Hi there, blogger buddies. This is about a couple of award nominations that arrived at my door the other day, sent by Rory, at beyondthedream.co.uk. It reminded me about other award nominations I’d received, just left there on the shelf, gathering dust. Why? Because I have a pretty small group of blogger buddies in my little window here and the requirements are finding others to nominate… that’ll be too difficult, I thought. So, well, anyway, this is how things were and I wasn’t sure what, how, where to begin. Then it seemed do-able, somehow, and I started to get into it a bit more. In the process, I began to think about the idea of REFRESH and renew and to reappraise the whole concept. Thinking about it can go on and on but it’s the doing-of-it that makes it work. It’s a good thing really, the circulating Awards for these really mind-boggling blogs to be found here and there on the planet, I never really doubted it. It does need a bit of focus to get it all presented correctly, but what I see now is that doing this, collecting all the links and connecting it all up, of course, brings us all closer together.

So that’s how it happened for me and I’m grateful for Rory’s nominations for both the Versatile Blogger award, and the Best Moments Awards. I’ve been following Rory’s blog, beyond the dream, for about 6 months and there’s all kinds of interesting observations on Non-Duality in his archives. Also a wealth of related material that’s well researched. I’m a regular visitor. Okay, then, this is what it looks like:

And now I have to share SEVEN THINGS ABOUT MYSELF:

1. I was born in the North of Scotland. It’s really cold there – and that’s all I can say about it.

2. My favourite fiction authors are Richard North Patterson, Scott Turow, Robert B. Parker and K. C. Constantine.

3. There are two exceptional countries in the world, Switzerland and Japan.

4. I had cancer in 1994, in Thailand and some Theravadin Buddhist monks helped me manage the pain and recover from surgery. After that I became a Buddhist.

5. I do 30 mins meditation every morning. But sometimes I forget.

6. At the Delhi meeting in 2012, the Dalai Lama spoke to me and held my hand. His skin is so soft!

7. My wife is Thai, we have no children of our own but take care of our 9 year-old niece part-time.

Awarding the people who live in the moment,

The noble who write and capture the best in life,

The bold who reminded us what really mattered –

Savoring the experience of quality time.

RULES:

Winners re-post this completely with their acceptance speech. This could be written or video recorded.

Winners have the privilege of awarding the next awardees! The re-post should include a NEW set of people/blogs worthy of the award; and winners notify them the great news.

RESOURCES:

• What makes a good acceptance speech?
  • Gratitude. Thank the people who helped you along the way
  • Humor. Keep us entertained and smiling
  • Inspiration. Make your story touch our lives
• Get an idea from the great acceptance speeches, compiled in
• MomentMatters.com/Speech
• Display the award’s badge on your blog/website, downloadable in MomentMatters.com/Award
• ACCEPTANCE SPEECH:
• Thank you everyone for following my blog and all your ‘likes’ and comments. It means a lot to me. What am I trying to do with my blog? It’s been described as chapters in a travelog/spiritual autobiography. That’s it, more or less; the Buddha’s Teaching on the simple reality of being here. And that’s why I believe blogging is important; we’re all in different parts of the world, yet we’re all here, each in his/her reality space, contemplating this, reading others’ pages, writing our own. That’s the internet, it’s simply amazing. The intention is just to share what I’ve learned about how it works, moment by moment. I’d call it Applied Buddhism, rather than the theoretical kind. It’s the doing-of-it, the ‘practice’ that has helped me. And it’s in this way that I hope it can help other people. The sense of it is generosity, relinquishment, giving it all away, no holding on, no attachment. All this springs from G R A T I T U D E to the monks in Thailand who helped me in 1994, and changed my life. It’s only been about 9 months since dhammafootsteps went public but, bit by bit, it’s becoming part of my life. I spend the first two hours of every day reading the blogs I follow and checking comments and replying to these. I copy parts of posts that are interesting and paste them into my own notes. My own posts are often developed from this source material. It’s how we learn. And so that’s all I have to say right now. I’ll be back soon with some other award nominations that are lying on the shelf. Thanks again for the nominations and thanks too everyone for doing what you’re doing and the creativity of all bloggers everywhere.
• NOMINATIONS:
• a mindful traveler
• A4man
• burgessart
• everyday gurus
• gems of delight
• grow your innerself
• julie green
• ladybluerose
• mindful diary
• poet4justicedotwordpressdotcom
• shift
• spiritual artwork
• superaalifragilistic
• the wind horse blog
• who is bert

• ps. could someone tell me how to get rid of the formatting of these bullets?

• Image: Durer engraving of Erasmus 1526, Rotterdam, Holland