Buddhist grandmother to hike 1200-mile Keystone pipeline route

Posted: 06 Jun 2013 09:00 AM PDT
Shodo Spring is a 65-year-old grandmother of four and a Zen Buddhist priest. In a few weeks, she will begin a 1200-mile walk following the route of the proposed Keystone XL Pipeline from Fort Hardisty, Alberta, to Steele City, Nebraska. — a journey she expects will take her at least three months.
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In communities along the way, she and fellow walkers will be lending their skills for service projects as well as offering events, dialogue, and interfaith prayer to those impacted by local economic and environmental issues. Shodo says that she knows that the walk will be rugged, but that she won't be deterred from her conviction to help make change in the world her grandchildren will inherit..
Shodo recently won $ 1000 from the Pollination Project, a nonprofit that awards seed grants to individuals making a difference in their communities, to help kickstart her walk. For more details about the walk and how you can support Shodo's efforts, read this post by her at Resilience.org.
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Posted: 06 Jun 2013 06:00 AM PDT

Photo by Htoo Tay Zar via the OpenMyanmar Photo Project
Today, at the World Economic Forum in Burma, Aung San Suu Kyi announced: "I want to run for president and I'm quite frank about it. If I pretended that I didn't want to be president, I wouldn't be honest and I would rather be honest with my people than otherwise."
That being said, Suu Kyi, the chairperson of the National League for Democracy, faces a hurdle: a clause built into the country's constitution prevents anyone with a foreign spouse or child to qualify as a presidential candidate. To turn that clause around, she will need support from more than 75 percent of the members of Burma's parliament.
For more, see our previous SunSpace coverage and commentary on Aung San Suu Kyi and Burma.
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Posted: 06 Jun 2013 04:00 AM PDT
"Just as nurturing our ability to love is a way of awakening bodhichitta, so also is nurturing our ability to feel compassion. Compassion, however, is more emotionally challenging than loving-kindness because it involves the willingness to feel pain. It definitely requires the training of a warrior.
"When we practice generating compassion, we can expect to experience our fear of pain. Compassion practice is daring. It involves learning to relax and allow ourselves to move gently toward what scares us. The trick to doing this is to stay with emotional distress without tightening into aversion, to let fear soften us rather than harden into resistance."–Pema Chödrön, from her book, The Places That Scare You: A Guide to Fearlessness in Difficult Times. Via Heart Advice.
For more from Pema, visit her Shambhala Sun Spotlight page. And don't miss a very cool opportunity to "practice with Pema" this summer, online and for free thanks to the Pema Chödrön Foundation. We've got details on that right here.
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Posted: 05 Jun 2013 01:00 PM PDT
The Modern Day Bodhisattva (MDB) Training Seminar, June 8-9 in Vermont, aims directly at how we can become bodhisattvas right now, in the midst of our everyday experiences. Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche's MDB teachings–which cover topics like the four immeasurables, tonglen, or the six perfections–relate to everyone and they require no more knowledge of the dharma than an inclination for self-reflection. They open up a future that is as big as we make it. More information.
This year we introduce same-day download "remote attendance." For $ 50, you will be able to download Kongtrul Rinpoche's four teachings within 12 hours after they are given. This new form of attendance allows all of us to keep in step with this important and most wide-reaching aspect of Rinpoche's work and vision. We invite you to join us at the program, either in person or through audio download, to make becoming a modern day bodhisattva the center of our lives.
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