Sangha of Auspicious Companions

Inspiring Links of the Week

July 7, 2024

a project of ServiceSpace

When People Reach Out To Help Their Neighbors…

A young carpenter who volunteered at an orphanage in Ghana wanted to help children make a living. A couple with a woodworking school in Pennsylvania sponsored his training, education, and other local support. When he returned to Ghana, with a little help from his Pennsylvania “neighbors,” he and local community volunteers built bridges, fixed roads, repaired buildings, and even learned how to preserve foods. A school principal in Leotho realized children were hungry. She asked their parents for ideas, and enlisted an NGO to teach them organic farming. Together, they created a school garden that provided vegetables to feed the children and much more. In both cases, one person saw a need, engaged those in need to nurture an existing skill, involved the community — neighbor helping neighbor — and empowered people to create amazing results they didn’t know were possible. One said, “We are a world community. We’ve gotta be friends with the world. And if you don’t give to others, you’ve missed the meaning of life.” { read more }

Be The Change

Do you have a skill you could teach or share with a local nonprofit, or with a neighbor — even a neighbor on the other side of the planet? Start by identifying a need. Reach out, and create something together!

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July 5, 2024

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Cultivation and Practice: Q&A with Rev. Heng Sure

Like many who grew up in the middle of America in the 1950s, his childhood was characterized by sports, church, and pop culture influences like the Mickey Mouse Club. Upon seeing Chinese characters at the age of fourteen, an unshakeable feeling of familiarity overtook him. When he opened the door to move into his dorm room as a freshman in college, he found his roommate meditating in full lotus on the floor. In his senior year of college, a values-based graduate fellowship interview found him performing mime. Through a winding series of unexpected encounters, he became Rev. Heng Sure, a dedicated Buddhist monk in a Chinese Mahayana Buddhist tradition. In 1977, he was one of two American monks embarked on a pilgrimage to foster peace within and an without, taking three steps and one bow for 800 miles up the coast of California, along Highway 1. Over the decades, his commitment to compassion and inner cultivation is palpable to all whom he encounters. A stirring interview, resurfaced from a decade ago, shines light on colorful left and right turns found along this elder’s remarkable path. { read more }

Be The Change

Who are you, really? Practice listening within today. Step it up by doing an act of inner cultivation that aligns with your values but that stretches your comfort zone.

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Let Your Garden Grow Wild

DailyGood // Conversations // iJourney // HelpOthers

MovedByLove // CF Sites // Karma Kitchen // More

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July 3, 2024

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The Night I Died

Tracy Cochran describes a night when she was robbed by three men while walking down a dark street. One held her in a chokehold that can kill in less than twenty seconds. During the chokehold, Tracy had what is described as “conscious dying, or transference of consciousness at the time of death, or even a flash of enlightenment without meditation.” She describes it in exquisite detail as a radiant light that “held everything that is. It was the alpha and omega, the particle and wave, the unifying force of the universe.” She survived, and both immediately and in the years that followed, found that many people did not believe her story. So, she only told it to people she trusted or that were dying. Yet, the experience never grew dim. She says, “What we really have to share is not any spiritual treasure we imagine we have stored up, but our poverty, our common human situation, our inability to know.” { read more }

Be The Change

Do you have a story or has someone told you a story that may seem unbelievable – outside of ordinary human experience? Share your own, or listen again. Open up to the possibility of greater awareness. For more inspiration, join an Awakin Call conversation with Tracy Cochran this weekend: { more }

DailyGood is a volunteer-run initiative that delivers “good news” to 150,018 subscribers. There are many ways to help. To unsubscribe, click here.

Other ServiceSpace projects include:

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Inspiring Links of the Week

July 1, 2024

a project of ServiceSpace

Infinity of an Open Heart

Cynthia Li invites us along on an illuminating experience while kayaking in a wilderness. In the silence and blanket of darkness, she stops paddling and begins to drift. She feels suspended in the “dance of the oneness” — of past, present, and future. She feels both tremendous terror and tremendous freedom hoping to “trust enough in my aloneness to dissolve fully into this great emptiness.” Cynthia shares further how a path to that great emptiness is through the heart. The heart is “the strongest electromagnetic field in the body… sending and receiving, transforming energy with everything that it touches.” The heart empties and fills. She explains that if the heart holds onto attachments such as “I want this story” or “I like being full,” it cannot send. When we empty ourselves, when we connect to our hearts and the emptiness, it opens the space where “life can play and create itself, through me, through all of us,” and create a new story. { read more }

Be The Change

Stop paddling, and drift. Let go of any attachments your heart may be holding on to. Instead of “my heart is full,” say, “my heart is empty.” What life story fills into your heart space? Share the new story with someone.

DailyGood is a volunteer-run initiative that delivers “good news” to 150,097 subscribers. There are many ways to help. To unsubscribe, click here.

Other ServiceSpace projects include:

KindSpring // KarmaTube // Conversations // Awakin // More