Sangha of Auspicious Companions

Farmin’ in the Hood

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September 2, 2011

a project of CharityFocus

An Accidental Activist

“So many of us have good ideas for helping the world. But we tuck our ideas away. I did. I’d tell myself that if the idea were any good someone else would have already done it. That I’m not capable of making a difference. I’d sit on my ideas, get on with my ‘life,’ and then feel angry at the world because the problems I cared about didn’t get solved. I had that fear of going first. Then I took my first hapless step into what I call accidental activism. In 2006, I started a project where I lived as environmentally as possible for a year — with my little family, on the ninth floor of an apartment building in the middle of New York City — to attract attention to the world’s environmental, economic, and quality of life crises. I had no experience as an activist. Yet suddenly my project caught fire.” { read more }

Be The Change

Take one small step towards one of your ideas for serving the world.

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September 1, 2011

a project of CharityFocus

The Best Goal is No Goal

“These days, however, I live without goals, for the most part. It’s absolutely liberating, and contrary to what you might have been taught, it absolutely doesn’t mean you stop achieving things. It means you stop letting yourself be limited by goals. Consider this common belief: ‘You’ll never get anywhere unless you know where you’re going.’ This seems so common sensical, and yet it’s obviously not true if you stop to think about it. […] Goals as a system are set up for failure. Even when you do things exactly right, it’s not ideal. Here’s why: you are extremely limited in your actions. When you don’t feel like doing something, you have to force yourself to do it. Your path is chosen, so you don’t have room to explore new territory.” Leo Babauta shares his counter-intuitive perspective. { read more }

Be The Change

Try out not having goals in some domain of your life, and notice the effects.

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August 31, 2011

a project of CharityFocus

The Doctor Who Would Not Give Up

Dr. Richard Olney is racing to finish what is almost certain to be his last research paper. The 63-year-old neurologist is considered one of the country’s top clinical specialists for ALS, popularly known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. ALS is also the reason Olney is in a hurry to finish his paper: He was diagnosed with it in 2004 and now has almost no muscle function left. But Olney’s most enduring contribution to the ALS field may have less to do with the details of his final study than the commitment he has shown, relentlessly attacking a disease that will soon kill him. It’s a lesson of persistence and personal bravery that clearly has impressed his own doctors. “I think about it every day,” Lomen-Hoerth said. “How he continues to work, his will to work.” This inspiring article shares more. { read more }

Be The Change

Is there something you’ve been meaning to give the final push to? Work on it today.

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August 30, 2011

a project of CharityFocus

School Superintendent Gives Up $800k

Some people give back to their community. Then there’s School Superintendent Larry Powell, who’s literally giving back. As in $800,000 — his expected compensation for the next three years. Until 2015, Powell will run 325 schools and 35 school districts with 195,000 students, all for $31,000/yr. “How much do we need to keep accumulating?” asks Powell, 63. “There’s no reason for me to keep stockpiling money.” The man who started his career as a high school civics teacher, who has made anti-bullying his mission, wants to ensure that his pet projects survive, and hopes his act of generosity will help restore faith in the government. There’s even more to Powell’s story: he contracted childhood polio, leaving him with lingering post-polio syndromes. But his view? “It’s the most spectacular thing that has happened to me in all my life,” Powell said. “People stepped up to help me be successful.” { read more }

Submitted by: Sharon Krause

Be The Change

Do you have something in excess? Share some of it today.

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August 29, 2011

a project of CharityFocus

Money and Life: Ecologizing Growth

The words economy and ecology share the same root — the Greek word meaning household. Could a change in how we view economic systems create a change in how we view ourselves? Ecologize Growth is a five-minute video based on the documentary ‘Money and Life’, and seeks to answer that question. This micro-film is a challenge to the commonly accepted infinite growth paradigm of the modern economy. It brings in the voices of several luminaries — Jean Houston, Brother David Steindl-Rast, Lynne Twist — who explore old and new perspectives and belief systems about money and how all of these can affect society’s shared well-being, co-creative potential and evolving consciousness. { read more }

Be The Change

“Our common future depends on creating a democratically accountable money system that operates as our servant, not our master.” David Korten in this short reading called ‘The Flow of Money.’ { more }

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August 28, 2011

a project of CharityFocus

Study, Practice and Serve: Peter Senge

Peter Senge is a senior lecturer at MIT, and the author of The Fifth Discipline: the Art and Practice of the Learning Organization. The Journal of Business Strategy named Senge one of the greatest influences on business strategy over the last 100 years. In this dialogue with Dr. Prasad Kaipa, Senge talks about how his own internal development helped him develop a perspective on systems theory: “I think the terminology I would use is ‘a continuous process of reflection’. I’ve always thought of only two questions that have mattered to me personally. One is what is really needed in the world and the second is what’s really important to me and how these two intersect. It’s always been a reflective process — spiraling around these two poles.” { read more }

Be The Change

Study, practice and serve.

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August 27, 2011

a project of CharityFocus

How Nature Affects the Brain

“For the first time in three days in the wilderness, Todd Braver is not wearing his watch. “I forgot,” he says. It is a small thing, the kind of change many vacationers notice in themselves as they unwind and lose track of time. But for Braver and his companions, these moments lead to a question: What is happening to our brains? Braver, a psychology professor at Washington University in St. Louis, was one of five neuroscientists on an unusual journey. They spent a week in late May in this remote area of southern Utah, rafting the San Juan River, camping on the soft banks and hiking the tributary canyons. It was a primitive trip with a sophisticated goal: to understand how heavy use of digital devices and other technology changes how we think and behave, and how a retreat into nature might reverse those effects.” { read more }

Be The Change

Take a small retreat into nature (however you define it).

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One Man, One Sign, One Message

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