into people’s lives. … You can see the wisdom just naturally emerge. It’s amazing. … I don’t know why I stopped doing that here. I far prefer to write small narratives and stories over political or philosophical mini-essays.”

Nacho of WoodMoor Village Zendo’s post “What do we Blog About?” reacts to Sean’s entry and discusses the beauty of Kimberly’s narrative blog this zen life and then writes, “Regarding what I blog about and how so, I'm happiest when I post things that in the process of writing and blogging spark insight into my life. Those can be of any type, but mostly they stem from genuine confrontation with stumbling blocks, with practice, with the daily ‘grind.’ Typically, I encounter a situation that just stops me, and makes me sit and embrace the issue, myself, and others with mindfulness.”

After a month of not posting to My Zen Life, John posted “Crisis,” an open letter to his readers. “I am currently in the midst of what you might call a ‘crisis of faith.’ That’s the reason for the sporadic updates to this website. I don’t know what I’m doing with this website anymore. I just feel so lost.” he wrote.

Platypus Moves on Down the Road

Chris of Cycling Platypus [aka, I am Cycling Platypus] has pulled up stakes at Modblog, moving his blogging operation to a new web location with new everything and a quite handsome display. Reset your bookmarks and RSS feed, y'all. In a Jan 23 opinion post, Chris has interesting things to say about the two types of online personas. You can read that post now -- but Blogmandu will wait till next week to write up a proper intro [this paragraph being added well after most readers will have read this post].

Roundup for Dec 19 - Jan 14 [Part 4 of 4]

This is the fourth and last post in a series catching up on great posts in the BuddhaBlogosphere during the past month. From here, you may read about Zenchick's great Christmas, Scott Wichmann's great past year, a Danny Fisher sighting, death and the Creator, a board game, cat litter, two moons and porn.

Great Christmas, Great Year.

Matthew’s freedomforall.net blog links to and highlights the central message of a great Zenchick Christmas post. The message, for Matthew, is “being seen” in Zenchick’s day-after-Christmas message, “receiving.” I don’t doubt for a moment that Matthew is right, but there are additional ways for readers to look at Zenchick’s heartwarming look at her Christmas.

Scott of Scott Wichmann Online tells of his spectacular, eventful 2005 in a post titled “WHAT A YEAR!!!” The guy was a triple threat – athletically, spiritually, and on the stage – as well as as a mentor/friend, husband and blogger. Scott is a comedy star in Richmond, Virginia, particularly after his critically raved performance in “Scapino.”

Trev of The Sound of Diesel Musing, as careful readers of Blogmandu are already sure to know, had a great year, too, culminating in the recent release of his first album, “The Parachute EP.”

Danny Fisher sighting

Danny Fisher whose short-lived eponymous blog made a splash in the Buddhist-blogs pool early last year is waist-deep in blog water again with The Buddhist Chaplains’ Sangha. It’s a multi-contributor blog, but Danny is clearly the mainstay, contributing all but one of the posts since its launch in September.

Gathering Clouds, Lightning Bolts

Gareth of Green Clouds has been on a heavy philosophical bender this new year with posts that ask the hard questions and have garnered long comment streams. Of particular interest are posts on Death and Dying and relating to Richard Dawkins’ opposition to the idea of a Creator.

Here are some of Gareth’s words on looming death:

The myth that I will still be here tomorrow has a very real affect on the way I live today, I can see this very clearly in my own actions; the way I take less care over things than I should, because it will work out alright, in the end; the way I put things off until tomorrow, or make plans for the far future – while coasting along in the present.

On the Creator controversy [Is there? Isn’t there?], Mark of Writing to Reach You waxes long and wanes not in his cleverly titled post “What if there were two moons in your sky?” An excerpt

I wonder, can I believe/practice Buddhism, yet believe some of Christianity too? Certainly I believe Jesus of Nazareth existed, and was definitely a Holy being. Maybe God and Buddha are the same--the Christian God not acting out of love for His creations and pact of free will, and the Buddha not acting due to being only omniscient, yet not omnipotent. Christ's definitely something like a Bodhisattva, that much is true.

Games People Play

Jeff Wilson, who keyboards Tricycle Blog, writes in praise of the board game Wheel of Life [aka, BuddhaWheel?]:

The board is actually a reproduction of the famous Buddhist motif of the realms of samsara, and your goal as a player is to escape the wheel and become a Buddha; of course, once you become a Buddha you can opt to go back and help others still stuck, so in a way the game doesn't have any end at all.

Will of thinkBuddha.org writes on the same topic, seeming a bit negative, at first, about the game, which he has read about but is yet to play. He writes,

… I tend to avoid board games because [of the latent] Napoleon within who surfaces from nowhere with a terrible lust for the ultimate conquest. … And whilst board-game manufacturers like to show pictures of happy families crouched around a board with smiles upon their faces, an image of sublime domestic harmony, my own long and bitter experience has been that at any one time, at least one of the players will be hunched into a glowering ball of resentment as they peer out at the board through half-closed eyes, brooding over the humiliation of defeat, comforted only by the thought that, eventually, the game will end.

There is no such comfort when it comes to the Wheel of Life. … You will plunge, to use an image from Shantideva, from one supremely generous act to another – shedding lives and limbs on the way – as joyfully as an elephant leaping into one cool lotus pool after another on a hot afternoon.

And now for something completely different …

M of Zen Filter shows us a Zen litter box.

Zen Porn

In what will surely be one of the more interesting Buddhist blogosphere posts of aught-six, Shokai of Water Dissolves Water writes about a website titled Zen Porn and offers his general thoughts about the idea of the site, and the ready connections and difficulties of putting Zen and porn together. Here’s an excerpt from Shokai’s long and graphic-rich post:

Sensei points out that to fall in love requires an enormous leap of faith, overlooking the facts that our lovers are really just big sacks of skins containing organs and fluids and bone. We choose to ignore that the bodies that we crave so much also emit excrement, urine, pus, blood, sweat and tears. So another tactic for Zen porn might be to remind us of the impermanence of all things, including our bodies.

The Religion of Hope

Zenmar, the Dark Zen Mystic, writes in his blog, The Buddhist, that Buddhism is the religion of hope. His words are in opposition to that of Buddhist physicalists. Here's a snip:

The nature of that which animates us is called many names in Buddhism such as "the light of the self", "the radiant mind", "thatness", "the pure will", "the Bodhi mind" and so on. It is also the very process of nirvana by which we come to unbind ourselves from our investment in the material which causes us to be reborn in many and varied worlds of suffering.