ABSTRACT
Blogs-short for “weblogs”—are online journals whose entries are composed by a single author and updated frequently. Their autobiographical nature makes them an ideal venue for expressing one’s sense of identity. DeMontigny acknowledges this in the fi rst post of Precious Metal from April 2, 2007, when he writes: “We all have the right to express ourselves, and this is my way of expressing the things I hold dear. Whether that means my spirituality, the politics of suffering (what we know of in the U.S. as Democracy) and just about everything else under the sun.” The aim of his blog is to give voice to that which he fi nds precious, which includes-but is not limited to-his practice of Buddhism. Precious Metal is one of hundreds of Buddhist blogs written in English on the Internet that represent a subgroup of the larger Buddhist cybersangha, alongside webpages, virtual temples, and more cyber-religious groups located solely online (Prebish 2004, 145).
