Dayamati Online

Just wanted to give a plug to this new website by Dharmacari Dayamati, aka Professor Richard Hayes, aka Mubul. Dayamati is wonderfully erudite and witty. He founded the academic listserv Buddha-L so many years ago that only he can remember it now, and has always been ready for a good robust debate. His book Land of No Buddha is a very good read. This site combines more formal writings with stuff edited from Buddha-L, and also provides links to his academic.

My Art

I haven't got around to getting photo's of artwork I did while on my ordination retreat, but I stumbled on a photo taken by Ashvajit while he was out for the ordinations. The image shows two works. A spire in the background (left a bit) was about 2m tall, took several hours and kept falling over. The arch was one of 6 or 7 and happens to be the best of the bunch. In a sense I think of it more of as a cascasde from the higher rock to the lower.

Another photo by Ashvajit. This time of a bundle of sticks representing the water element and the southern direction. Part of a planned series of four, but was the only one completed.

Other examples of my outdoor art can be found at jayarava.org.

Life without numbers...

... or colours... apparently. This caught my ear on the BBC 3 program Word of Mouth last Sunday. The Amazonian Piraha tribe have no words for number, or colours. They use three vowels, and seven or eight consonants. Actually men and women use different consonants, talk about gendered language!

This site appears to summarise an article from the journal Science, and has a number of fascinating factoids about the Piraha.

Blangha

Contrary to my earlier wailing about being left off Blogmandu, I am delighted to say that I do get a mention in the latest of 4 long posts covering the month to Jan 14. (see comments) I think I'd better stop being so obsessed and just relax into being noticed or not.

A while back Will of ThinkBuddha wrote about the online community of Buddhist bloggers and mentioned that it is friendly and helpful. So far I find myself in agree with this, and I must say it is very pleasent after the acrimony of Usenet and similar forums.

I note from perusing Blogmandu that there is a now a newsfeed aggregator called Blangha. Currently it seems to focus on Zen related sites, which mine are not, but who knows perhaps the idea will take off and the scope will broaden out. It's quite a good place to stop and take in the breadth of what Buddhist bloggers are writing about.

The Zero Dollar Homepage

The last pixels on the million dollar webpage have been sold on ebay. But what I really want to tell you about is the Zero Dollar Homepage. LOL! Courtesy of Wired's Monkey Bite Blog

Bricolage

Argh. I've been too busy doing other stuff to do much fun blogging lately. Finding I have more input than I can process so having to take a bit of a break from cramming stuff into my brain and waiting for some of it to leak out. I've written a rave about imagination which I thought was quite good. It even got a comment! Hooray! Continuing to scribble away in the back ground to create a backlog of writing as well.

I've managed to scrape together a few posts for FWBO News but keep wondering how I can other people involved. I have a poster ready to send out to FWBO centres, oh the ignominy of resorting to print to advertise a website. But I can't think of any other way to reach my target audience. I'm still in the top ten on Google, but also rating well on Yahoo!, and I'm numero uno on MSN. Not that I'd ever use the MSN search engine other than for vanity purposes.

Blogmandu is going again, but I don't get a mention. Oh cruel fate. Ah well, that's the worldly winds for you!

Upholstered Dave must be pleased that samsara-hq has finally moved ahead of this blog when you google samsara-hq :) Dave's been following my shining example and registering his blog on directory sites, although I'd call it attention seeking rather than whoring! I like the burning Wicker man Wikablog icon he found!

Obligatory cool/geeky website here. I've just finished reading all six Harry Potter books again, and find myself really excited about how it's going to end. It might have something to do with my fast approaching 40th birthday. Argh! Mugglenet is well beyond train-spotting and into obsessive compulsive disorder territory. However it will give you something to do while you wait another year and a half (most likely) for book 7.

Oh, and my MBTI type is INTJ - Mastermind! Finally some recognition.

Blog In Space

Send your blog, or your special one time message, out into space so that the aliens know that you care. Blog In Space .
I shit you not! Stuff like this really needs no comment does it? But in case you don't scroll down, yes, they do sell Blog in Space teeshirts.

Jayarava Rave

I uploaded a new essay on The Jayarava Rave in the weekend. In it I argue that awareness is better than having a lot of rules. I'm kinda hoping to get a response to this one, to get some comments. It's a fine line between saying something completely outrageous and offensive, and saying something thought provoking and interesting. I do try to err on the side of the latter, but I find that unless people disagree they tend not to interact.