Roundup for Mar 26, 2007

Hey, it’s been a while. It is about time I took this sleepy old blog out for a stroll, you think? I hope to get back into it all with a regimen of doing mini-link festivals [that is, the usual thing] every few days, off any specific schedule.

But until I can catch up to the webby world, already in progress, here goes with some good, good stuff that has been piling up in my head that is at least tangentially [and usually directly] related to the glorious buddhoblogosphere. It all simply demands to be shared!

Lighter Footstep

First off, y’all simply must check out Christopher “Kit” Baskind’s latest endeavor, Lighter Footstep [Link!], an online magazine that teaches us “actionable ways to lead a lighter lifestyle.”

Kit is best known in the buddhoblogosphere for the splash he made with the incredibly handsome and charming Paper Frog that graced the web up until about a year ago. Frog Blog was rolled up and left to hop around in a quiet pasture, but Kit re-emerged, behind the mask of Miso, with Big Red Buddha [Link], the buddhoblogosphere’s equivalent of the famed satirical The Onion. More recently, Kit started blogging the now-defunct more minimal [link to archives] the forerunner of Lighter Footstep.

LF shows us how to lead a greener, more earth-friendly life. I count 21 article blurbs on the home page [not including more delights in the sidebar] that link to full stories within the e-magazine. Here are some of the topics now being featured: Green Cities, composting, Al Gore’s congressional testimony; the first in a column dealing with trash in our cities; efficient light bulbs; green celebrities; feng shui; recipes; and terrific new enviro-technologies.

Zenmar

Many of you are likely to know Zenmar [aka, Ardent or The Zennist or Muni Butsu], the rather-mysterious and authoritative master of dark zen who made quite a splash in the halls of AOL beginning way back in the 20th Century. While Z has been blogging for a while, it has all been behind the guarded doors of AOL in The Buddhist [link]… until recently. Z has now joined the vibrant ocean of bloggers with his new typepad blog, The Zennist. His most recent post, “Zen mandala,” discusses the beauty and meaning of mandalas, both generally and from ceremonies he attended relating to Tibet Week.

morgannels in Sentient City

A Greenwich Village organization launched an online magazine, Sentient City, that includes an essay, “It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Dreaming),” by the buddhoblogosphere’s morgannels of the same-name blog. You can read morgannels’ morgannels post, “I’m a Author,” that links to his long, magnificent far-flung essay which relates to dreams; reality; Jung; Freud; the Blooms, Leopold and Harold; Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche; Genesis; the Big Bang; Cervantes; Milarepa; Shakespeare and Hamlet and John Lennon. Well, maybe not John Lennon, or maybe just a little tiny bit, sorta. Whispered words of wisdom, let it be.

A few quick other words ….

Will Buckingham of thinkBuddha is days away from the release of Cargo Fever, his novel. And Cliff of This Is This has a post that has been included in Shaggy Blog Stories, a collection of interesting posts that have appeared in the UK blogosphere.

2007 Blogisattva Winners Announced

Bill Harryman’s Integral Options Café [link] won the top 2007 Blogisattva award and three others according to an announcement released early this morning at the Blogisattva webspace. IOC was named Blog of the Year, Svaha! and feted for Best Achievement Blogging on Integral Issues and for Best Achievement in Wide Range of Topic Interests Blogging. An ongoing series of almost-daily linkfests within the blog, called speedlinking, won the award for Best Niche activity. The Awards website called Integral Options Café “fulsome and intellectually hefty - yet fun, smooth, easy and delightful.” Harryman was praised as having “a broad and sophisticated palate of what is worthwhile and interesting” and for being “masterful” with his Integral-informed essays and multi-part articles.

Best Post of the Year was won by Cliff Jones and his blog This Is This [link] for an entry last May titled “Vesak and the Art of Changing Tyres.” The post tells of Jones’s serendipitous experience teaching a classroom of five year olds the meaning of Vesak, Buddha’s birthday, and the special effort to be especially nice on that day. The awards site called the post “A stunning achievement” told with “toothsome brio.” Jones and This Is This also won Best Achievement with Humor in a Blog Post for an entry last June called “Burrito.” Beginning by using the contents of a burrito as an example, Jones cleverly explores the meaning of “interbeing,” how everyone and everything inter-exist.

The Wordsmithing Prize for skilled writing was given to Will Buckingham who blogs both thinkBuddha.org [link] and WillBuckingham's weblog [link]. Buckingham was cited for
“his unique abilities that turn phrases into gold [and] churn lofty thoughts into buttery text.”

