I did an Open Space event today, able to witness the miracle of attitude shifting as the result of self-organizing conversations - the alchemy of freedom in connectivity.
No agenda, no leader,
understanding appears.
Deep Ecologist Joanna Macy puts an appreciative lens on apathy, suggesting that when people care deeply and experience enough frustration in powerlessness or helplessness relative to their passion, they can go into a self-protective apathy. Leadership understands this and evokes passions beneath the surface of apathy.
A major insight from a very late conversation with an old friend: however compassionate we like to be, we cannot do other people’s attentional, intentional, or emotional work for them. Knowing this, we become more free in what we give others, less attached to outcome, and more nourished ourselves in just the giving.
The most important thing is to enjoy your life without being fooled by things.
Sunryu Suzuki
My experiment to keep most of my conversations as appreciative as possible is interesting so far. The gravitational pull toward things negative is sometimes an alluring undertoe that can be avoided if we keep our board on the waves of appreciation in the informal conversational sea.
I�ve learned by being literally paralyzed that, to a large extent, paralysis is a choice. We can either watch from the sidelines or actively participate. We can rationalize inaction by deciding that one voice or one vote doesn�t matter, or we can make the choice that inaction is unacceptable; either let self-doubt and feelings of inadequacy prevent us for realizing our potential, or embrace the fact that when we turn our attention away from ourselves, our potential is limitless.
Some people have to be pushed to the edge or confront their own mortality in order to gain that perspective, to learn to live a more conscious and fearless life. But, you don�t have to do that. You don�t have to go to the edge, and you can choose not to be paralyzed.
Christopher Reeve, this year’s Middlebury commencement speech
In the practice of loving kindness, we open space for our own freedom and the freedom of others. Only in constraint is grasping, fear, and hate possible. Freedom is the source of loving kindness.
Tonight, my neighbor Dave and I checked on an absent elderly neighbor who we discovered, with the help of the EMS, died in his house a couple of days ago. He was a rather eccentric but likeable death camp survivor with no known relatives. He died alone and awaits the potential fate of an anonymous burial. The only religious liturgy he had was the Buddhist prayers I chanted alone at his bedside before escorted for the coroner.
May all beings have happiness and the causes of happiness,
May all be free from sorrow and the causes of sorrow;
May all being never be separated from the sacred happiness, which is sorrowless.
Namo Amida Butsu
Namo Amida Butsu
Namo Amida Butsu
In a NY Times magazine interview yesterday, Trent Lott responded to the comment, “We can’t kill everyone who hates America!” with the lament, “you can’t kill all of them.” There are always military and political constraints.
