community

Peace starts within each one of us. When we have inner peace, we can be at peace with those around us. When our community is in a state of peace, it can share that peace with neighboring communities.

“Negative experiences can lead to joy and understanding. Life is
untidy. When we reject this messiness - & in so doing reject life -
we risk perceiving the world through the lens of our economics or our
sciences. But if we celebrate life with all its contradictions, embrace
it, experience it, and ultimately live with it, there is a chance for a
spiritual life filled not only with pain and untidiness, but also with
joy, community, and creativity.”
                                         
Derrick Jensen
                                          
A language Older Than Words

It is possible that the next Buddha will not take the form of an individual.
The next Buddha may take the form of a community -a community practicing
understanding and loving kindness, a community practicing mindful living.
This may be the most important thing we can do for the survival of the
earth.

"The person in misery does not need a look that judges and criticizes but a comforting presence that brings peace and hope and life and says: 'you are a human person: important, mysterious, infinitely precious, what you have to say is important because it flows from a humn person; in you there are those seeds of the infinite, those germs of love... of beauty which must rise from the earth of your misery so humanity be fulfilled. If you do not rise then something will be missing... Rise again because we all need you... be loved beloved.'"

If we can help people reconnect with their communities, I think we can work together as a global community and solve the world's problems. You know, it's a bit idealistic, but we're really looking for second order effects in what we're doing. In other words, if we can just get people to just reconnect with their community. Just realize that you're an individual, but you have a responsibility to be part of your community, and that responsibility is not just a burden, but it also comes with benefits that are real tangible benefits that you'll see, being a part of that community. Then just think, if everyone thought like that, you could actually tackle local community problems, homelessness, health care. I mean, just serious problems, and you could tackle global problems as well, because we now have -- again we have a global communications medium, and communities are being built, not just in the real world but in the virtual world as well. So I'm very hopeful that the reconnection with community that I -- actually, frankly, I first became passionate about it because of eBay -- because I saw it happen on eBay, I am very hopeful that that reconnection is going to dramatically improve the world.

Our smile will bring happiness to us and to those around us. Even if we spend a lot of money on gifts for everyone in our family, nothing we buy could give them as much happiness as the gift of our awareness, our smile. And this precious gift costs nothing. At the end of a retreat in California, a friend wrote this poem:

I have lost my smile,
but don't worry.
The dandelion has it.

If you have lost your smile and yet are still capable of seeing that a dandelion is keeping it for you, the situation is not too bad. You still have enough mindfulness to see that the smile is there.

You only need to breathe consciously one or two times and you will recover your smile. The dandelion is one member of your community of friends. It is there, quite faithful, keeping your smile for you.

The currency of real networking is not greed but generosity.

Nature is flexible and resilient. Nature likes redundancy and dispersion. It is approximate and deals in gradients. All boundaries are permeable. Nature nests small systems like molecules within larger systems like cells, which in turn are nested in systems called organs, organisms, ecosystems. We grew from ancient one-celled ancestors. Nature likes mergers: we contain multitudes of other life forms within us. We stand at the crest of four billion years, bacteria molded into wondrous form, burning with a slow fire and about to take the next step.

Poverty, I realized, wasn't only a lack of financial resources; it was isolation from the kind of people that could help you make more of yourself.

And even one life that bears witness to the truth of the prosperity law will quicken the consciousness of the whole community.