Michael of One foot in front of the other [link] took three awards from his four nominations, winning for Best Achievement Blogging in the First Person, for Best Achievement in Kind and Compassionate Blogging and for Best Achievement in Creation or Use of Graphics in a Blog. The Blogisattva announcement cited the blog’s entries as being “fiercely attractive and vividly human” and that whether as prose, poetry or pictures as being “works of art.” Michael’s photographs were termed “consistantly amazing” often with “wondrous, surprising details.”

George Dvorsky and his Sentient Developments [link] won two awards, for Best Achievement Blogging on Matters Philosophical or Scientific and for Best Achievement in Wonderful, Remarkable, Elegant Design. The awards announcement praised George for writing “with perfect clarity and great intelligence” and for a web design that "perfectly fits the nature of his serious science-themed blog."

Buddhist Geeks [link], a group podcasting blog, was named Best New Blog of the Year. Ryan Oelke, Gwen Bell and Vince Horn were cited as the “triumphant triumvirate” behind the cutting-edge effort who were proving that “Buddhists can be geeky. And they rock.”

Tyson Williams of tysonwilliams.com [link] was cited for consistant excellence and beautiful presentation in winning the inaugural Best Achievement Blogging on Buddhist Practice or Dharma. Quoting the awards site, "Tyson’s blog is a must stop for the dharma lover that we all are."

Bhikkhu's Blog [link] won the award for Best Achievement Blogging Opinion Pieces or about Political Issues. At the awards webspace it was written “Ajahn Punnadhammo tackles important issues and brings his incisive genius to the fore in delving deeply into the nexis of problems and conflict.”

The popular The Buddhist Blog [link] won the inaugural Best Achievement with Use of Quotations in a Blog. In the announcement post it said “James Ure presents wise words both unannotated and, at other times, adding interesting commentary from his experience.”

Paul Salamone’s “inspired touches” transforming a Blogger template, turning the ordinary into extraordinary, won him the award for Best Achievement in Clean, Straightforward, Unaffected Design for his The DENVER Anti-Apathy Cluster [link].

“Happy. Geeky. Energetic.” C4 of ~C4Chaos [link] won the Golden Pig for Blogger Best Demonstating a Multiplicity of Talents. At the awards site, it said, “He is combative, but kindly. Interested in all things, but sure of what he thinks.”

Buddhist Chaplain Danny Fisher of Danny Fisher [link] won for Best Multi-Part Blog Post for his 25-entry India series. The series took readers on a tour of India with visits to places of special interest to Buddhists and included scads of great photographs.

Soen Joon Sunim’s “a note on death,” posted in her defunct blog One robe, one bowl was named Best Achievement in a Compassionate Blog Post. Her post tells the story of living “in the presence of death, which calls into question the meaning of life.”

And, finally, Best Conversation-Sparking Blog Post (not necessarily a good thing) went to Ken Wilber’s “attack post” in kenwilber.com, “What we are, that we see.” Dozens of Integral-interested bloggers analysed this post before and after it was revealed that the post was all “a test.”

Technorati tags: Blogisattva Awards, Blogisattva, Buddhism

Double the Pleasure, Double the Fun

This is doubly cool, so I have to share it. The photo at left is of the Smith Brothers, each of whom has started a blog in recent months from the roof of the world [Michael is a Fulbright scholar doing research in the Kathmandu Valley in Nepal. Dan is in Sichuan Province, China, working for an NGO, The Bridge Fund.]. The little coughdrops in front of the Smiths are the monks Fearless Wisdom and Fearless Compassion. [Which is which twin, I’m not absolutely sure of. But does it matter, except to the guys’ moms?]

The pic was kiped from Michael’s blog Kathmandu for You, which is doubly nominated for Blogisattva honors. Dan’s blog is Kham Abiding. [Ohhh, those Buddhists. Into suffering, no wonder there is often so much pun – ishment.]

Update: Be wary. I was attacked by spyware [HotBar 4.8.4.0] clicking into Dan's blogspace.

Blogisattva Award nominations have been announced

...in a larger sense, we cannot nominate, we cannot award, we cannot hallow the buddhoblogosphere. The brave Buddhist bloggers who struggle here have consecrated the Internet far above our poor power to add or detract. -- from a Blogisattva Blogsite post

Earlier today, the Blogisattva blogsite announced the 2007 Blogisattva Award nominations honoring English-language Buddhist blogging during calendar year 2006.

