Sangha of Auspicious Companions

September 20, 2011

a project of CharityFocus

Why Does Beauty Exist?

“Why does beauty exist? What’s the point of marveling at a Rembrandt self portrait or a Bach fugue? To paraphrase Auden, beauty makes nothing happen. Unlike our more primal indulgences, the pleasure of perceiving beauty doesn’t ensure that we consume calories or procreate. Rather, the only thing beauty guarantees is that we’ll stare for too long at some lovely looking thing. Museums are not exactly adaptive. Here’s my (extremely speculative) theory: Beauty is a particularly potent and intense form of curiosity. […] Put another way, beauty is a motivational force that helps modulate conscious awareness. The problem beauty solves is the problem of trying to figure out which sensations are worth making sense of and which ones can be easily ignored.” This Wired Magazine article offers an insightful look into the neuroscience of beauty. { read more }

Be The Change

“There is a wonderful urgency within things to realize the dream of their individual fulfillment. Nothing is neutral, everything is on its way.” John O’Donohue shares beautifully in this short passage. { more }

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September 19, 2011

a project of CharityFocus

How to Transform Negative Emotions

“The word emotion comes from the Latin emovere, meaning to ‘move through or out.’ So in its original form, there isn’t any trace of clinging to, or rejecting, these movements. But instead of allowing emotions to move through and out of us, we often feed them with negative thoughts and end up giving them long-term residence. In short order, the guests take over the house, leaving us reeling and unable to truly be in control. So how do we turn this unhelpful pattern around? The key to any pattern is repetition. But in the case of such reactivity, this repetition is actually happening below the radar of our conscious mind. By the time a situation escalates to the point of emotion, we often find ourselves overpowered. The challenge, then, comes in sharpening our awareness so that we become sensitive to smaller versions of these same emotions.” { read more }

Be The Change

Try allowing emotions to move through or out of you today.

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September 18, 2011

a project of CharityFocus

Friendship Balloons

When 9 year old Sara-Beth Martin let out red balloons in her send-off party a week before her second heart surgery, little did she know that one of them will travel 180 miles to reach 8 year old Reanna — struggling with troubles of her own. The balloons carried a simple request of praying for Sara for her successful surgery. Reanna knew adversity and pain herself — she lost her mother to cervical cancer when she was just 4 years old. Reanna wrote a heart warming note to Sara and this marked the beginning of a friendship based on trust, hope and optimism. The friendship had a remarkable effect on Sara: not only was her surgery successful, her appetite returned and she went from frail to energetic in just a couple of months. { read more }

Be The Change

Anne Morrow Lindbergh shares a beautiful reflection on “the mutuality of first sympathy, [which] seems, at its initial appearance — even if merely in exciting conversation across a dinner table — to be a self enclosed world. Two people listening to each other, two shells meeting each other, making one world between them.” { more }

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September 17, 2011

a project of CharityFocus

The Dumpster

“‘We can’t use these. They look like heirlooms!’ Gina, a guest at my holiday gathering, holds up one of the elaborately embroidered napkins from the buffet table. ‘Where’d you get them?’ ‘Out of a dumpster. The tablecloth and those candleholders were in there, too.’ ‘You can’t be serious! Why would they be in a dumpster?’ The shock in her voice carried across the room, and others looked up. It’s common that women ask where something came from, especially if it’s an attractive article of clothing or new addition to the house. But to name a dumpster as the source of anything, especially an object of beauty, is completely unexpected. My explanation created an atmosphere of mystery.” What follows is a touching true story by author Meredith Sabini on what gives objects value. { read more }

Be The Change

Take a look around at the things in your living space. Do some seem imbued with memories, while others don’t?

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Bottle to Bulb

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September 16, 2011

a project of CharityFocus

The Man Who Builds Bridges & Saves Lives

More than 13 years after his parents drowned in a flash flood, David Kakuko is at the Moruny River, building a bridge that might have prevented their deaths. The hanging footbridge will provide safe passage over the Moruny, a frequently flooded waterway in West Pokot, Kenya. “Before the bridge, there [were] so many people, so many who lost their lives,” said Kakuko, 32. “I know, because I have no parents. I have no parents, because this river took them.” Kakuko is working alongside other local residents and Harmon Parker, a master mason who has been building bridges through Kenya’s mountainous terrain since 1997. { read more }

Be The Change

Build more “bridges,” and help others do the same.

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September 15, 2011

a project of CharityFocus

Blooming in the Whirlwhind

“‘Conduct your blooming in the noise and whip of the whirlwind.’ Strange message in a stranger place. I don’t know who said it, but this pronouncement suddenly appeared on a huge wall of the 59th St. subway tunnel connecting the Lexington Avenue trains to the N and R lines. For many months I’d passed the area, which was roped off and covered over with heavy paper — reconstruction in progress. What else is new in NYC! Then one fine day the plastic barrier was cut and the brown paper pulled down. There, gleaming in vivid colors, was a giant mosaic mural with a great scroll of a message running through it in a waving line that ran up and down from ceiling to floor and back.” Author Patty de Llosa shares this timely reflection on finding freedom within our constraints. { read more }

Be The Change

“Learn to posses all things — your time, your pace of work, your moments of rest, your privacy — all.” Pierre Pradervand, from ‘Letter to A Friend in A Hurry’ { more }

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September 14, 2011

a project of CharityFocus

How To Build A Beautiful Company

In the early 1970s, Bill Witherspoon lived for months in a school bus parked in the Oregon desert. A hundred miles from the nearest town, he spent day after day painting the sky and the clouds. He later sold his work for tidy sums. Witherspoon would spend the rest of his life alternating between painting and launching companies. When Witherspoon, then 60, launched The Sky Factory in 2002, he wondered, Was it possible to create a company as beautiful as a work of art? A beautiful company, in Witherspoon’s mind, starts with the elimination of hierarchies that impede and repress the expression of people’s natural curiosity and creativity. The Sky Factory’s organizational structure is as flat as its creator’s beloved desert. There are no employees, just owners, and everyone cares deeply about doing what is best for the group. { read more }

Be The Change

Do something today that adds beauty to your workplace.

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