This Friday, December 18th, Karen Armstrong will host a one hour Facebook conversation on compassionate action. Join her at 6pm GMT (1pm EST/10am PST) on the discussion boards and click the link titled "LIVE DISCUSSION WITH KAREN ARMSTRONG 12/18".Focusing on the calls to action in the Charter (posted below), participants can ask her about and read her thoughts on how we can use the Charter as a summons to creative, practical and sustained action to meet the political, moral, religious, social and cultural problems of our time.
We therefore call upon all men and women ~ to restore compassion to the centre of morality and religion ~ to return to the ancient principle that any interpretation of scripture that breeds violence, hatred or disdain is illegitimate ~ to ensure that youth are given accurate and respectful information about other traditions, religions and cultures ~ to encourage a positive appreciation of cultural and religious diversity ~ to cultivate an informed empathy with the suffering of all human beings—even those regarded as enemies.
12/05/2009
Charter for Compassion: 25,000 Affirmers and More
As we close a decade marked by war, help us usher in a decade focused on compassion.
The names of all affirmers on December 31 will be sent along with the Charter for Compassion to 5 world leaders whose countries are engaged in conflict.
Add your name today and encourage others to do the same. Share the Charter with your networks. Each additional name makes the compassionate voice a more potent force in the world. Let us make the silent majority a challenge to extremism and hatred.
Simply copy and paste this text into your website or blog to insert the Charter for Compassion widget.
The names of all affirmers on December 31 will be sent along with the Charter for Compassion to 5 world leaders whose countries are engaged in conflict.
Add your name today and encourage others to do the same. Share the Charter with your networks. Each additional name makes the compassionate voice a more potent force in the world. Let us make the silent majority a challenge to extremism and hatred.
Simply copy and paste this text into your website or blog to insert the Charter for Compassion widget.
12/02/2009
What the Vision Does
What the Vision Does
by Peter Senge
[Listen to Audio! New!]
If your deeper intention is an inseparable part of how you are, it is not capable of attachment.
You can seek to accomplish your intention. You live out your intention. It is like the wind, the life force from which your energy and determination arises, whereas your vision is a particular destination you want to reach.
So, as best I can understand, the heart of the dynamic of being truly committed and nonattached is to anchor in your deeper intention and focus your energies on realizing your vision, while at the same time knowing that the vision is, at best, a reflection of your deeper intention.
It is possible to be truly committed and not attached. Indeed, it is essential to developing our mastery in the creative process. For years we have expressed this basic idea as the principle. "It's not what the vision is, it's what the vision does." In other words, rather than obsess about realizing my vision, consider it as a force for change, a way of aligning my actions with nature's unfolding. When you operate this way, what happens may not be exactly as you imagined it in your vision, but what happens would otherwise not have happened. You could hold a vision of a genuine perfection in some domain and, although you might never realize that vision, you might also achieve things that would have never been achieved otherwise. It's not what the vision is, it's what the vision does.
In this spirit, pursuing a vision is a way to live in harmony with your deeper ineffable intention. In this sense, vision is a tool for orienting our energies and effort around who we really are. But when we obsess about whether or not our vision is being achieved, we confused the animating force behind our being with an idea created by our mind.
--Peter Senge, from a dialogue with Charles Holmes
by Peter Senge
[Listen to Audio! New!]
If your deeper intention is an inseparable part of how you are, it is not capable of attachment.
You can seek to accomplish your intention. You live out your intention. It is like the wind, the life force from which your energy and determination arises, whereas your vision is a particular destination you want to reach.
So, as best I can understand, the heart of the dynamic of being truly committed and nonattached is to anchor in your deeper intention and focus your energies on realizing your vision, while at the same time knowing that the vision is, at best, a reflection of your deeper intention.
It is possible to be truly committed and not attached. Indeed, it is essential to developing our mastery in the creative process. For years we have expressed this basic idea as the principle. "It's not what the vision is, it's what the vision does." In other words, rather than obsess about realizing my vision, consider it as a force for change, a way of aligning my actions with nature's unfolding. When you operate this way, what happens may not be exactly as you imagined it in your vision, but what happens would otherwise not have happened. You could hold a vision of a genuine perfection in some domain and, although you might never realize that vision, you might also achieve things that would have never been achieved otherwise. It's not what the vision is, it's what the vision does.
In this spirit, pursuing a vision is a way to live in harmony with your deeper ineffable intention. In this sense, vision is a tool for orienting our energies and effort around who we really are. But when we obsess about whether or not our vision is being achieved, we confused the animating force behind our being with an idea created by our mind.
--Peter Senge, from a dialogue with Charles Holmes
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