Re-upped the domain for another year.

In other news, my practice has been going strong for a little over a half-year now. Since January 1st, I’ve missed only three days. One because I plum forgot, one because it was 2am, I’d just driven 4 hours, and the next day I’d be sitting for 90 minutes, and one because I was knocked out with the stomach flu. Not a bad run for the first 188 days.

Yesterday, a neighbor tried to recruit me to come to her newly Lutheran church. I smiled politely, but was thinking about how uncomfortable I still get when people try to bring up religion in conversation.

This may be the only time zombies (well, cannibals) and zen have been mentioned together:

Because when the cannibals come to the door, your chanting and your bells and your visualizations, your Secret and your gods and your mumbo-jumbo, your politics or your philosophy and ethics, all that will be gone. Just you looking down the barrel of a gun (Mao had that right) or at the razor-sharp teeth of a predator with your name on ‘em.

Oops, wait… no it’s not.

Last week, I listened to the Zen Stories talk by Gil Fronsdal from 2003.  Definitely one of my favorites of his so far.

I really enjoy Fronsdal’s perspective on things because he has a Ph.D. in Buddhist Studies from Stanford and has trained in both the Soto Zen and Insight Meditation lineages.  From my beginner’s eyes, there’s a lot to learn and take from varying lineages of Buddhism, no matter which one you might feel most closely connected with.

So, the other day on my personal blog I linked up to the Blogisattva Awards which are given to Buddhist bloggers.  Kind of a cool idea and I wanted to scour the nominees for new sites to check out.

Today I returned to the page, clicking through a few links here and there when I stumble upon the “Best Achievement in Clean, Straightforward, Unaffected Design” category and see:

• Nine Out of Zen, ryan

Wait… what?

First of all, I’m surprised anyone’s even stumbled across this blog as I haven’t really mentioned it or linked it up very many places.  It’s really just been a place for me to think out loud about stuff as I start this here Buddhist journey thing.

Secondly, as much as I’d like to take credit for the design, it’s just a plain old Wordpress theme I downloaded.  I haven’t even made a header graphic!  On top of that, I grabbed it because I first saw it over at My Zen Life.  So I’m doubly lazy!

I guess what I’m saying is: please don’t vote for me!  I’m sure one of the other sites is way more worthy than a lazy zen beginner that slapped his site up on a whim one afternoon.

But I do invite you to stick around and comment!  I have a lot to learn.

In lieu of a thorough introductory post, I’m going to point to my about page. My next two (repurposed) posts will serve as an introduction of sorts as well.