Rev. Danny Fisher

The nominees for the 2008 Blogisattva Awards have just been announced. Award recipients in twenty-six categories will be revealed this Sunday, February 24th, just before the Oscar telecast.

If there’s any clear “winner” at this moment, it’s most definitely awards administrator Tom Armstrong. Those of us who take this Buddhist blogging thing seriously have no greater champion than Tom. Between the Blogisattvas and his own essential metablog Blogmandu, he’s done such an enormous lot to “introduce Buddhists–and others with a nascent interest in Buddhism–to some of the great many excellent, varied Buddhism blogs that are out there, as close as a click away” (including his and Nagarjuna’s marvelous Thoughts Chase Thoughts). Thank you, Tom.

Check out the nominees. There are many wonderful blogs, posts, and people to discover. I participated this year with nine others in the gathering and voting that determined this year’s nominees, and I daresay we found some really tremendous stuff out there. Although, I must confess, doing this did convince me further that ranking and picking “bests” (even when you have specific criteria, as we did) is kind of impossible. George Clooney put it very well when he won an Oscar a few years ago, saying something like, “How do you compare performances when we don’t all play the same part?” But I digress… It bears repeating: the Blogisattvas are about raising awareness of what’s going on out there in the Buddhoblogosphere, shining lights on amazing blogs with sometimes small audiences. And that’s a great thing. (I wouldn’t have found the bulk of the 83 terrific blogs I subscribe to on Bloglines without the Blogisattvas.)

I’m also very sincerely pleased and honored indeed to have been recognized by my fellow denizens of the Buddhoblogosphere with seven nominations this year: