One City: A Buddhist Blog for Everyone

Jon Rubinstein: November 2009 Archives

Thursday November 19, 2009

Categories: Right Lifestyle

The Buddha at Work - The Joy of Effort!

How amazing is Stevie Wonder? Check out this performance from 1973. I like to imagine myself watching this at age 3, but chances are I was watching Sesame Street.


So what in the heck does this have to do with the Buddha at Work? Here's what I said last month:

Monday November 16, 2009

The Charter for Compassion: Karen Armstrong's Vision

cfc_b2_eng_120_60.jpgby Jon Rubinstein

I've been writing elsewhere about the Charter for Compassion which launched on November 12. The Charter is the fulfillment of Karen Armstrong's 2008 Ted prize and comes from Armstrong's observation that every religion, without exception, shares a central tenet:

"The Charter will proclaim a principle embraced by every faith, and by every moral code. It is often referred to as The Golden Rule....The Golden Rule requires that we use empathy -- moral imagination -- to put ourselves in others' shoes. We should act toward them as we would want them to act toward us. We should refuse, under any circumstance, to carry out actions which would cause them harm."

Thursday November 12, 2009

Categories: Right Lifestyle

The Buddha at Work - Smackdown Against Anger - "All We Need is Just a Little Patience"

In a shocking twist, I'm not going to post the Guns 'n Roses video here. The lyrics just don't have that much to do with what we're talking about. We've been discussing the Six Paramitas, as they're called in the Mahayana tradition and how they can help us in our careers.

(Brief interlude for a bad joke: Come to Mahayana Motors for a Great Vehicle.)

Sorry.

So many of us spend more than half our waking hours at work. Why not use those hours to bring happiness to ourselves and others? Kshanti paramita refers to patience or forbearance. Jon Kabat-Zinn points out that just underneath the surface of impatience is anger. "It's the strong energy of not wanting things to be the way they are and blaming someone (often yourself) or something for it."

Wednesday November 11, 2009

Categories: Right Lifestyle

A Journey into Right Livelihood with Etsy

Handmade crafts marketplace Etsy's blog The Storque highlights one of their vendors, Zeke, who recycles glass bottles and makes them into glasses, carafes, and planters. Zeke seems like a great example of living Right Livelihood. To Zeke, Right Livelihood is "earning a living without doing harm to people or the environment."

But by reading the interview, I gleaned that there's more to it than just that for Zeke. Sure, he's taking glass that would otherwise end up in landfills, and converting it into useful and beautiful glassware. But he seems deeply aware of interdependence, a key concept when considering Right Livelihood. Recycling is a core practice of his business, from his bottles to his packing materials. And he's very aware of the impact he has on the world around him.

Thursday November 5, 2009

Categories: Buddhism, Right Lifestyle

The Buddha at Work - "Ethics, Shmethics, So Long as I Get Paid."

Often in business, we are confronted with shortcuts, with opportunities to bend our integrity just a little bit, in order to enrich ourselves. This might mean financially, or taking credit where it isn't due, or avoiding a difficult situation we would otherwise have to face.

At other times, we find ourselves secretly rejoicing at others' failures, even small ones, and cursing their successes. The former is so common that there's even a word for it!

What we usually fail to recognize is that any pleasure we gain from bending our integrity--whether by taking that which doesn't belong to us, gossiping about another, or wishing them ill--is always, one hundred percent of the time, outweighed by the negative effects of this lapse.

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About One City: A Buddhist Blog for Everyone

Welcome to One City. You've lived here your whole life, whether you know it or not. One City blog is an outgrowth of The Interdependence Project, a Buddhist-inspired nonprofit organization led by Ethan Nichtern, dedicated to teaching the insights of Buddhism, meditation, mindfulness, and interconnectedness in the 21st century world.

If you're interested in how your mind works, are interested in meditation (but don't want to pretend you live in ancient Asia), care about the world, are into media, love contemporary culture, and above all, really dig the truth of interdependence-that nothing happens in a vacuum--then this blog is for you.

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Davee Evans
A Shambhala practitioner in San Francisco
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Evelyn Cash
Evelyn is a Soto Zen practitioner and engineer living in Wichita, Kansas.
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Ethan Nichtern
Author, founding director of the Interdependence Project, and the host of the I.D. Project’s popular weekly podcast
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Ellen Scordato
A business owner, editor, teacher, and board member of the Interdependence Project
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Greg Zwahlen
Practices meditation and studies Buddhism
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A writer, producer, and director for television, film, and theater in NYC
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Jon Rubinstein
Jon writes about art and the media from a Buddhist perspective.
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Kirsten Firminger
A Doctoral Candidate in Social Psychology
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Lodro Rinzler
Lodro Rinzler is a second-generation Shambhala Buddhist practitioner and teacher.
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Paul Griffin
A writer, scholar, and tutor in New York City
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Assistant Director of the Interdependence Project
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Stillman Brown
A photographer, writer, and meditation practitioner living in Brooklyn, NY
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