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Only Good News, Please
Once in my young adulthood, before I knew anything about Buddhism, I had an insight: Wouldn’t it be great if there were a good news channel? Every time I would hear something on the radio or on TV, it was bad. I wondered about all the stories that didn’t get told about people helping people and children who survived cancer and heroes that brought food to their elderly neighbors. I think I voiced this idea to someone and they said, “No one would be interested.” I am very interested, and one day as I was reading the news from Associated Press about another bomb that killed several people, I received an e-mail from Living Compassion. The e-mail was a newsletter about all the good things that were going on with them. I was astounded by the contrast and immediately remembered my earlier idea about good news. As I thought about this idea, I realized that awareness practice is all about good news. Egocentric karmic conditioning only delivers bad news. True? I think so. It is only interested in suffering so therefore only bad news. We are bombarded daily with our thoughts and the chatter in our heads, all bad news. As well as all the news we get from TV, radio, newspapers, and magazines. Awareness practice helps us to see that much of the bad news is untrue and unhelpful. As we practice, we become aware of the compassionate mentor, and we realize that we are more than what conditioning is telling us. Our lives are full of possibilities that we could not have imagined. That, in fact, the good news is always available to us when we are paying attention. Living Compassion is a model for what is possible. Hearing good news throws a wrench in the plans of conditioning. The day I read the good news from Living Compassion, I became happy, motivated to help, and closer to center. It seems that always hearing only bad things contributes to feelings of hopelessness and powerlessness. However, when you hear about the home for the orphans in Zambia, the meditation pants, the micro loans, the food programs at the schools where most children barely get one meal a day; when you hear about the combined efforts of the people in Zambia from other faiths working closely with the monks; when you see the pictures of the children smiling despite the fact that they probably don’t have two parents; or when I tell someone about Living Compassion and the work they are doing and I see their eyes light up with interest and curiosity, I know that good news inspires passion and love and causes people to want to help. It gives them something to do about all the problems they see in the world delivered via bad news. Good news tells you about someone that has a need and a way to go about helping. When I hear about one person or several people taking action, I feel more capable and more hopeful that there is something that I can do. Bad news just feeds the system of egocentric karmic conditioning and keeps me and everyone else in a place of suffering. Most people are looking for a way to participate and Living Compassion provides that opportunity. The way in which you can help does not have to be well defined; it can be offering support and saying “Yes” when we are usually hearing “No.”
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