The Habituated Buddhist

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Hiatus Over

Well, what I had planned to be a brief two week (or so) hiatus has extended too long, and is now coming to an end.  While I try to keep this a blog about ideas, please indulge me in the following more personal piece.

I had decided to take a bit of a break from the blog to explore some other forms of social media, and just generally decide if doing the blog is worth it.  Despite some encouragement, blogging is a little like shouting your ideas from the roof of a building… all while 10,000 other shout from their own. As such, it’s tad lonely.

Anyway, my experiment with other social media has been a mixed bag. Twitter has been fun, though terribly addictive. If you don’t know, I’m @habituatedbuddh on twitter. There I have found a great recovery community (who use the hashtag #xa – among others which I generally ignore). All very supportive and more or less tolerant of my heretical ways.  Being on Twitter has been fun, and has led to a great, though scary, opportunity I describe shortly. In addition I have connected with some really wonderful and intelligent Buddhists who have been great to get to know,

The other social media I checked out is the new Google +. As much as I’m enjoyed Twitter, G+ has been a truly disappointing and disillusioning experience.  On G+ I have had the chance to meet and interact with some very interesting and occasionally prominent Buddhists. Several whose blogs I frequent and link to from my own.

Unfortunately, it has felt at times like one long episode of “Buddhists Behaving Badly” .  Unbeknownst to those of us outside the e-Buddhist world, in cyberspace there is quite a history of, and active engagement in, the rudest, pettiest, most mean-spirited behavior by Buddhists, and under the banner of Buddhism, one can imagine. Now, I know I should not expect all Buddhist to behave a certain way, and bad behavior is not the sole domain of other faiths, but seriously the rude insulting and ego-centric behavior out there is enough to turn me theist (poor joke, but you get what I mean).

Perhaps I should not expect all Buddhist to behave better, but I feel no desire to engage with those for whom basic manners are not a part of their practice. If you disagree… well, I don’t care.

The great opportunity that has come up as a result of the social media experiment is that I am going to be starting a Dharma Punx inspired recovery meeting in the Atlanta Metro.  More details will be forthcoming but it appears I’ve actually got a space lined up and encouragement from some people at Dharma Punx in LA and elsewhere.

It’s a scary prospect, but it’ll be fun. I’ll get a web page and twitter account up once I get a name for the group.

As for this blog, in up-coming days I’ll finish my analysis of Step two, begin to explore what I consider the three stages of recovery (including “transcendence”) and begin introducing the Dharma Punx group.

Good to be back!