What Is the Meaning of Your Username and Avatar?

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samseva
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What Is the Meaning of Your Username and Avatar?

Post by samseva »

What is the meaning of your username and avatar?

My username is actually the Pāḷi word saṃseva (pronounced sang-say-veh). Its translation is 'companionship' and its definition is the following (from Nyanatiloka Thera's Buddhist Dictionary):
saṃseva: ‘companionship’. [...] (2) Through companionship with good men (sappurisa-s.) comes listening to good advice, thereby faith, thereby wise reflection, thereby mindfulness and clarity of consciousness, thereby sense-control, thereby 3-fold good conduct, thereby the 4 foundations of mindfulness (satipaṭṭhāna, q.v), thereby the 7 factors of enlightenment (bojjhanga, q.v.), thereby liberation through wisdom (paññā-vimutti, q.v.).” Cf. A. X. 62.
Since I was joining the forums to have interesting discussions with 'good men', I thought saṃseva would be a suitable username.

Some members call me Sam, which I find amusing. :smile:

As for my avatar, it is a monk and a tiger. I consider it a representation of the proof of mettā (loving-kindness) and an indication of the validity of other teachings of the Buddha.

Your turn.
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Aloka
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Re: What Is the Meaning of Your Username and Avatar?

Post by Aloka »

samseva wrote:
Since I was joining the forums to have interesting discussions with 'good men', I thought saṃseva would be a suitable username.
Hopefully the female members at DW are included in that, samseva!
As for my avatar, it is a monk and a tiger. I consider it a representation of the proof of mettā (loving-kindness) and an indication of the validity of other teachings of the Buddha.
If its from the Thailand Tiger Temple, maybe you don't know about the controversy that's been going on for a long time about the treatment of the tigers there.

http://www.careforthewild.com/what-we-d ... the-truth/

http://www.angloitalianfollowus.com/the ... er-temples

http://www.dhammawheel.com/viewtopic.ph ... le#p327834

.... .......... ................................... ..................... .....


The meaning of my username Aloka is "light," and it was chosen for me by a friend from Dhamma Wheel.

My avatar is a lotus flower.

:anjali:
Last edited by Aloka on Sun Aug 23, 2015 9:29 am, edited 3 times in total.
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cooran
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Re: What Is the Meaning of Your Username and Avatar?

Post by cooran »

My username 'Cooran' is the name of a small town in the Noosa Hinterland of Queensland.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooran,_Queensland" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

My avatar is a Lotus flower which is symbolic of purity of body, speech and mind while rooted in mud. Its flowers blossom on long stalks as if floating above the muddy waters of attachment and desire.

With metta,
Chris
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Spiny Norman
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Re: What Is the Meaning of Your Username and Avatar?

Post by Spiny Norman »

I am a possibly imaginary giant hedgehog in the employment of Doctor Evil. ;)

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.p ... y%20norman" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Buddha save me from new-agers!
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Kim OHara
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Re: What Is the Meaning of Your Username and Avatar?

Post by Kim OHara »

A diverse lot, aren't we?
Kim O'Hara is the title character of the book Kim by Rudyard Kipling (of Jungle Book fame, but I don't recommend the Disney version :tongue: ). At the beginning of the book he's just a child and is known as the 'little friend of all the world', which I thought was a good thing to aspire to, and he is fascinated by meeting a Tibetan lama, one of the first Buddhist people I encountered in fiction or real life. That seemed like enough reasons to use his name.
My butterfly is simply a symbol of my part of the world, Australia's tropical east coast. When I joined the other DW I used a pic of Kim's Gun (look it up!) instead. Maybe I will start using it here too.
BTW, none of the above is untrue but none was ever 100% serious, either. We need to hold lightly to our identities, even online identities. :smile:

:namaste:
Kim
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Ben
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Re: What Is the Meaning of Your Username and Avatar?

Post by Ben »

It would be nice to have an interesting back-story to my online username but there isn't one. It's just my name in the fiction known as the 'real' world.
And my current avatar is a homage to my kalayanamitta Ajahn Dhammanando who has an avatar of one of his cats sitting on his shoulder. The cat in my avatar is Claude and he is completely hairless.
“No lists of things to be done. The day providential to itself. The hour. There is no later. This is later. All things of grace and beauty such that one holds them to one's heart have a common provenance in pain. Their birth in grief and ashes.”
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Learn this from the waters:
in mountain clefts and chasms,
loud gush the streamlets,
but great rivers flow silently.
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Dhammanando
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Re: What Is the Meaning of Your Username and Avatar?

Post by Dhammanando »

My Pali name, meaning “bliss of Dhamma”, was chosen by my former preceptor, Ajahn Khemadhammo, in consultation with the late Dr. Rewata Dhamma, the seniormost monk at my sāmaṇera ordination in 1984. Khemadhammo wanted to name me after Ānanda, the Buddha’s long-term attendant, but as Thai custom disapproves of giving monks the names of the Buddha’s eighty great disciples the name had to be combined with something else. Dr. Rewata suggested that Khemadhammo should give me part of his own name, either ‘khema’ or ‘dhamma’, and so ‘Dhammānando’ was what I ended up with.

