Imagine my shock when I read Precious Metal's post about the "Top 50 Buddhist Blogs" and saw The Journey mentioned.
WHAT?!? SNARKY ME?!? Nominated as a Buddhist blog and not in the yoga category? Here is a list of "award winners" in the yoga category from which this blog is conspicuously absent.
While it's nice to "win" an award and I posted about this on my Facebook pages, after I stopped jumping up and down I wondered who runs these sites that make these awards.
Over the last 5 years I've "won" an award a time or two from an X-ray technician school or something like that for being one of the best yoga blogs. Then I read the "Top 10 Buddhism Award Hustle" that Dave wrote in his Buddhist blog, The Endless Further. I would bet that the "best yoga blog" thing is hustled the same way. As Dave says, at least I discovered some new Buddhist blogs to read.
The best Buddhism blog awards were supposedly sponsored by "Online Schools" and Dave quotes a blogger who was informed that this is "basically a list to shore up Online School’s credibility as a diploma-mill":
“As it turns out, the awards are sponsored by a consortium of online doctoral programs, some run by for-profit institutions. What’s more, the html code for the badge one is meant to display on one’s blog contains a text link, just below the badge, for a site promoting these programs.”
I removed that html code from the award badge in the sidebar.
In any event, what the hell. While I do not consider this blog a "Buddhism blog" per se I DO write about my spirituality. I am proud of the pieces I wrote about my dying cat here and here.
If those two pieces helped someone in the same situation then that means much more to me than any type of award from faceless entities on the internet. And if posting the award badge leads people to more good writing on Buddhism, then I will have paid it forward.
OM MANI PADME HUM
5 OMs:
Hey, nice blog. I love the look, and again, thanks for the mention.
Since I too have a cat that I serve (I'm just staff, you know), I read with interest the posts on your dying cats. When a friend of mine's dog was dying we sat around him and chanted Om Mani Padme Hum for about four hours. It was a rather peaceful and, funny to say, uplifting experience. Reading about the last moments of your cat's life sure brought a tear to my eye.
One of these days I will post the story of how my cat, Tara (she's a Bodhisattva), who looks like your Yogi Cat) was lost and went 28 days without food or water, and survived. Of course, she's down to only 7 or 8 lives now, but who's counting? Anyway, thanks for sharing your moving story. Best regards, David
lol that's great! congrats :) I remember the posts about your cat and they were true and honest. Namaste!
Yeah... the Buddhist one and the Yoga one do look like twins in terms of design.
Seems so strange, but I guess there must be some kind of pay off for the creators of these awards, right? It sure isn't obvious but oh well...
Anyway, just like the awards that get handed around without such an agenda, it is a good way to discover new blogs. So it's all good in the end as long as you disable the HTML code :D
Dear Linda
Haha, how funny the "read this first" part. I found the thread interesting, as well as the post by the other blogger you mention. Sometimes people who put too many "trophies" on their side bars stop blogging in the first place.
Cheers,
Arturo
Nothing matters if you hold onto nothing. You know its the truth if it eradicates suffering.
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