Bill Harryman and his blog Integral Options Café led the way with eight nominations, including Best Blog; Best Multi-part Post, for the series “Who Owns God?”; and the Wordsmithing Prize. Bill also garnered nominations for two series within his blog, "speedlinking," a daily link carnival, and "gratitude," a daily practice Bill had going for a spell where he blogged thanks for things or people in his life he felt grateful for.

Cliff Jones’s clever humour in This is This was honored with seven noms in categories including Best Blog; the Wordsmithing Prize; and Best Blog Post for “Vesak and the Art of Changing Tyres” which was the source for an article published in Mandala magazine last year. Two others of Cliff’s entries were nommed in the Funniest Post category.

Miso’s Onion-like blog Big Red Buddha tallied the most nominations for a blog less than a year old – five noms – with scores in the categories Best New Blog and Best Niche Blog. Other nominations were for Elegant Design and a double nomination in the Funniest Post category.

Other blogs with high tallies of nominations were George Dvorsky’s Sentient Developments, Will Buckingham's thinkBuddha.org and Michael’s One foot in front of the other. Each received four nominations including Best Blog of the Year.

Other blogs up for Blog of the Year are Danny Fisher’s eponymous blog and Mystery of Existance by a mysterious blogger Blogisattva is calling DotDotDot Putali

Vince Horn did something distinctive this year, getting two nominations to go with three he received last year, where all the noms are for differently titled blogs. This year, Vince was part of the trio that has started the podcasting Buddhist Geeks, a Best New Blog nominee. His solo blog Numinious Nonsense was nominated for a post that was a Conversation Sparker. Last year, Vince had three nominations in the Best Integral Blog category for his solo blog which was then titled VincentHorn.com, and for two group blogs he was involved with, Generation Sit and Kosmic Bloggers.

You can see the nomination announcement with a complete list of Blogisattva nominees at the Blogisattva blogsite. There are 21 categories of awards with an aggregate of 115 nominations. Winners will be announced there on February 15.

Be a Slave for Ken

BLOG: Integral Spirituality Typos?
from Kenwilber.com Journal by kenwilber.com@gmail.com
Hello Friends!Iand#39;m happy to announce that Shambhala will be bringing out a paperback version of Integral Spirituality this fall.andnbsp; In preparation for this launch, we need to know if there are any errors orandnbsp;typos that need to be fixed before the book goes to print--thatand#39;s where you come in.andnbsp; Ifandnbsp;you noticed anything while reading IS youand#39;d consider to be an error, please let me know at integralspiritualitytypos@gmail.com.andnbsp; Whoever submitsandnbsp;the most genuine errors will get a signed copy of Integral Spiritualityandnbsp;from Ken :-)andnbsp; Thanks everyone, Colinandnbsp;
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The above is the RSS feed from Ken Wilber’s blog, from a post that went up yesterday written by Colin. Must be nice to be between CEOs such that you can fully disregard the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1934.

I am afraid that it is not strictly legal to put out a work notice and expect labor to be unpaid [which would be the case for most folks who search and find a few errors in Ken's book] and then send a trinket to the most successful of your slave employees.

I don't know the set up, exactly, but I would guess it goes like this: Integral Spirituality is Ken's book for which he will collect royalties on the Shambhala paperback. The plea for aid finding typos comes from Colin who works for somebody or something but I would bet the details are a bit cloudy and confused or is split somewhat arbitrarily between Ken and one of his non-profit organizations. Shambhala may or may not be responsible for copy editing the paperback edition, but it is to Ken's credit that he is interested in clearing out errors found in the hardcopy edition.

But without a thought for integrity and the keeping of one's beans properly organized and counted and the ending of slavery in 1864, somebody comes up with the bright idea LET'S HAVE THE PESKY LOVE-STARVED INTEGRAL PEONS FIND THE ERRORS. They'll do the grunge work for free! And then, with a nod to charity, it is suggested "Let's send the best slave an autograph from Moviestar Ken." And Ken begrudgingly says sure he'll do it, after all signing his nine-letter name will only take a few seconds.

Now I know I sound harsh, but Integral Headquarters in Denver has turned all wealth-seeking and money grubbing in recent years [or is it singular, year] and has been embracing more than a few personality-disordered wannabe gurus while curtly showing the back of the hand to, you know, rape victims and I-I staff members of high integrity and people who want a signed book and victims of dred Boomeritis and such.

And I know Ken is sick, and all, and word is out that we're supposed to be tippy-toeing around his hospital crank-bed, but I still find it remarkable and worth a remark when something new crops up to show how much mucky muck continues to accumulate in the Denver pigsty.