Jizo Celebrates His/Her First Birthday

Photo: Theresa Thompson (Creative Commons): http://www.flickr.com/photos/theresasthompson/

This month, The Jizo Chronicles celebrates its first birthday. (I can’t decide Jizo’s gender, and historically Jizo is gender-fluid anyway. Thank goodness.) A year is not much in the human realm, perhaps, but a pretty good feat for the blogosphere. And now I understand why… it takes a certain level of commitment and creative imagination to continue posting new material week after week.

The biggest thing I’ve learned this year is what an amazing virtual sangha of Buddhist bloggers is out there. When I started TJC back in November of 2009, I was only aware of Danny Fisher’s great blog. It’s been wonderful to meet so many new sister and brother bloggers who inspire me and challenge me. Many of them are listed in the right sidebar… I encourage you to check them out. Four bloggers who I have come to particularly appreciate for the depth and quality of their thinking and writing and willingness to grapple with tough issues are Katie Loncke, Nathan of Dangerous Harvests, Rev. James Ford of MonkeyMind, and Arun of Angry Asian Buddhist.

My intention this year with TJC has been to explore how my own dharma practice informs how I look at and act upon suffering in the world, and to share stories and information with all of you that are relevant to that topic.

I’ve been looking over the posts from this past year and have created my own award categories, kind of a narcissistic version of the Blogisattva awards just for The Jizo Chronicles. So here we go…

Most viewed post

• Call to Action for the Gulf Oil Spill (viewed by 813 people)

2^nd most viewed post

This one is fascinating to me… for some reason, this quote from Thomas Merton came out in spot number two, with 547 viewers. I didn’t do anything to promote it, but it seems to have taken on a life of its own and pops up every week in my statistics as one of the most viewed posts.

Posts that generated the most comments

• Once again, the Call to Action for the Gulf, followed by
• Principles of Socially Engaged Buddhism

Post with the most provocative title:

• Dissing Thich Nhat Hanh (did that get your attention?)

Some of my favorite first-person accounts

The tagline for this blog is “bodhisattvas in the trenches,” and I’m always looking for moving stories from people on the frontlines of social change and social justice. We’ve featured a diverse group  of voices on The Jizo Chronicles over this past year, ranging from a nuclear disarmament policy analyst to a peace volunteer in Bangkok during the uprising in Thailand. Here are a few of my favorites:

• First-hand Account from Thailand (April 2010)
• Buddhist Chaplains Love the Gulf (July 2010)
• Dispatch from the Train to Auschwitz (June 2010)
• Challenging Questions for Engaged Buddhists (September 2010)

Three favorite posts that almost nobody read

• Harmony of Difference and Sameness
• Micro Peacework
• Waking Up to the Tragedy of New Orleans

Some of the topics Jizo covered this year

• Arizona’s Immigration Bill
• Gulf Oil Spill
• Uprising in Thailand
• Burma
• Earthquake in Tibet, April 2010
• The Death of Robert Aitken Roshi

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If you have any favorite Jizo Chronicle moments from this past year, or if you want to let me know the kinds of posts you’d like to see more of, I’d love to hear from you. Just drop a comment below. Even just to say hi. Bloggers love our readers…we’d be nothing without you.

I’ll have one more birthday celebration post next week with a special giveaway coming up.

Most of all, thanks for reading along with me and Jizo this year!