Musings

In the unfolding of a practice organization, it drops in:
Time to switch the technology platform used to process donations.
We ask: 
How do we get the message out to our monthly donors?
It drops in:
Let’s send some Practice Reminders! 
But wait a minute…
There are only 133 people who are subscribed to Practice Everywhere. It used to be that 3000 people received these “wake up calls” when we delivered them via Twitter. What happened? Did we forget to get the message out to Sangha to sign up on the new platform or is there just no interest in it anymore?  
 
In order to send out six Practice Reminders a day, every day of the year, a dozen stewards generate 180 reminders a month. A separate team collates reviews, edits and schedules the reminders. Given what goes into making this “free” offering available, should we continue to offer Practice Everywhere Reminders?
 
In the School of Life, the choice is never binary! The “decision making” was guided by a series of parables.

 
In the conditioned equation of value, there is some abstract number (the bigger the better) that justifies an action or investment. But in Life’s calculus, every starfish, blade of grass, ant, tree, human is of equal value. Each one is a Buddha. 
 
On the night of the Buddha’s enlightenment, Mara challenged the Buddha’s resolution to go out and teach the path of freedom from suffering, pointing out that the majority of the populace was disinterested in the pursuit of anything unrelated to their personal satisfaction, especially something as difficult as the path to Nirvana. The Buddha was deeply affected by this query. He sat with it for a long time, contemplating the truth of Mara’s assertion. As clarity arose, he countered that he would teach the Dharma to anyone who would listen. Anyone who wanted to awaken was deserving of the teaching. Quantity wasn’t a consideration. Benefit was. 
 

Every steward that sits down to write a Practice Reminder is practicing constant devotion. It is our practice to write the reminder, our practice to offer ourselves to the moment, our practice to cultivate intimacy with All That Is. It’s the beauty of any offering that the giver is the first recipient. As long as a “circle of lovely quiet people” (Rumi) are willing to craft a beautiful sentence to “wake up,” the offering comes into existence, just as flowers bloom and birds sing.
 

 
And if all these perspectives did not cinch the argument to continue this offering, here is a final consideration.



In the ebb and flow of life, forms arise and dissolve. This offering, this Sangha, this Practice in its current shape is simply an expression of the functioning moment. There will perhaps be a moment when that shape changes and another expression comes into existence. This doesn’t appear to be the moment. 
 

 
Gasshō
ashwini
 
And if you want to sign up for Practice Reminders…here you are.