Summary: Podcast Episode 16 Welcome back, I'm Brian your host and this is episode 16 of the Daily Buddhism. Before we get started recapping the week's material, we'll cover a few quick announcements. A few weeks ago, I mentioned that I had set up a message board or forum for posting questions and answers. Well, there just wasn't much interest in that, and it was getting to be a lot of work simply keeping the spam and crank messages off the board, so I have decided to discontinue the message boards. I think it may have been a little overcrowded with other things anyway. Maybe I'll try something similar at a later date in the future, I don't know yet. But for now, no more forum. If you have questions on anything or want to request that I cover a specific topic, please send me an email, or post your comments right on the website. To make those comments easier, I am now including a link in each daily email to the appropriate place on the website to comment on each topic. That'll make finding the right place easier, especially if a new question comes up on an old topic. Every post on the blog now has a “Share this Article” button on it. If you think something would interest a friend, you can send them a link to the article in question. Technical Questions and "how to's": I have had a few technical questions about things as well. I'm going to try to clarify as many of them as I can now: When I say “the blog,” or “the website,” I am referring to the main website at www.dailybuddhism.com The type of software running there is called a blog, or “web log,” it allows me to post our daily topics there and lets you post comments or questions after each topic. When I discuss “the emails” I usually mean the daily email that I send out with the lesson or subject of the day. There's a sign-up form on the front page of the website if you aren't getting these already. The podcast is of course, this audio file. You don't need an iPod to hear a podcast (although they're great!). If you don't have an iPod or MP3 player, you can download the audio file to your computer and play it with whatever media player you might have on your system. If that's not something you are comfortable with, you can just go to the website and click on the embedded audio player. It's at the top of all the podcast announcement posts, and looks like a little arrow. Click on the arrow and listen to the show right there within your browser. Someone complained that I didn't put the full transcript of the podcast on the site anymore. Actually, I do. I put the announcements and introduction on there (you're reading it now), but the bulk of the podcast is already transcribed in the daily emails. I don't see any reason to duplicate the whole week's emails in one long post. If I were going to do that, I may as well change the name of the site to the “Weekly Buddhism” and that defeats the purpose a little bit. On the other hand, a while back I asked whether or not the listeners wanted a daily podcast as well as the daily emails, and the responses I got were unanimous that once a week was good. I have to agree; I have been subscribed to some daily podcasts and they're very hard to keep current with. So the podcast will stay weekly. Now that our long “series” on basic Buddhism is about done I will be having more and more “standalone” subjects, which will allow me to get the podcast out more regularly every week. OK, that ‘s a LOT of stuff, so lets get on with this week's show! [read blog posts, listen to the audio file, or read emails for the rest of the content that's not repeated here :) ] Episode Links Namaste: “I bow to the Divine in You” http://www.dailybuddhism.com/archives/108 No-Self or Anatman http://www.dailybuddhism.com/archives/112 Dependent Origination http://www.dailybuddhism.com/archives/113 Koan: If You Love, Love Openly http://www.dailybuddhism.com/archives/114
