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Well it's pretty obvious that this project has ground to a halt. And what's more I'm going to be away from most of this year. In Feb I'm heading down under for a visit, and then from Apr - Aug I will be on a long retreat in the mountains in Spain - during which I will be ordained into the Western Buddhist Order. It will then take some time to sort out who I am and what I am doing. I may come back to blogging... I just dont know.

Most of my time these days is being spent working on my book on Mantra. Just collating all the Western/Eastern scholarship on the subject, or at least what is easily accessible to an amateur like me, is complex and time consuming. So much has been written about mantra that is obscure, misleading, or plain wrong that it requires a lot of sifting.

However I also intend to apply the ideas of Phonosemantics to mantra - something which to my knowledge has never been attempted before. This requires me to understand in some depth a few different areas of linguistics and semiology: phonology, phonetics, semantics, pragmatics, and of course Margaret Magnus's material on phonosemantics. It's heavy going. I recomend Margaret's book Gods of the words (it's on Amazon), and one by George Lakoff called Women, Fire and Dangerous Things.

I know at least two people read Mahablahblah on something like a regular basis - thanks.

Best wishes for the year ahead (2005)

Mahaabaala (aka Michael)