Sangha of Auspicious Companions

August 6, 2012

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A Brief History of Timekeeping

“For millennia, humans have sought to make sense of time, to visualize it, to ride its arrow, to hack it, to understand biological connection to it. ‘Time is the very foundation of conscious experience,’ writes Dan Falk in ‘In Search of Time: The History, Physics, and Philosophy of Time.’ And yet that awareness has a long history of friction — to mark and measure the passage of time has proven remarkably challenging. For instance, Falk traces the evolution of the calendar, our dominant system for collectively experiencing time.” { read more }

Be The Change

A short passage on time-shifting, which “recognizes that every single moment has a particular rhythm to it, and that we have the capacity to expand or contract an individual moment as appropriate.” { more }

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DEVOTE YOURSELF

Devote yourself to your spiritual friend, obeying his words with the sense of being like a servant. Devote yourself to your spiritual friend with the sense of being like a garment that gently covers the skin. Devote yourself to your spiritual mentor with a sense of being like a sweeper who has abandoned pride. Devote yourself to your spiritual mentor with a sense of being like a bull with his horns cut off and who has abandoned conceit.

August 5, 2012

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Freed: Cat With Head Trapped in Jar for 6 Days

“I feel like I have experienced a truly blessed event. A member of my feral colony, usually one of the friendlier cats, got a plastic jar stuck on his head. His entire head enveloped in hard plastic, he was completely unable to eat or drink. I first saw him this way on a Saturday night. I spent hours trying to get him to trust me to get close enough so that I could remove the jar. But, completely vulnerable and positively panicked, the cat was far too skittish to permit me to get near.” A real-world story of the rescue of a starving cat whose head had been trapped in a jar for 6 days. { read more }

Be The Change

Extend your circle of kindness to a non-human being this week.

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August 4, 2012

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A Conspiracy of Love: Stanford Graduation Speech

In these video excerpts, charismatic Newark Mayor, Cory Booker, reminds Stanford graduates that their success is the product of a vast “conspiracy of love,” and challenges all of us to engage in the conspiratorial caring that makes our society safe, strong, and ennobling. A clear and compelling message, and one of the most articulate and inspired commencement speeches of recent times. { read more }

Be The Change

Honor your roots — reflect on the conspiracy of love in your own journey.

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The Story of Change

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August 3, 2012

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Why Creative Thinking is Inclusive Thinking

“Albert Einstein was once asked what the difference was between him and the average person. He said that if you asked the average person to find a needle in the haystack, the person would stop when he or she found a needle. He, on the other hand, would tear through the entire haystack looking for all the possible needles. With creative thinking, one generates as many alternative approaches as one can. Creative thinking is inclusive thinking. You consider the least obvious as well as the most likely approaches, and you look for different ways to look at the problem. It is the willingness to explore all approaches that is important, even after one has found a promising one.” Author Michael Michalko explores further. { read more }

Be The Change

Working on a problem? Explore options, make new connections, engage in inclusive thinking.

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ALTRUISM AND INNER PEACE

We humans are social beings. We come into the world as the result of others’ actions. We survive here in dependence on others. Whether we like it or not, there is hardly a moment of our lives in which we do not benefit from others’ activities. For this reason it is hardly surprising that most of our happiness arises in the context of our relationships with others. Nor is it so remarkable that our greatest joy should come when we are motivated by concern for others. But that is not all. We find that not only do altruistic actions bring about happiness, but they also lessen our experience of suffering. Here I am not suggesting that the individual whose actions are motivated by the wish to bring others happiness necessarily meets with less misfortune than the one who does not. Sickness, old age, mishaps of one sort or another are the same for us all. But the sufferings which undermine our internal peace—anxiety, doubt, disappointment—these are definitely less.

Of Interest to Readers

If you enjoy receiving weekly quotes from His Holiness the Dalai Lama, you may also enjoy one or more of the other weekly quotes we offer:

• Tibetan Dharma Quotes of the Week
• Ocean of Dharma: The Everyday Wisdom of Chögyam Trungpa
• Heart Advice from Pema Chödrön.