Sangha of Auspicious Companions

How I Practiced Forgiveness When It Hurt the Most

After Maria Breaux’s brother David — known as “the Compassion Guy” in Davis, California, after 14 years of collecting definitions of compassion from strangers — was stabbed to death as he slept on a park bench, she discovered a message he had left her: “If I’m ever harmed or unable to speak for myself, forgive the perpetrator and help others forgive that person.” Sitting yards away from his killer in a courtroom, she found herself doing something that defied easy explanation: looking for the humanity in the young man who had taken her brother’s life, and finding it in shared immigrant roots, honors student transcripts, first-generation college attendance, and childhoods shaped by insecurity and trauma. What she discovered was not that forgiveness erases grief, but that it can coexist with it; that learning to “be at peace with the vulnerability inherent in human life,” as researcher Fred Luskin writes, is less a single act of will than a sustained, daily practice of listening, reflection, and honest reckoning with one’s own biases. As civil rights attorney Bryan Stevenson reminds us, “Each of us is more than the worst thing we’ve ever done” — and Maria’s story suggests that holding that truth, even in the rawness of loss, may be one of the most demanding and quietly radical things a person can do.

Be The Change

Think of someone who has frustrated or hurt you. Spend a few minutes today finding one piece of their story you don’t know, such as a hardship they’ve carried or a pressure they’re under. You don’t have to change how you feel; perhaps just see if elements of their humanity might take up a little more space in your heart than before.

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Colorado Mayor Sleeps at Homeless Shelter Every Week

Mike Coffman, a U.S. military veteran who held many government offices, and is the current mayor of Aurora, Colorado, spent a week in homeless encampments to learn from the inhabitants. As mayor, he didn’t talk about it, or hire consultants to study it; he went to see and listen to people first hand. As “Homeless Mike,” he slept “covered with a tarp as temperatures dipped into the teens.” “His experience on the street led the mayor to help found the non-profit Advanced Pathways. The incentive-based program includes a 600-person transitional housing facility.” People can move from shelter, to transitional housing, to full-time jobs helping them “achieve the highest level of self-sufficiency they are capable of reaching.” The mayor continues to visit once a week, getting to know them while they get to know him, to openly talk about their challenges and future.

Be The Change

Be open to an opportunity to see and hear first-hand about a problem or situation in your community in order to better understand. Listen for a possibility to serve.

This Month’s DailyGood Digest

This month, DailyGood explored subtle yet profound shifts that guide our unfolding narratives.

Nic Askew invites us to the origin point of stories, encouraging a deeper understanding of storytelling’s evolutionary role. Leena Wilde Ryan offers solace to writers of a new story, urging them to find courage amid existential blocks. Christopher Lowman’s encounter with the two sides of grace unravels the unexpected paths that reshape destinies. Parker Palmer encourages us to view life with soft eyes, revealing the profound impact of our perceptions. From Uganda, the tale of a monk’s improbable life inspires with its seeds of spiritual teachings. Nguyễn Phương Lam’s contemplative insights express a new age for humanity, where purpose and love intertwine in the dance of transformation. Two brain researchers’ dialogue on dopamine challenges prevailing narratives, offering insights beyond biochemical limitations. A teenager’s heartfelt promise to just write one book sparks a journey of commitment and creativity. The Wisdom Collective paves critical pathways for global transformation, inviting collective action. Ruth Pittard narrates a love story that defies age as she becomes an octogenarian, and filmmaker Andrew Hinton shares the heart-expanding journey of a monk who creates a haven for ‘uninvited’ children, all weaving a tapestry of resilience and hope.

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The Man Who Uncovers Remarkable Forgotten Lives

Scrolling through videos on social media, one man was about to swipe past Simon Howard’s video of researching the history of the names on a random grave from 1934, when he realized, “It hit me: that’s exactly who I’ll be in a century. Just some random guy with his own ego, desires and goals, completely forgotten.” Simon Howard, whose work involves helping people trace their ancestral pasts, walks through overgrown sections of cemeteries, choosing graves at random, then goes home to reconstruct the lives buried beneath the stone. What he uncovers for George and Reginald Bailey — two brothers who died within days of each other in 1934 — is the kind of sorrow that history absorbs without a trace, unless someone goes looking. He decides to clear the weeds on the brothers’ overgrown grave and puts two small white flowers on the tombstone. “Rest in peace, Reginald and George. We will remember you.” Howard’s efforts are a quiet argument that every life contains a world worth knowing, and that the simple act of looking — really looking — is itself a form of love.

Be The Change

Today, find a photograph of someone from your family, or even a stranger in an old photo you’ve come across, and spend a few minutes simply wondering about their life: what they loved, what they feared, what an ordinary day felt like for them. Then, throughout the week, look at strangers you pass by with that same lens.

