Across traditions

I was at the BALLE conference in Denver about 10 days ago and one of the speakers ended his presentation with this quote:

Rumi says:

Today, like every other day, we wake up empty and frightened. Don’t open the door to the study and begin reading. Take down a musical instrument. Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.

Keeping things in our heads helps no one. Being requires action and yet action requires mindfulness, thinking through the implications of our actions.

These concepts belong to no individual tradition. Rumi was a 13th-century Persian poet, Islamic jurist, theologian, and mystic. And yet what he says is valuable to my Buddhist friends and me as a Christian. We need to be mindful in a broad way, in my humble opinion.

Mindfulness in the West.

I have left Thailand for a while. I have returned to the US to finish my doctoral work.

The return has been memorable.

• San Francisco is cold - the people are warm


• The internet is capable of fostering incredible friendships - I have visited Holland, Haney and Thomas and what incredible people they are. I would go to the line for any of them anytime.


• As I have talked with old colleagues (Haney and Thomas) and new (Fred Block and Mark McLeod) I have realized just how my different pasts come together into my present. If I could only foresee the future.


• There is something different about America these days. I have not been home since 2006. There was a scary tangible fear then. It doesn't seem to be here now. Do I sense hope? Or is that just me?


• America is still the seventh heaven of consumerism. How, oh how can that be changed?


• Thomas has helped me step back and look at myself, for which I thank him immensely.

I have had 4 interviews here that are preliminary to my research and helping me get my head focused. Haney and Thomas helped me realize that the work I am doing probably really started the fateful day I found Omidyar.net more than 4 years ago. It is there that I started developing a deep interest in the organization of communities: communities that work together based on shared values. Dr. Block held up a light for me that was a light of hope for progressive economics where people matter and the light grew brighter in meeting Mr. McLeod of the Berkeley Sustainable Business Alliance and a part of the BALLE Network.

I have a few more days to "chill out" (literally) before I head off to Salt Lake City on Friday. On the way I am going to get to meet another long-time virtual friend who I feel like I already have spent years with.

In Salt Lake City I am anxious to investigate the Church of LDS Welfare Square and find out how they have developed mechanisms to assist the poor and unemployed in their midst. Social justice somehow feels like it has to be a huge and integral part of the solution to our current economic crisis. I will also be meeting with another BALLE Network there.

On the 24th I will arrive in Denver where I am going to get to spend a couple of weeks trying to pull together a number of different networks and start to make sense of what I will be studying over the next months.

• David Braden, a mindful philosopher looking to find a way to share his vision (Omidyar/)


• Peter Hurst, a man who shared his vision and knowledge of deep communities with me in Thailand (Naropa/Buddhism)


• Marpa Center for Business and Economics (Buddhism/Economics/Alternative Currencies)


• Mickki Langston and Arthur Brock who are working with BALLE in their own distinct ways to build strong, vital mindful communities (Omidyar/ BALLE/Alternative currencies)


• The 7th BALLE Conference where I hope to find a network and companies that will agree to be a case study for me to look at how they gather together as communities with values and how they organize themselves to do economic activity continuing to support the values

I think I should make this my mantra -


mindfulness ....

thinking about what you are doing
thinking about why you are doing it
thinking about what the effects of doing it are going to be