Bhikkhu Subhuti’s Blog has moved!
Bhikkhu Subhuti’s Blog has moved!
The blog at https://Subhuti.withmettanet has moved to https://AmericanMonk.org
The new title of the blog is American Monk: Bhante Subhūti
Why change The Domain Address?
The reason why I changed the name of the domain was to streamline my verbal website announcements to let them known how to find the monk in Kauai. Usually a conversation will start up with some new person in Kauai and then I say, “Hey, you can check out my blog at americanmonk.org .” I was in the Buddhist world when I picked that name and never realized it until now. When I spit out such a long name like that, the typical American will give me a confused look because they won’t know how to spell or remember the Pāḷi Language words. To solve this problem, AmericanMonk.org was available. I chose the .org over .net because that seems to be the proper way to do things even though there are many new Top Level Domains available. There are .blog and even .guru choices for one’s website name. While I am not an organization, I sort of fit into the noncommercial realm.
While I am the only Theravāda Buddhist Kauai Monk, kauaimonk.org is too specific. I also recognize that am not the only American Monk in the world. However, that name describes me, it was available, and so I grabbed it. There are other reasons too, but being accessible is the main reason. Now if you forget my specific web address, you can just ask Google about the “American monk in Kauai.” If you do, AmericanMonk.org will show up.
The name change:
A little while ago, you may have noticed I had changed my name from Bhikkhu Subhūti to Bhante Subhūti. In the beginning, I used the same format as Bhikkhu Bodhi. However, I had noticed that people, especially in emails, nonBuddhists were addressing me as “Bhikkhu” without “Subhūti.” Basically, you don’t want to call a monk either “Bhikkhu” or “Subhūti” by itself unless they are both used together. However, “Bhante” is the most appropriate to be used by itself or with both words together; “Bhante Subhūti.” Bhante means venerable sir. You can call a rabbi “Rabbi” but I doubt you could call a Catholic priest “priest”. You can however call a priest or myself “reverend” without anything after it. You can also use reverend with Subhūti as a secondary word too. It all works similar. “Venerable” works in the same way, and is often the English word of choice in Theravāda monks.
You can call any monk in the Theravāda tradition “Bhante.” That is what we called the Buddha during his time. However for monks over 10 years in monk-age, Ajahn is better in Thailand and Laos while Sayadaw is better in Myanmar. In Sri Lanka, “Bhante” is a great name no matter how old the monk is in monk-years. So “Bhante” or “Bhante Subhūti” are perfect. Believe it or not, “Bhante” alone is more respectful.
So now if I have an email sent to customer service, it feels right to sign my name as Bhante Subhūti. When I get an email back that says, “Bhante,” that also feels right too. By the way, never call a monk by his unique name without a prefix like Bhante or Bhikkhu. It is like calling a person by their last name and disrespectful. However, very senior monks will refer to their younger monks by such a name. Ven. Pa-Auk Sayadaw calls me “Subhūti” with nothing added. I like that.
So I hope you like my new blog-address and name. I do too.
photo from wikipedia copyright cc-sa-3.0
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