Smashing Yesterday’s Croissants for a Better Tomorrow

At a Paris bakery called Demain (the French word for “tomorrow”), yesterday’s unsold croissants and sourdough loaves don’t go to waste; they go on sale for half price, rescued from partner bakeries across the city and given a second chance to nourish someone. “All of this would have ended up in the trashcan,” says co-founder Martin Herbelin, gesturing at counters piled with almond croissants and lemon meringue tarts, about 50,000 of which Demain saves from the trash every single month. What the bakery has quietly discovered is that the gap between waste and value is often just a matter of logistics and imagination: stale croissants get flattened and caramelized into “smash croissants,” old pain au chocolat gets rebaked into a “Chocobread,” and customers who once bought cheap supermarket baguettes now find themselves eating artisanal sourdough for the same price. “Food waste, it’s a moral problem,” observes Professor Béatrice Siadou Martin – and Demain’s growing success suggests that when a solution is concrete, local, and delicious, people are more than ready to be part of it. The bakery is a small operation, but it points toward something larger: that changing how we treat what we’ve already made might matter just as much as anything we create anew.

Be The Change

The next time you prep a meal, rethink what you consider “scraps” before throwing them into the trash or compost. Save your vegetable peelings and herb stems in a freezer bag to boil into a rich homemade stock later, or blend slightly bruised fruit into a quick morning smoothie.

The Town That Gave Trees Legal Rights

In a small Quebec town of 2,000 people, something quietly extraordinary happened on June 9th: city council voted unanimously to recognize trees as living beings with rights of their own — the right to life, to natural growth, to integrity, and to regeneration. Terrasse-Vaudreuil, built in the woods west of Montreal, became the first municipality in Canada to sign the Universal Declaration of the Rights of the Tree, a move inspired in part by a local filmmaker whose documentary showed citizens how trees breathe, communicate through their root systems, and form ecosystems all by themselves. The legal argument turns out to be less radical than it sounds. As Ecojustice lawyer Karine Peloffy notes, “corporations have legal personhood and rights and they are definitely not living” — so why not the beings that hold up the sky? The town’s mayor speaks of trees not as scenery or resources but as allies, infrastructure, neighbors — a community flooded three times by climate change learning to name what it cannot afford to lose. There is something worth sitting with in the image of a municipal resolution that asks humans to stand in “fraternity and solidarity” with the trees that have been standing all along.

Be The Change

Step outside today and spend two full minutes standing near a tree — not walking past it, but actually pausing beside it. Notice its particular shape, its roots, the way its canopy moves.

A Wall Street Refugee Finds His Poetry Again

He co-founded a global private equity empire, traveled to over 130 countries, and checked every box the world said mattered. Then, he looked inward and found, as he puts it, “the ego doing all of it.” Nguyen Phuong Lam offers a unique reckoning written from inside the machine, by someone who helped run it. Born in Vietnam, Lam traces a journey from refugee to financier to contemplative — and arrives at a diagnosis both personal and civilizational. The modern day fractures he names are real: spiritual disconnection, social rupture, ecological collapse. But his optimism for humanity isn’t the soft kind; it’s been earned through daily stillness on the meditation cushion, a genocide museum in Phnom Penh, and the slow dissolution of a very accomplished ego. He points to broader metrics of value-creation, noting that depth is a dimension of scale and that inner transformation is not a detour from changing the world but its very source.

Be The Change

Reflect on a habit or identity you’ve outgrown but haven’t yet released. For more inspiration, join a virtual Awakin Call with Lam this weekend.

The Origin Point of Stories

There are two places a story can come from, remarks filmmaker Nic Askew, who has sat with thousands of people over decades, being an authentic witness to their stories. One is the calculating mind, which speaks *to* someone with the notion of giving or getting or contributing something. The other is a deeper source that speaks *through* a person once they set that all down. In a short piece of raw, unedited footage, Nic describes the process of inviting people before the camera to “start with nothing … no thing — no act on your part” and simply wait for the experience to find them. “For this moment, let yourself be undone and speak from what remains. Trust the field. Trust life itself.” What emerges through the stillness is different in kind from the story we would have chosen to tell. His central provocation is quiet but transformative: “We’re not really the writer of our stories. We’re the page on which a story is written.” This is not a call for passivity; rather, it is pointing to a practice of listening so subtle and complete that the quality of something true can finally surface.

Be The Change

Before a conversation today — whether a meeting, a phone call, or even an informal chat — give at least one minute to be in genuine stillness beforehand. Set down what you want to get or prove, and ask instead: what wants to come through here? Notice whether anything shifts in what you say, how you listen, or the way the other person responds.