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Hi all, I’m Mark. Welcome to my little cloud in the Earthville blogosphere, where I get to share stories from the field from a personal perspective, with occasional sundry musings on topics (hopefully) of interest to caring global citizens and the curious extraterrestrials who study them online.
In case we haven’t met yet, some background: I founded Earthville in 1997 with a lot of help from my friends and have been volunteering as its president ever since. I’m also busy as a creative (music, architecture, design, production, writing, photography), which keeps me nourished and helps support my globetrotting do-gooding habit.
On a personal note: It’s easy to feel sad about many things in our world, but I’m inspired by the possibilities I see and I’m driven to work with others, with joyful diligence and creativity, to make whatever contributions we can. I’m fueled mostly by the kindness of others, aesthetic beauty, and yummy plant-based global cuisine. I appreciate the contemplative life (though usually from afar, TBH) and do my humble best to make this engaging work a meditation.
(My full bio is here, if you’re curious.)
I love hearing from everyone, so please feel free to post in the comments section below each article.
Last month, friends new and old from all corners of the globe (five continents!) came to Dharmalaya to participate in our fourth annual SanghaSeva retreats at Dharmalaya. As usual, we were feeling like family by the end, and mountains were moved — both outside and in.
By chance, world leaders and I are in Geneva today, on peace missions of different sorts. Events of the past two weeks spur reflection on the ways in which their big mission and my little one intersect.
Smiles all around at the close of our second annual silent meditation retreat with SanghaSeva at the Dharmalaya Institute in the Indian Himalayas.
When we left you with the season finale cliffhanger last June, we had just bundled up our baby building with prayers that she’d survive the monsoon rains without a roof….
The biggest news on the construction of the Dharmalaya Institute is in regard to our race against time to get the roof on our baby building before the onslaught of the monsoon rains this month… and the update is that, well, we couldn’t win, so we’ve done our best to change the game.
This week, during our first service retreat program (see news article) on the Dharmalaya Institute’s new Himalayan eco-campus, we had a precious opportunity: our friends at SanghaSeva brought sixteen wonderful, hard-working volunteers from all over the globe to work with us, so we figured this was the time to take on…
We’ll be posting a detailed update on the construction of the Dharmalaya Institute soon. For now, here’s a little picture of progress… 🙂
So much in life can’t happen without the kindness of others, and this is especially true here in the Himalayas. In a “subsistence-plus” economy such as we have here in Himachal Pradesh, most villagers have enough land to feed their families, more or less, so they don’t necessarily need to work…
A familiar sea of humans, cows, and three-wheeled auto-rickshaws… with some new features: People of all stripes gathering around giant outdoor projection screens to cheer every turn of the Indian athletes in the Commonwealth Games… Brand new Delhi Metro terminals, still not-quite-finished and already falling apart, teeming with hurried passengers…