Sweeten The World Up
Passing along a nice quote from Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche which seems especially relevant right now (courtesy of the Dharma Ocean daily quote mailing list):
There are many international problems, and throughout the world chaos is taking place all the time -- which is obviously far from the expression of enlightened society. In the past, various disciplines or faiths, such as Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Islam, Buddhism, had great dignity. There were extraordinarily sane people among the ancients who worked to make the world worthwhile and passed down their wisdom generation by generation. But there has been a problem of corruption. The world has been seduced by physical materialism as well as by psychological materialism, let alone spiritual materialism! The world is beginning to turn sour. Our measures may be small at this point, but we're trying to sweeten the world up. In the long run, we want to offer something beyond a token. We want to make a real contribution to the development of enlightened society. That begins right here. As they say, charity begins at home.
From "Working with Early Morning Depression," in
GREAT EASTERN SUN:THE WISDOM OF SHAMBHALA, pages 26 to 27.
When we sweeten ourselves - through yoga, meditation, walking in Nature, loving each other - the global broth gets just that much sweeter, too.