I have decided to transfer all my blogs from WordPress to Substack. The free version of WordPress has kindly hosted around 1070 blogs over the past 15 years.
Benoit Martin in Quebec, Canada, has been the guardian angel of my WordPress blog and some websites throughout this period in my online work. I am very appreciative for his ongoing support and detailed advice whenever I had questions.
I will continue to post blogs on WordPress and Substack until the summer of 2023. Then I will shift fully over to Substack if it still feels the right decision, namely knowing readers have joined the free subscription available on Substack to receive notification twice a week of a blog.
Why am I shifting to Substack? Five primary reasons:
1. To join a growing community of writers/artists/journalists using Substack.
2. Substack takes care of all the ongoing updates of the software. This feature was not available with WordPress, a software system for hosting blogs and more but requiring regular additions, plugins and updates.
3. I can make an audio with the Substack blog. This will be useful for the poems, guided meditations, reflections, transcriptions of talks, comments on music, book reviews and prose in the blogs. I will continue to offer some blogs on first-hand experiences. I will record some longer essays and critiques forming them into 15-minute sections. Subscribers can listen to a blog in various environments.
4. Substack does not charge a monthly/annual fee, The website enables subscribers to donate a sum per month, such as $5.00 to per month to the blogger. Substack receive 10%.
5. Every Substack blog carries a photo above the text. I have around 17,500 of my photos on Flickr in more than 150 albums. I can draw from the photos taken around the world on retreats, yatras (pilgrimages), monasteries, nature, cities, protests, Totnes and more.
I will continue to write around two blogs per week. Currently there have been a total of 930,00 views of the blogs. In the summer of 2023, blogs will probably pass one million views.
Jude Butler, my IT consultant, ensures here at home the smooth running of the websites, book publishing, blogs, social media and more. Her immense skills enable me to concentrate on writing for readers worldwide.
Substack includes a section for the bio and ways to subscribe, either a free subscription or a modest monthly donation. Here is the information on Substack
Christopher Titmuss bio
Christopher Titmuss, a senior Dharma teacher in the West, offers retreats and leads Zoom meetings in five time zones.
His teachings focus on insight meditation (vipassana), the expansive heart and enquiry into emptiness/liberation. Poet, social critic and blogger, he is the author of more than 20 books including Light on Enlightenment, Spiritual Roots of Mindfulness and Poems from the Edge of Time.
In 2021, Christopher wrote a 500-page Memoir, Ten Years and Ten Days, of his years in the East including six years as a Buddhist monk. (Books available on Amazon).
He is the founder of Mindfulness Teacher Training Course. More than 1000 of his talks are freely available on www.archive.org and as podcasts. He lives in Totnes, Devon, England.
Christopher has four grandchildren. Nshorna, his only child, is the founder and CEO of The Wise Lotus Centre in Letchworth Garden City, Herts, UK – 35 minutes on train north of London
www.christophertitmuss.net
www.mindfulnesstrainingcourse.org
www.insightmeditation.org
www.anengagedlife.org
Subscribing
I have been living on donations since 1970 when I ordained as a Buddhist monk. All teachings have been offered on a donation basis.
If you wish, you might like to become a paid monthly subscriber. Substack set the minimum at $5.00 per month. Your paid subscription will go directly to support the teachings, the office expenses, support for myself and the family.
Paid subscribers will receive the same content as everybody else.
You will see an invitation to donate. If you do not wish to donate at this time, then click below where it says Not Now and you will go direct to the blogs.
THANK YOU for your support.