Blogging

Increased awareness

I have been blogging on and off for about three years now, although this iMonk blog —begun when I left San Jose on March 14th to go to Nabadwip, India to take sannyas initiation from Srila Gurudeva — is the first consistent publicly available blog.

When, out of the blue, I announced that I was giving up everything to become a sannyasi — a mendicant, an itinerant monk, an imonk — devotees, friends, and family all asked me to keep in touch, to let them know where in the world I was from time to time, and thus this blog was born.

A blog is a web log, or an online journal. When I started this blog, its primary purpose was to inform family and friends where I was, what I was doing, and what was on my mind. I used to average about 10-12 hits a day, but now that more and more devotees have become aware of it, the site averages about sixty hits every day, and on days when it is linked to from the Sri Chaitanya Math web site, the tally jumps to about 250 hits.

So now, although I still write as though I was talking to myself or one or two close friends, I do find myself watching my p's and q's, conscious that "anything I say can and will be used against me" :-)

I mention all this because the other day I was shown a link where one of my blogs had been translated into Spanish and published elsewhere on the web. And here in Turkey, Krishnendrani Devi Dasi has translated some of the blogs into Turkish and pinned them on the bulletin board (gulp!)...