Our capacity for inquiry accelerates when we focus on meta-questions – the questions we raise about the questions we should be raising. What questions would move us into a new space of possibilities? is a meta-question. Another: What questions would get people connecting and collaborating more?

If the quality of the world we create is shaped by the quality of our questions, the ability to create meaningful meta-questions is undoubtedly a core community competency.

from the current work in progress, New Spaces

The only way to live is by accepting each moment as an unrepeatable miracle.
Storm Jameson

From a Zen perspective, the nature of reality is impermanence, imperfection, and interdependence. The only authentic promise we can make in Zen friendship, where harmony with one another depends on harmony with reality, is: I promise to be impermanent, imperfect, and interdependent.

Peace of mind on some days is not about trying to hold onto approved thoughts, but to create a quiet space of clear mind. In this practice, If we allow our thoughts to arise and dissolve by themselves, they will pass through our mind as a bird flies through the sky, without leaving a trace. Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche

Thanks to G for his weekend-time-and-a-half help desk support for gassho’s new face. Good karma for his efforts.

As Thich Nhat Hahn reminds us, our life exists thanks to an infinite ecology of life that supports and sustains us. Let no one take for granted the countless people who contribute daily to our well-being.

I am larger and better than I thought. I did not think I held so much goodness. Walt Whitman

I’ve been noticing lately that many people I meet seem to live and interact along a continuum between two existential spaces: one is a space of being attracted to the familiar … the other is a space of being attracted to the unfamiliar.

Where we are on the continuum shapes what we read and eat, where we go, where we play, who we engage with, what we believe, how we vote, what we buy, how we express ourselves, our choice of work, how we relate to life and death, how we define ourselves and our spirituality, how we form or resist community, and how we go about creating our future.

With the hype about extreme as the theme for all social things good — extreme cycling, volleyball, rock climbing and the like — will we get to the point of extreme moderation, and if so, what might that look like?

Emotions are magnetic energy fields, and as such have the ability to feedback on themselves and therefore amplify and sustain themselves. We can become angry about our anger, bored with our boredom, critical about our criticism, hurt about our hurt, afraid of our fear, perfectionistic about our perfectionism, unhappy about our unhappiness.

Breaking the cycle means allowing suffering to come and go without trying to necessarily resist, understand, or fix it — just noticing and moving on.

Talking with Don Iannone and I yesterday, Sally Parker offered a breakthrough question when our intention as facilitators is to help a group create its own compelling focus: What is the conversation this group needs to have in order to release energy?.