Daily Dharma: A New Series of Posts
As I searched for Dharma in the sea of Google, I came across a site and instantly fell in love with the content. Although a relatively new blog (much like us), the content is excellent and I look forward to the many posts to come. The authors name is David and his blog can be found at DailyDharma.net
I thought that the posts would be an excellent addition to Blending Zen and so I emailed David and asked if he minded if I republished his articles here on our blog. He was kind enough to give me permission, and so I will be adding the first series of his posts over the next week and will then add them as he adds to his own.
I hope to get to know David better over time, and who knows, maybe he wouldn’t mind doing some guest posts here from time to time on related content that may not fit exactly with the purpose of his site. As he states, his blog is not intended to be a Buddhist blog per se, though it pulls heavily from the philosophies of Buddhism.
Here is what he says on his ABOUT page to give you a little info:
DailyDharma.net is my project to ponder one unique way to improve ourselves everyday for a year.
We all want to be happier and healthier, yet we’re so busy and so overwhelmed with information, we often don’t know how to start improving our lives. If we do start, we often don’t have the time and discipline it takes to create lasting change.
With DailyDharma.net, I hope to make it easier to become happier and to create lasting positive change in our lives by providing one simple idea each day that you can choose to practice on that day. Each post will include a “challenge” that we can try that day.
Not every idea will be for everybody, and that’s OK. But hopefully you will find some ideas that you can practice and implement in your life, for at least a day, that can help you begin to improve yourself in your own way.
Why Dharma?
The Dharma, roughly translated as “the way”, is the word for Buddhist teachings leading to enlightenment. The Dharma can also refer to the elements that make up the world as we experience it.
While DailyDharma.net is not a Buddhist site per se, through the daily exercises presented here, the site aims to awaken everybody to three life-changing concepts: mindfulness, compassion, and peace.
Mindfulness
A key precept of Buddhism and other Eastern religions, mindfulness is the practice of concentrating your thoughts to become fully conscious. Mindfulness is being fully aware of yourself, including your thoughts, your actions, and your surroundings.
While Buddhists strive to achieve mindfulness through regular meditation practice, you do not have to identify with any particular religion to enjoy the benefits of mindfulness.
Anybody can practice mindfulness at any time by simply focusing your thoughts on where you are and what you are doing, rather than letting your mind wander or worry.
Mindfulness has myriad benefits. Mindfulness reduces stress, increases productivity, and enhances how you experience life. By increasing your appreciation for life’s simple pleasures, mindfulness can even make you happier.
Compassion
The Dharma teaches compassion in lieu of a selfish existence. By recognizing that suffering is a universal condition for all living beings, we can choose to think and act in ways that help relieve the suffering of others.
Whether it is taking time out of our busy lives to volunteer, donating a portion of our income to charity, spending time helping those around you, or simply thinking and praying for others, our compassion improves the world around us, and leads to greater satisfaction in our own lives.
Peace
Non-violence is a prerequisite for compassion. We cannot live with compassion if we wish harm upon other sentient beings. Living peacefully is more than just not physically harming others, however. To truly live peacefully, we must refrain from harming all living creatures – even a mouse, or a fly, for example. Additionally, we must take responsibility for the actions of our governments and societies. To truly follow “the way”, we must object to war and other violent actions.
About Me
I am David, DailyDharma.net’s author. I am a 27 year old man living in Massachusetts. I work as a writer and a marketing consultant. I study Buddhism as a way of life, not necessarily a religion. If you would like, you are welcome to contact me.
Thanks for reading.
The Direction of Blending Zen…Ideas?
This blog is a great start, but I know that even a blog has limits to what purposes it can serve, though admittedly, it’s not like we’re pushing it to it’s limits just yet. In my mind however, I envision this site becoming much more than a blog. A resource for learning and understanding on various topics of spirituality.
For those who came along through Lotus Liberation, here’s a small history, even though I’ve mentioned it in previous posts at the beginning. I created the site as a place for me to talk about my process of blending some of the Zen/Buddhist philosophies into my life. Though I have left Mormonism, I’m not quite ready to abandon Christianity as a whole. My goal was to find a happy medium and learn how to blend the two together. There seem to be many people who find great success in it, so I wanted a place for me, as well as others to talk about the process, how we apply certain concepts into our lives.
I met up with Sattva and she had the suggestion to open it up to more people, to let others create posts and have it be more of a community based concept. This was perfect, as that’s ultimately what I did want to see happen. After she started the LL blog, I thought I might as well approach her about merging the two and getting it kicked off (she’s more of a go getter than I am), and so here we are.
With that said, I could really use all of your ideas on the direction to take this site…even if it’s just to not mess with a good thing. Any comments are welcome. Here were a few of the ideas that I had already.
Community Forums – For open discussion
Resources – I know there are a million sites out there that have information on Buddhism, etc, explaining the basics, but it couldn’t hurt to have some of the basics here with links for in depth information. This can even be Yoga resources, etc. No limits other than it being related to our topics in some way.
Downloads – This could really be part of the resources section, but I know there are a ton of PDF’s I’ve downloaded of various articles and other items I’ve found helpful or inspiring. This could be a place to share those (staying within copyright laws), or maybe to be a mirror for content from other sites, like some of the talks from AudioDharma, etc. Lots of thoughts.
What would you like to see here? How can we make it more useful to us and others?
If you build it…
April 26, 2008 by barefootbhakti
Filed under Website
they will come! Thank you ScottyDoo for picking up my project and running with it. As most of you know I’m extremely busy and up to my eyeballs in projects right now: opening a yoga studio in three weeks, three kids, two callings, etc. I’m also not the most tech savvy person out there.
ScottyDoo graciously offered up his blendingzen site to all of us and his talent to help maintain it. Much thanks! Please stay after the meeting today so we can set you apart….
Wordpress 2.5 RC1
As you may have noticed, when you go to the main domain it now forwards you to the “/blog” folder. This is where I have the install of 2.5 RC1. I’m someone who loves to tinker with the latest and greatest on software, so I just had to install this. I was pleasantly surprised that the theme ported over just fine. I know a lot of themes and plugins are not working properly. So far so good. I still have the old one in place, I haven’t moved anything, so it actually may get confusing if you follow old links. I’ll worry about that later as it’s not like I get much traffic at this point.
If you have any problems at all, please let me know. You can email me at the following address:
scott at (the domain of this site)
Sorry, have to do something so the bots don’t pick it up and I start getting spam. Thanks!