The avatar is a photo taken by the German nun Ayya Phalañāṇī at my mountain hermitage in Phrao. On my shoulder is my feline companion Bajazeth, Emperor of the Turks —or ‘Bajji’ for short— named after a character in Marlowe’s Tamburlaine the Great and Händel's Tamerlano, and corresponding to the historical Sultan Bayezid I.
Rūpehi bhikkhave arūpā santatarā.
Arūpehi nirodho santataro ti.


“Bhikkhus, the formless is more peaceful than the form realms.
Cessation is more peaceful than the formless realms.”
(Santatarasutta, Iti 73)
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Mr Man
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Re: What Is the Meaning of Your Username and Avatar?

Post by Mr Man »

My name was chosen purely to differentiate myself from other posters. My avatar is some bark on a fallen tree which is also rather unexciting and impersonal.
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tiltbillings
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Re: What Is the Meaning of Your Username and Avatar?

Post by tiltbillings »



Nothing to do with the lyrics; just a cool name in a song by a great guitarist:



The avatar is Woody Guthrie, a hero of mine. The expression somehow seems apt.
>> Do you see a man wise [enlightened/ariya] in his own eyes? There is more hope for a fool than for him.<< -- Proverbs 26:12

This being is bound to samsara, kamma is his means for going beyond. -- SN I, 38.

“Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?” HPatDH p.723
Mawkish1983
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Re: What Is the Meaning of Your Username and Avatar?

Post by Mawkish1983 »

My online name was Mawkish for many many years. I am in two minds whether to scrap this account and start a new one with my real name or to keep this username for prosperity. Either way, I'd like there to be no links between my real name and this username (and I've worked hard to make sure that's the case, as much as possible) because of the job I do and some of the controversial content I once left floating around cyberspace attached to this username.

Mawkish means overly sentimental. It's rather a jokey name given that I find it difficult to express emotions. The joke is that, although I struggle to understand emotions and the express them properly, they're there in the background. Not many people would think of me as being mawkish unless they had the misfortune to know me better; and it is unlikely that level of knowledge would ever be acquired online.

I've had a variety of avatars over the years, one notable one was a spinning head. I also experimented with a macro to randomise the colours of every letter in my posts for a while. These were ego-driven distractions I later abandoned.

Edited to add: 1983 is the year of my birth
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seeker242
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Re: What Is the Meaning of Your Username and Avatar?

Post by seeker242 »

Seeker of enlightenment, plus some random numbers. :smile:

Avatar is the teacher of enlightenment. :smile:
Spiny Norman
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Re: What Is the Meaning of Your Username and Avatar?

Post by Spiny Norman »

seeker242 wrote:Seeker of enlightenment, plus some random numbers. :smile:
Aww, I thought the number 242 had some profound significance. :tongue:
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daverupa
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Re: What Is the Meaning of Your Username and Avatar?

Post by daverupa »

namarupa --> daverupa; pretty simple.

And via the image, it's as though we're having chats over a late-night fire.

(If you look closely, one ember at the lower-left raises up and disappears after going from a spheroid to a crescent. A nice little image for nibbana.)
  • "And how is it, bhikkhus, that by protecting oneself one protects others? By the pursuit, development, and cultivation of the four establishments of mindfulness. It is in such a way that by protecting oneself one protects others.

    "And how is it, bhikkhus, that by protecting others one protects oneself? By patience, harmlessness, goodwill, and sympathy. It is in such a way that by protecting others one protects oneself.

- Sedaka Sutta [SN 47.19]
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Nicolas
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Re: What Is the Meaning of Your Username and Avatar?

Post by Nicolas »

Nicolas is my first name and I have no avatar. (I don't use avatars or signatures to keep my messages as light and short as possible.)
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Bhikkhu Pesala
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Re: What Is the Meaning of Your Username and Avatar?

Post by Bhikkhu Pesala »

My username is my ordained name. "Pesala" means well-behaved, as in the phrase "pesalānaṃ bhikkhūnaṃ phāsuvihārāya," i.e. the Vinaya rules were laid down by the Blessed One for the comfort of well-behaved monks, and for the restraint of evil-minded men (dummaṅkūnaṃ puggalānaṃ niggahāya).

The avatar of a Burmese Buddha image is the same one that I used on E-Sangha. I chose to use it rather than a photograph of myself as a reminder that bhikkhus should teach what the Buddha taught, not their own personal opinions.

In the Burmese tradition, the ordination name is given according to the day of the week. If I was born on a Thursday¹, my name must begin with pa, pha, ba, bha, or ma. Sayādaw U Rewata Dhamma said that I was well-behaved so Mahāsi Sayādaw gave me that name.

¹ I think someone got it wrong, because I was actually born on a Wednesday.
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