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Post by White Lotus on Jun 8, 2024 2:53:27 GMT
Greetings friends!
Here's a little update on my recent study and practice. After reading through Shantideva's text on the Bodhisattva Way or otherwise known as the Bodhisattvacaryāvatāra, I was reminded of being a young child and deeply considering the suffering of others. I remember one day when our school choir group went to an old folks home and we sang for the elderly people there. I saw that many of them had no body to visit them, and were in tears because we chose to come visit and sing them songs.
Since that time, I have spent a number of years ministering to the needs of various people. After my wife and I had kids, I shifted my focus to cultivating an environment suitable for their own exploration of life. Now that they have all started their own journey through life I have had more time to start studying Zen and Buddhism again.
That brings us to now. Shantideva's text and others like it, are unique and interesting. I do not look at them as guides for myself, though others can certainly utilize them that way. For me it reminds me of the spirit of compassion, and has even expanded my view of what that means.
I've gone through the stages of impulsively trying to help others, and struggling with my own aspirations, assumptions, and applications. Now I take a far more balanced approach based upon all I have learned about others in ministry as well as raising children. I used to go out of my way to find opportunities to help others, and instead I see all the opportunities around me all the time, which I overlooked in the past. Everyday opportunities which may seem small, but actually have a profound and accumulative effect.
On the other hand, I am also open to new chances to get plugged into an outreach should it come to light. Possibly even doing outreaches in the future coupled with other projects I have worked on.
One last gem I found while studying Shantideva's work is that it lays out a lot of what it looks like to do ministry. Each portion is helpful to me for using as a sort of map, connecting various conditions of those around me, with a number of possible causal solutions and ways of navigating those areas of life. No doubt it will take some development of skill to figure out how to accurately apply it to circumstances, but that shouldn't be too hard.
That's a little bit about my practice and where I am at in studies. Thank you so much to everyone who has participated in my development!
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Post by lcl1qp1 on Jun 8, 2024 15:04:21 GMT
"I remember one day when our school choir group went to an old folks home and we sang for the elderly people there... were in tears because we chose to come visit and sing them songs."
We have an epidemic of loneliness affecting a huge proportion of the elderly in America, and IMHO this shortens lifespan. We (sadly) don't have a tradition of the elderly gathering in village centers to socialize like we see in Europe, which keeps the brain healthy and happier.
"instead I see all the opportunities around me all the time...which may seem small, but actually have a profound and accumulative effect."
This is a wonderful observation. No doubt the beneficial effects are profound, exponential, transformative.
"On the other hand, I am also open to new chances to get plugged into an outreach should it come to light. Possibly even doing outreaches in the future coupled with other projects I have worked on.
"One last gem I found while studying Shantideva's work is that it lays out a lot of what it looks like to do ministry. Each portion is helpful to me for using as a sort of map, connecting various conditions of those around me, with a number of possible causal solutions and ways of navigating those areas of life."
What do you imagine the outreach might look like? It seems like we could use a new paradigm, one that isn't based on hierarchy or prone to bureaucracy.
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Post by JustaWhistleStop on Jun 8, 2024 18:21:24 GMT
I agree with needing a new paradigm, I just wonder what it could look like. No heirarchy, but not an anarchy. Is that possible?
If everyone had White Lotus's altruistic spirit of giving, it could work. I spent years giving of myself as a religious person, then found out I was suffering from the delusion of clinging and grasping. I wasn't ready for that kind of life. All rules and no method of teaching a person how to achieve the Fruitage of the Spirit, which is Love, they say, with an ultimatum. Develop the fruit or die the second death from which there is no returning. It was all based on fear and threats. The Bodhisattva path is something you do to benefit yourself, and along the way benefit all sentient beings. 180 degrees from christianism.
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Post by White Lotus on Jun 8, 2024 18:45:39 GMT
What do you imagine the outreach might look like? It seems like we could use a new paradigm, one that isn't based on hierarchy or prone to bureaucracy.
Years ago I visited around 50 churches in my local community to present an idea. At the time I hadn't formed an operational organization yet, so there was relatively little I could put into work. However, I wanted to see how receptive the community of churches would be to my ideas. I started with a simple one.
We had 50 churches taking in resources for the poor and homeless, then distributing those resources sporadically. Often requiring the poor to use resources to travel around all these churches to benefit from their services in the most disorganized way.
My idea was to instead pool all 50 churches resources, donations, and manpower, into one central hub easily accessible for the poor and with a regular schedule to manage. Instead of handing out random items in a bag, they could suit the packages according to the needs of those using the services. It is actually just one small component of the system I was working on, but it was a starting point to see how the churches responded. Interestingly enough most of the church administrators I met loved the idea, and said they would be behind it once I got it off the ground.
Due to life circumstances I had to move out of state shortly after this. To my amazement and excitement, when I moved back someone else took my idea and realized it. We now have a central hub where the resources from about 80 different churches are pooled and distributed according to need.
