Brilliant Blogs

Bill Harryman of Integral Options Cafe has put h~log on his list of seven brilliant blogs. Thanks for that! Now it's my turn to name seven brilliant blogs. I click through many great blogs via Google reader but of course some have a special status, meaning I read most if not all posts, and sadly I'll have to skip IOC, ~C4, Julian Walker, Chris Dierkes, and Buddhist Geeks who already got their nomination - so, in no particular order -

1. Joe Perez' integral blog
2. Vincent Horn's numinous nonsense
3. Bruce Alderman's blog
4. Robert Godwin's one cosmos
5. Just Perception without a perceiver
6. William Harryman's masculine heart
7. and more recently Kelly Sosan Bearer's black plum

(Of course, there are quite a few blogs from celebrities like Ken Wilber, Andrew Cohen, Laurence Lessig etc. which for obvious reason should have a list of their own.)

Note to nominees/awardees: When you read this post, here is what you are invited to do:

1. Add the logo of the award to your blog
2. Add a link to the person who awarded it to you
3. Nominate at least 7 other blogs
4. Add links to those blogs on your blog
5. Leave a message for your nominees on their blogs

Wordle is fun

Have you seen this little thing called "Wordle"? From the website:

Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your friends.

I've done a few to contribute. See below "Song of Mahamudra" and click for a larger view. Join in!

Many small ways

Here's a gem from Bernie's Zen Blog:

Question: You talk during the first course about the transformation of emotions--anger without attachment can be determination, and ignorance can be unknowing. Meditation is an obvious practice for the transformation of emotions, but which other practices might be useful, especially for those who find meditation difficult?

Answer: There are so many small ways to turn our self centered emotions around, but they seem so ordinary that we usually overlook them and seek instead some special spiritual practice. A few that come to mind are: Introducing yourself to a homeless person and asking them their name and how they’re feeling; praying for the well-being of someone you don’t like; giving something of value to another without expecting something in return; Any small act of kindness; Thanking someone for their kindness; Asking for help from someone we don’t know or to whom we’re afraid to show our weakness; Holding the door for a stranger, Saying please and thank you so the other person knows we really mean it. The list can go on and on…

I would argue, however, that these "small ways" will tend to serve us well after the initial recognition has been made that our fundamental relationship to emotions can indeed be changed radically. This first opening then allows the transformation to flow into the many small ways, making them, in a way, into the process of transformation itself, touching others as we go along, deeper and wider. Acting kindly and politely, even sincerely, is not sufficient without a basis in direct 1st-hand knowledge that this is indeed an expression of a deepening relationship to emotions. Acting kindly and politely, though, is always a solid basis from which to build this knnowledge. Excellent small ways!

Takenoko with Joi Ito

Good stuff from Boing Boing Tv, with Joi Ito (plus wikipedia entry) cooking young bamboo shoots. Music by Ryuichi Sakamoto (plus wikipedia entry).

"...In this video, Ito welcomes us into his back yard in Japan, where he and his partner Mizuka teach us how to hunt for and prepare this traditional seasonal delicacy from a lush bamboo forest..."

Link to BBTv episode (with recipe).

Everyday Diacritics

Coming from The Level 8 Buddhist. This can prove handy:

All extended-ASCII letters in HTML have the format of

&#(number);

So, the trick is just remembering what number you want, and fill in the blanks. Remember that you have to do this for each special letter you want to print. Here’s a helpful chart for some commonly used diacritics and letters for Buddhist terms. Most are for Pali/Sanskrit, but for Japanese, the long vowel sounds are used too (ā, ī, ō, ū):

• á - 225, the a with an acute mark
• é - 233, the e with an acute mark
• ñ - 241, the n with a tilde over it
• ú - 250, the u with an acute mark
• ā - 257, the long “ah” sound
• ī - 299, the long “ee” sound
• ō - 333, the long “oh” sound
• ś - 347 (346 for upper case), the s with an acute mark
• ū - 363, the long “oo” sound
• ḷ - 7735, the nasal “l” sound
• ṃ - 7747, the “ng” sound
• ṅ - 7749, another “ng” sound
• ṇ - 7751, the soft “n” sound
• ḍ - 7693, the nasal “d” sound
• ṣ - 7779 (7778 for upper case), the emphatic “s” sound
• ṭ - 7789, the nasal “t” sound

Try it out on your webpages and see if it works well for you. After a few times, it gets much easier to accurate represent Buddhist terms in English, and you can pass yourself off as a Buddhist scholar or something.

See the whole article.

The Blogisattva 2008

This from Tom Armstrong:

"The Blogisattva Organization is pleased to announce the nominees for the 2008 Blogisattva Awards honoring English-language Buddhism blogging during calendar year 2007. This is the third annual iteration of the awards which are given wholly for merit, and not as a measure of blogs’ popularity.

This year, ten accomplished buddhobloggers participated in the gathering of candidates and the voting that determined this year’s nominations and/or will participate in the voting that determines the winners, to be announced on February 24.

There are 26 categories of awards with an aggregate 132 nominations, making for a bounty of worthy honorees.

The prime purpose of the awards is to introduce Buddhists -- and others with a nascent interest in Buddhism -- to some of the great many excellent, varied Buddhism blogs that are out there, as close as a click away."

I was quite surprised to find myself nominated in two categories, namely Best Buddhist Practice or Dharma Post with "Buddha and Myth" and Best Multi-Part Blog Post with "Drop karma", "Drop karma (2)" & "Karma of excellence". It's an honour, indeed, and a pleasure.

NOTE: Meanwhile, the winners have been announced later today: "we bow to the winners, all the nominees, the excellence of Buddhism blogging and the work that buddhobloggers do to bring us information and joy." See more.

Spoken Sutta

John Bullitt invites you:

"The Dhamma has always been essentially an oral tradition. Since the Buddha's day, generations of teachers have passed down the teachings to their students by way of the spoken word and through their living example. Although written sutta translations are invaluable in the careful study of Dhamma, rich new layers of meaning often emerge when hearing those same suttas read aloud. I am often astounded at how immediately and deeply the meaning of a sutta — even one I've read many times before — can penetrate my stubborn heart when I finally make the time to listen to it.

I invite you to download these readings, settle down in a quiet place with your laptop or iPod, close your eyes, rest your attention lightly on your breath, and open your ears. Imagine yourself in a peaceful forest setting on a warm day, sitting under the cooling shade of a tree, as the Buddha himself takes a breath and begins to speak..."

Check out the collection.

Mindmapping Buddhadharma 2.0

Is Buddhadharma 2.0 being born, or is it still just a thought? See here what Ryan Oelke of BuddhistGeeks has to say about this über-geeky notion. As it turns out, Web 2.0 is a social beast, so we have a mindmapping project "bD 2.0" going at mindmeister ("think together"). See the map on Buddhadharma20.com (read only). If you wish to contribute, you'll need an invitation.