I want to share with you a project we’ve been working on. Good Buddhist News is a free monthly newsletter focused on news stories which are uplifting from a Buddhist perspective. The goal is to provide a source of gladness and joy in an age of turmoil and bad news.
The newsletter includes:
A few brief articles reporting acts of kindness/generosity
sections covering interesting aspects of Buddhist history/cosmology
The idea came to me when I tried and failed to find a source of good news. There are some outlets dedicated to this, but they mostly focus on material gains (lottery winnings, technological breakthroughs etc). So I decided to fill the gap myself and start a newsletter that Buddhists might want to read. I also tricked my dear Dhamma brother @M_Asunta into joining me.
The newsletter has been an absolute joy to create, and we hope it will be of benefit to you.
If you are interested, you can sign up here: https://goodbuddhistnews.com
The newsletter is sent out on the 3rd of each month.
With a truckload of mettā,
Remy and Mikko
(*) this was compiled last autumn, which is why the stories are not so recent. full sources are linked separately at the very bottom of the newsletter.
PS you can also subscribe by writing to info@goodbuddhistnews.com if you don’t want to use Google’s reCAPTCHA. I’m working on finding a more privacy-friendly solution.
Thank you for the kind response, Bhante There’s a button linking to a full source document at the very bottom of each newsletter, including the sample edition. This is to avoid being mislabelled as spam due to excessive linking
Yeah, what could go wrong with another secured channel
It’s important to protect without “fencing in”, and if one feels called to protect and serve then the party is going on out there.
Bring your prayer capsule with you, there’s a lot of very good Buddhist news going on live, so why use an intermediary, even if it’s “secure”. That channel must have a time lag, and therefore not trustworthy for what going on now.
An increase in selfless acts of kindness, and bringing awareness to them is such a positive force. A little bit of balance to the obsession about the negative that seems to be every-where at the moment.
Here is one I came across the other day. I was visiting my father, and in the car-park near the local shops someone had put up a sign that said
‘I am so proud of you - (just in case no-one has told you this recently)’.
When I reflect on the generosity of the person who went to the trouble to share such a positive message of metta and karuna, and then of all the 1000’s of people who will have been uplifted by it - it is impossible to not be moved to joy, metta, gratitude etc etc… May there be more and more heartfelt expressions of kindness - just like your newsletter.
Thank you for the heartfelt response, and for sharing that story. This was such a lovely message to wake up to! I’m touched by the response to the newsletter so far.
Indeed, the world seems very focused on negativity. Which is a shame considering there’s so much goodness out there. Even without referring to specific acts of kindness, take for example how most people instinctively want to help when there’s an emergency. The more I reflect on it, the more it amazes me. I bet it’s not like that at all in some of the lower realms… There seems to be a deep-seated wish to be kind that many-many-many people carry within themselves. What a beautiful thing that is!
Dear @remy , Would you like people to share any ‘good news stories’ here that they have heard of? That way you might get more material. I wasn’t sure if you might want it as part of this topic, or to create a new sub-topic for that . Just an idea
PS I saw you are from Estonia (great to see Buddhism in the Baltics ) … Latvian living in Australia here…
Yes, of course people are very welcome to share stories here
That’s an excellent idea, thank you.
Any kindness/generosity sharing is very welcome, be it news or personal stories (I won’t include personal stories in the newsletter ofc)
That’s cool! There is a Buddhist scene here, surprisingly enough. We even have a temple on an island with some sutta-loving meditation monks living there. It’s so cool to see these pockets of Dhamma pop up in the most unexpected places
- (just in case no-one has told you this recently)’.
