About this Site
Monday August 1, 2005

Flowers

Welcome to thinkBuddha.org, a peaceful little quarter of cyberspace for wayward reflections upon the various traditions of Buddhism.

thinkBuddha.org is run by me, Will Buckingham. I am a UK-based novelist, philosophy teacher and writer. I have been practising Buddhist meditation, in one fashion or another, since 1994, although these days I ten tod regard myself as Buddhish rather than as Buddhist. I started thinkBuddha.org some time around the July of 2005 as a means of thinking out loud as I tried to reflect more deeply on questions that cropped up in my practice as a meditator, as a philosopher and as a writer.

Why “wayward”? you may ask. Well, my dictionary gives the following definition:

Wayward: 1 following one’s own capricious, wanton, or depraved inclinations; 2 following no clear principle or law; 3 opposite to what is desired or expected.

I am not sure about ‘wanton’ and ‘depraved’, but there is probably sufficient caprice around these parts to warrant the term. ‘Following no clear principle or law’ is closer to the mark. Nevertheless, although I don’t have anything as grand as a theory or a principle to put forward, I will confess a particular set of biases and preferences: I tend to prefer the this-worldly to the other-worldly, the robust reality of the material world to the vague ineffability of the spiritual realm, science to religion, pragmatism to idealism. And all of this, of course, may seem to some to be opposite to what is desired or expected from someone who writes on Buddhism.

This site, then, is not an academic site, nor is it a site that aims to advocate Buddhism or preserve some idea of the purity of Buddhist doctrine. Rather it is part of an on-going tussle with the traditions of Buddhism in the hope that, out of the confusion, some kind of clarity might eventually arise… or at least the confusion itself might be fruitful.

The site, incidentally, is run using textpattern, an exceptionally elegant piece of software that produces nice CSS/XHTML compliant code. What this means, in plain English, is that the site conforms to web accessibility standards. I’m using some of the following textpattern plugins:

  • zem_contact: for the contact form.
  • zem_article_info: an administrator plugin. Let’s me know how many words in any particular article, as well as random other stuff.
  • bas_lets_see_yours: the txp blogmap plugin
  • mdp_calendar: for the neat little calendar in the sidebar.
  • upm_img_popper: for images – where would we be without it?
  • Newsletter Manager: I’m testing this one at the moment. It looks great so far…

Thanks for visiting, and do call back some time soon!