Time Passes So Fast

Anniversay PartyThose nice people at WordPress reminded me that today is the third anniversary of my blog, and there’s been a post each and every day.

As it says in the About it is the story of my path to enlightenment, but it also records the past thirty six months highs and lows of life.

I would like to think that you can see the progress, slow though it may be, that I have made since I began, it’s a fascinating journey as many of you know, and everyone’s is different.

I would really like to thank all the people who have left comments on here or on Facebook or Twitter, they are all greatly appreciated and very often show that we are all learning together as we go along.

When I wrote the first post, I was determined to keep it up. Whilst I cannot, hand on heart, say that there haven’t been days when I’ve thought ‘Oh bum, it’s late, I’m tired and I still haven’t written today’s post’ I have always made the effort.

As with my practice and my cycling, it’s the routine that makes all the difference. It’s the discipline needed to keep going that adds to the progress through the practice, so when you feel like giving up on something don’t do it !!!

Barring fire, pestilence or flood, I’ll still be here, blogging away this time next year, and I hope that you are all still reading the posts too.

Don’t Tar Us All With The Same Brush

His Holiness, The Dalai LamaI was dismayed, earlier today, when I stumbled across the I Hate Buddhism page on Facebook. The page is a reaction to the violence against Muslims in Burma, with which I wholeheartedly disagree, but it paints a very bleak picture for any hope of peace.

What is really disturbing, is that, as a Buddhist myself, presumably I am also the subject of this torrent of hate. The Dalai Lama, surely one of the most revered and peace loving people on the planet, is also attacked and described as a devil.

Whilst I fully sympathise with the plight of the Muslims in Burma, I cannot, for the life of me, find any positive aspects of this or other similar sites on Facebook. I urge all people who are working so hard for world peace to report this page for inciting hatred, surely against the Facebook code of conduct.

The authors of the page have very valid grievances and deserve our prayers and help, but going about things this way cannot help their cause. Surely a more logical route to resolving the problem would be to call on the worldwide Buddhist community to put pressure on the Burmese to stop the atrocities.

P.S. Many thanks to Facebook for removing the page so promptly and also to all of you who reported the page.

Awkward Questions

Facebook-ZuckerbergThere was a really thought provoking program about Facebook on BBC tonight. Emily Maitlis interviews Mark Zuckeberg, the founder of the social networking site, and asks some rather awkward questions about the underlying psychological issues and advertising practices facing subscribers.

As one of those subscribers, I had become rather concerned about the way commercial companies are now much more prominent and that they have access to all my details as well as all my friends if I choose to Like them, so I tend not to.

Nobody can argue that Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and the like haven’t changed the way we keep in touch with family and friends forever. But we should all pause to think about quite how comfortable we are, letting these companies have such easy access to our personal details as well as our spending patterns, simply in order to promote their products or persuade us to part with our cash.

Watch the program, via the link above, and then you decide.