BACK AGAIN!

I have been thinking a lot about The Buddha Diaries. Which is obviously not the same as doing. I have been thinking that I need to get back to more regular entries; and first I need to set the intention and make the commitment.

Was a time when this blog was the first thing that came to mind when I woke up in the morning. Was a time when I rarely missed a day. The blog seemed to satisfy my writing jones as well as the commitment I made long ago to waking up and living in awareness, rather than allowing the precious time to slip by without my noticing. And, through awareness, to become the better person that I had chosen to become.

I have been distracted, clearly. I have been distracted, particularly, by events in my adoptive country that have been profoundly upsetting to my equanimity. The (good!) socialist instincts with which I was raised in my native country, England, have suffered a severe shock in the face of the rise of extreme right-wing power throughout the world, and particularly by its dominance of our national priorities.

In recent months I have been personally distracted from The Buddha Diaries by my commitment to a book about my boyhood. I saw the book, "What a Good Boy Am I", as an expression of my dedication to awareness; it was, has been, a way to learn more about who I am today and how I got to be that way. Some say that your entire life speeds through your consciousness at the moment of death and this has been a close-up review of my first years here on earth.

I am now done with it. The book went through four stages of revision, and a last minute full-length review. After that review, this past Tuesday, I took the book on a thumb drive to a print shop, all 286 pages, and had a couple of copies printed out. I packed up one of the copies and shipped it off to an agent who expressed interest, first, in seeing an outline and, now, the entire manuscript. I'm grateful for the interest and keeping my fingers crossed. It would be great to find a good agent and eventually a commercial publisher.

So it's out of my hands, at least for the time being, while the agent puts it through the review process at that end. Which leaves me thinking about The Buddha Diaries again.

The description line for the blog, sitting below the title for lo! these many years (the first entry dates from January 29, 2007) is this: "getting to the heart of the matter." I meant any matter, from what was going on in my life at the time to international politics. I wanted to use the blog as a diary in which I could reflect on my reactions to both interior and exterior events, to become aware of what was going on in the deepest part of my own being.

This was perhaps too lofty a goal for me to live up to, day-in, day-out! But it remains, for me, a worthy goal, and one that I'd like to continue to pursue. I hope to rebuild my base of readers who enjoyed reading what I wrote, and sometimes responding to it. I feel I have somehow let them down...