The Buddha Diaries Recommends

Dharma Bums
The Buddha Diaries is offering a free "virtual" stay for all of our readers, at the magically ordinary Washington State country home of Robin and Roger, authors of Dharma Bums. To redeem your prize, simply click here…read the posts, take in the pictures and stories, and be transported.

Having become rather attached to the Dharma Bums’ lovingly portrayed corner of the world, we are anxious (though perhaps not as anxious as they) about their impending departure to places unknown.

The current house and its surroundings, you see, is as much a part of Dharma Bums as the authors themselves. Perhaps more. Roger and Robin’s wonderful observations on Buddhism, current events, nature and philosophy are nearly always sprung from the everyday minutiae of daily life on and around their beautiful property…we cannot imagine any family to be more intimately familiar with their habitat. In this July post, “the incongruity of seeing deer at an extreme minus tide…” leads to ruminations about the elusiveness of outrage, which seems to be an ever-present challenge for this pair. The idyllic scenes unraveling all around them threaten to obfuscate the current political realities that they find so abhorrent.

Thankfully, the posts at Dharma Bums are as well tended to as the prolific garden, which regular readers know intimately by now. There is much else to love about the world (the life) Robin and Andrea share with us: the charming and often educational non sequitur (“The new hi-tech way to spread bark mulch is to have it blown in.”); the surprisingly frequent animal rescue (see chipmunk trapped in garden hose caddy); the carefully chosen photographs that always illuminate or amuse (see photo of a sea star with 19 arms that does both!).

The great danger of the internet is that its pull becomes so strong as to isolate us from each other even as it brings us -- in some ways -- closer together. Dharma Bums removes the double edge from that sword. In bringing loving, honest attention to a small corner of the world that many of us will never see, it strengthens the notion that we are all connected though we may be far apart and living under quite different circumstances.

Please do take a look.