Community
Tuesday December 13, 2005
Last week I had lunch with Gareth from Green Clouds. I don’t know why I was surprised when I discovered that one of my fellow Buddhist bloggers lived a couple of miles down the road from me, but I was. Anyway, we met for lunch in Café One, one of Birmingham’s nicest but most erratic cafés, and chatted about Buddhism and blogging, without the mediation of a screen and a keyboard.
The world of Buddhist bloggers is, it has to be said, an extremely friendly and mutually supportive place. I think it was ZenUnbound’s Tom who said that Buddhist bloggers tend to be wayward by nature, and that trying to organise them is rather like herding cats. No doubt this is true, but this waywardness and unherdability does not preclude an awful lot of friendliness and mutual appreciation. It may be a curious kind of sangha or community that we have coming down the pipes of our modems, but it’s certainly a sangha of sorts. Nacho, over at Woodmoor village has coined the nifty term blangha, the blog-sangha. Nacho, it seems, spends at least small a proportion of his meditation thinking up nifty terms like this – the other one I like is ‘onlightenment’ for the process of finding insight through online activities.
Anyway, the lunch was good, it was a pleasure to meet with Gareth, and the meeting, during which we spent a fair while talking about question of sangha has given me a bit of extra impetus to get a project going that I’d been planning for some time. Being by nature rather unherdable, my current Buddhist connections are informal and rather loosely-knit, and I’d like something a bit more regular and formal in terms of community. The blangha is great, but in the end it is not enough. When I came back from my retreat at Gaia House, I was fully intending to get a weekly sitting group set up here in Birmingham – there’s not one in Birmingham at the moment, and it would be a fantastic thing to have; but life – as life will – took over for a few months, and this plan got pushed to the bottom of the pile until the new year.
Now, fortunately, the bulk of the year’s work is out of the way and I have a bit of time to start planning things more seriously for the coming year; so I’m getting myself organised and putting things in place. I hope that the sitting group will start in mid-January. And for those of you in Ohio and Ulan Bator who can’t pop over to Birmingham’s Café One for a cuppa, I’ll be posting to thinkBuddha to say how things go…
#2 · James
13 December 2005
Hello Will…first time on you blog and I bow to the Buddha within you.
Sounds like you and Gareth had a wonderful connection.
I must say that I was honored to meet Nacho.
He is a beautiful person. :)
I like blangha and onlightenment but I agree with you that they do not substitute for an in-person sangha.
Anyway, namaste my new friend.
#3 · Gareth
14 December 2005
Was great to meet you too Will. I am very intrigued by the idea of a Gaia house affiliated group. Please let me know as the organisation begins to fall into pace, and et me know if there’s anything I can do.
I have friends who I suspect may be looking for a new Sangha in the New Year, I will mention this to them as well, if you don’t mind.
Best Wishes
#1 · Nacho
13 December 2005
Smile Thanks Will. Wonderful that you got to meet with Gareth! I had a chance to meet James from The Buddhist Blog last September. I went to my ordination in the Order of Interbeing (at Estes Park, Colorado), and James picked me up at the airport and took me to the site. Wonderfully nice and friendly fellow.
As to the terms… : ) a love of words, a Rhetoric degree, heady combination. I like Blangha and Onlightenment, and have plans soon for something cool out of those. We’ll see!
Have fun with the practice group! Give my regards to Gareth!
Best,
Nacho