My guide to blogging. I sent to Hugh MacLeod of Gaping Void and he asked permission to publish it. That was a thrill– rubbing elbows with the A-listers.
Hugh MacLeod of gapingvoid is a man after my own heart— bright, witty, satirical, profound with humility & humor. Plus, his drawings make me smile.
Hugh asked his readers to submit a mini-manifesto to Change the World. The only requirement, other than meeting his quality standards, was it be less than 500 words. Now I can be verbose with the best of them, and often am (I’m seeking help though), but I aspire to the sublime beauty of verbal economy, best found in Japanese poetry and haiku. So I submitted “Zen Blogger’s Manifesto”, which I share with you below. Not even close to 500 words, so don’t worry about zoning out.
But first a little background, if you will indulge me. (What choice have you got? Are you going to bail out now?) I wrote it late at night in a fit of spontaneity and emailed it to Hugh. Then I forgot about it. Today, as is my habit, I cull through the mass of junk mail my spam filter sucks up, to rescue any non-spam that has been innocently hijacked. Well, in this week’s spam morass, I found Hugh’s email, sent to me last Sunday (yikes) asking whether he could publish it. I just emailed him to apologize for my delay in responding and of course he could. A lesson: check that junk mail regularly, you may miss something.
Hugh is heading to Europe tomorrow, so he may be too busy to post it. So I share it with you here and now.
Zen Blogger’s Manifesto
Do not follow in the footsteps of others,
seek what they sought and make your own footsteps.
Write not for others, as there are too many.
Write for yourself, as there is only one.
Subtract before you add.
Listen more than you speak.
Give more than you take.
Make but do not measure.
If you want to change the world, love someone.
All manifestos are dung.
Be soft in your practice. Think of the method as a fine silvery stream, not a raging waterfall. Follow the stream, have faith in its course. It will go its own way, meandering here, trickling there. It will find the grooves, the cracks, the crevices. Just follow it. Never let it out of your sight. It will take you.
Sheng-yen
Greetings,
I very much enjoyed this post! It reminded of the above quote by Sheng-yen, an Ancient Zen Master.
Thank you and enjoy dancing in the light!
It’s brilliant Joe. Well done.
Well said Joe and with few words. Yes people are too quick not to check their spam folders. Today, I did find an e-mail from a prospect because they hit a send button from a site 3 times - so it triggered the spam filter.