Hi there.
I know it’s been a long time since our last post. A lot has happened over the past few months. I submitted my thesis, graduated from college, got a job, and then moved to China, where internet access isn’t always available.
Granted, that’s no excuse for me to have stopped posting.
It wasn’t until I received a message from a reader asking me why I’ve stopped that I realized I had stopped. Over the past few months, I’ve been busy with one thing or another, and soon enough I had gotten into the habit of not posting.
In fact, after logging onto BuddhaPod for the first time in months, I was a bit peeved to see that one of the posts I had written in May never got published. Perhaps there was some glitch in the system, but in any case, it’s up now.
This entire scenario has reminded me that habitual actions are powerful, and while we have to be wary of accumulating negative habits, we also have to remember to continue practicing positive habits. In this case, I had neglected to continue a very positive habit of blogging about Buddhism.
It also showed me how important it is to request the Dharma. This is one of Samantabhadra’s ten vows, and although I always assumed that we in our current day and age can’t possibly ask the Buddha to deliver a teaching, the message from a reader showed me that we simply have to adapt it to our situation. We should ask our Dharma teachers to continue teaching and our fellow practitioners to continue sharing so that the entire discourse in Buddhism becomes livelier.
While I don’t consider my blog to be very substantial Dharma, I’m glad that it has helped at least one reader, and I’m more than happy to continue writing for those readers.
Moving forward, there are a few topics I want to explore. These include tips on upholding the precepts in a a college context, as well as sharing some of my thoughts on classical texts. Oftentimes, these two things (precepts and old woodblock-printed books) seem especially inaccessible to a younger audience, but they’re both necessary in developing a holistic understanding and practice of Buddhism.
Until next time.
🙏