Happy Birthday, Mountain Dharma

I only just realized that the Mountain Dharma blog had it's birthday this December: it's now four years old! (In fact, it's birthday was on the first day Marjorie and I attended the Rinchen Terzod.)

There hasn't been as much Dharma blogging as I'd originally hoped, but we did get the occasional sangha member to write a post an share their thoughts. If more folks are interested in contributing articles to the blog, email me and let's chat!

The real question is: what am I going to get the blog for its birthday? Funny that you should ask... there are a couple presents I have in mind. 1) I'm hoping to have a custom domain set up for Mountain Dharma very soon, and then 2) I expect that Mountain Dharma will a brother or sister very soon :-)

For present #1, I have registered the domain gsang.org. The word "gsang" (Tib. གསུང་) is a wylie transliteration of Tibetan used to indicate the following meanings:

speech, voice, guru's speech, communication, authentic communication, authentic communicative being with others, communicable significance, precept, expression, act of speaking, verses, enlightened speech, teachings, authored by, transmitting

In other words, it indicates Dharma in word form, communicated by voice. This particular word was chosen as the domain name, since there are some very nice word combinations you can make with them that seem apropos for the blog format. Most of those will be saved as surprises, but here are some good examples:

• snying po gsung (Tib. སྙིང་པོ་གསུང་) - inner reality of communication
• mdo tsam gsung (Tib. མདོ་ཙམ་གསུང་) - to speak or tell briefly
• rdo rje gsung (Tib. རྡོ་རྗེ་གསུང) - vajra voice
• 'dzum ste gsung (Tib. འཛུམ་སྟེ་གསུང་) - said it smiling

One that you won't likely find in a dictionary, though, is ri gsung (Tib. རི་གསུང་): "Mountain Voice", or more liberally translated, "Mountain Dharma" :-) As such, I'm hoping to set up the new domain for this blog as http://ri.gsung.org/ :-) As part of the new name, the blog will get a makeover as well! Nothing too crazy, but a little refresh would be nice. Also, the blog templates haven't been updated since its birth, so the layout uses obsolete Google-tech. The makeover will include using the latest and greatest Blogger templates from Google :-)

But shhhh! Don't tell the blog...

Do note that it is not the content of this blog that is viewed as Mountain Dharma. Instead, it refers to this: upon receiving genuine Dharma teachings, various students (from the mountains) comment upon them (and write on other, semi-related topics in support of the Dharma and Dharma activities).

As for present #2, well, that's a surprise!