At least in this community, each church was willing to set aside their doctrinal differences for the betterment of the community, and that alone represents a sort of unity between those churches. A very nice starting point.
My initial idea was to utilize that momentum to form a backbone of community members, volunteers, youth, and leaders to begin the process of building a working team fundamental for carrying out larger projects.
The dynamics of the larger project is multifaceted and aims to address many issues at once.
My view is a self sustainable community system, which isn't dominated by or solely dependent on government, bureaucracy or a particular religious organization. The way it works is a series of large scale community events. The basic idea is to create events which brings together the community in dynamic ways which encourage building relationships and engagement on various levels. For example, hosting a music and theatrical event for local community leaders. This would involve everyone from outreach program leaders, to city planners, government officials, major local economic leaders, philanthropists, sponsors and donors, human service managers, and so on. At first these sorts of events would not only advertise and inform community leaders of the project, but allow them the opportunity for direct involvement. Whether that was through forming new relationships within that community, contributing resources; such as space, time, money, etc., or active participation in developing programs within the project itself.
The next level of community events would then target the general public using entertainment and engagement activities to encourage community support, participation, interaction, and unity. These events would involve quite a bit of activities to boost community engagement.
There are many working components to this system, such as raffle initiatives and structured events that would be a lot to go into with a topic like this, but to give an example of what this would look like and involve; there would be local artists and vendors of all sorts. Local music and theatrical performances, and special events, which feature community story telling. Allowing the elderly to tell their life story and share it with the community, whether pre-recorded or live if they prefer. The same true with giving a face to the homeless, and allowing them to share their story, successes and struggles.
Community block parties, small groups, large music events, job and lead fairs, expos, those sorts of events, all aimed at bringing more unity to the community.
All the revenue from those events would create a baseline community funding that would then be invested, and the outreach programs would be supported, not by donation or sponsorship directly, but indirectly through the investment returns. Moving the monetary dependence off of the local community or government, and generating it from the national economy. Allowing the outreaches to be self-sustainable. This is a financial strategy I came up with in response to researching how 501c3 organizations are somewhat of a monetary black hole to the local economy. Taking in many resources, but not having much of any return on those donations for the local economy. By re-orienting the monetary relationship through investing in the national economy, not only does it utilize the donations to help the national economy through investment, the returns from those investments will be spent directly improving the local economic community.
The outreach program sector would focus on unifying the local outreach community as a whole, enhancing and expanding their reach or effectiveness, as well as creating new programs and boosting funding to existing support structures.
It is a massive system overhaul with many more components than I could reasonably address here, but perhaps that isn't too much as is, and gives you a better idea of what I mean. Feel free to ask any questions!
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Post by lcl1qp1 on Jun 9, 2024 17:42:37 GMT
"My idea was to instead pool all 50 churches resources, donations, and manpower, into one central hub easily accessible for the poor and with a regular schedule to manage. Instead of handing out random items in a bag, they could suit the packages according to the needs of those using the services. It is actually just one small component of the system I was working on, but it was a starting point to see how the churches responded. Interestingly enough most of the church administrators I met loved the idea, and said they would be behind it once I got it off the ground.
"Due to life circumstances I had to move out of state shortly after this. To my amazement and excitement, when I moved back someone else took my idea and realized it. We now have a central hub where the resources from about 80 different churches are pooled and distributed according to need."
What an incredible gift you left for those communities! The power of an idea whose time is right.
"My view is a self sustainable community system, which isn't dominated by or solely dependent on government, bureaucracy or a particular religious organization. The way it works is a series of large scale community events. The basic idea is to create events which brings together the community in dynamic ways which encourage building relationships and engagement on various levels.
"Community block parties, small groups, large music events, job and lead fairs, expos, those sorts of events, all aimed at bringing more unity to the community."
It's a great observation that creating a sense of community can serve as a catalyst for change. Often people who grew up with a tradition of block parties speak of them as magical. The community threads become more tightly woven as kids grow up and strive to recreate those experiences for their children.
"All the revenue from those events would create a baseline community funding that would then be invested, and the outreach programs would be supported, not by donation or sponsorship directly, but indirectly through the investment returns. Moving the monetary dependence off of the local community or government, and generating it from the national economy. Allowing the outreaches to be self-sustainable. This is a financial strategy I came up with in response to researching how 501c3 organizations are somewhat of a monetary black hole to the local economy. Taking in many resources, but not having much of any return on those donations for the local economy. By re-orienting the monetary relationship through investing in the national economy, not only does it utilize the donations to help the national economy through investment, the returns from those investments will be spent directly improving the local economic community."
In some ways, there's enough wealth to discuss what a post-scarcity economy could look like in this country. Globally, abundance has been diminished by inefficient distribution and middlemen. But technology has transformed our distribution capabilities. Creative financial solutions like yours no doubt are part of a solution.
You are to be commended for your outstanding efforts!
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