Summary: [display_podcast] I'm Brian your host, and this is the Daily Buddhism Podcast for May 9th, 2008. Before we get on with this week's lesson, I have a few announcements: I'd like to welcome the hordes of new listeners from iTunes. The numbers of listeners has skyrocketed since the last episode, and I hope you all enjoy the show and learn a thing or two about the world of Buddhism. I'd like to ask a little favor of you before we get started today; If you are listening through iTunes and you like the show, go to the iTunes listing for the Daily Buddhism and leave a review there. If you don't like the show, send me an email and explain why. If you have any comments, suggestions, or questions, drop me a note at dailybuddhism@gmail.com. For new listeners to the podcast, the Daily Buddhism is intended as a daily email service with short lessons and texts in Buddhism delivered to your email daily. If you haven't looked at the email list or the website, go to www.dailybuddhism.com and sign up for the mailing list. Next, subscribers to the email list already know about this, but we're launching a companion website and podcast called “Tao Of The Day.” The Tao and Taoism are not directly a part of Buddhism, but the Tao was very influential on Buddha and his society, and I think it's worthwhile to understand the Tao. The new site will look at one chapter of the Tao every day, both through email and as a podcast. You'll hear and learn a lot of material that still influences Eastern thinking today. The site and email list is set up a lot like this one; there's an email sign up in the top top-hand corner of the site for the daily email. Although the Tao podcast isn't available through iTunes yet, there is a link to the RSS feed that you can plug into iTunes or whatever you use to listen. The main website for this is www.taooftheday.com and there's a link on the Daily Buddhism site as well. And lastly, this past week I have added a few new things to the dailybuddhism website. There's a page called “Books” that contains a bunch of good beginner's level Buddhist books that I recommend. I'll be doing reviews on all of them eventually, but if you are looking for some reading material check out this list. Also, up in the top left-hand corner is a “Donation” button. I'm pointing out that it's there, but that's all I'm going to say about that. OK, enough announcements, on with the lesson! [This is the end of the transcript. Listen to the whole podcast or read the past week's entries]
