Having a personal website or blog has felt pointless for over a decade. The internet is full of thirty years of flotsam and jetsam and the sheer volume of data has become intractable. Search engines don’t work any more. The only way to find relevant content is looking at what people tend to click on. Unfortunately, the strongest driver of clicks is fear, followed closely by hyperbole. I don’t offer either of those things so I have no expectations of traffic. The little bit of monitoring I do is for security.
So why blog?
- We need more free, human-generated content on the Internet.
- To create as an antidote to consuming.
- Sharing my return to more active Buddhist practice might help someone else along their own path.
Who am I?
I’m a GenX netizen who has watched the Internet grow from the ground up. I’m a bioinformatician in my day job. Outside work I have an ever-changing panoply of hobbies and interests, some of which may appear at various times on this blog. They include Irish music and dance, English handbells, fountain pens, and fiber arts, but are subject to change on a whim.
On Zen
My Sōtō Zen practice is in the lineage of the White Plum Asanga, founded by Maezumi Roshi and Bernie Glassman. I’m training to join the Zen Peacemaker Order and serving as a student practice leader in our sangha. I do a fair amount of admin work for our nonprofit as well. I’m relatively new to Zen but I’ve been Buddhist since 2001. I started looking for a place to restart my practice after the pandemic and found a dharma home in One Heart Sangha. The blog is called “Off the Cushion” because my teacher, Bob JinGen Ertman Sensei, emphasizes developing a strong practice outside of sitting.
Everything here is just my perspective and isn’t meant to be authoritative. If you’re looking for dharma talks, Sensei Domyo Burk has an excellent podcast, and I highly recommend Tenshin Fletcher Roshi’s monthly podcast out of Yokoji Zen.
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