Sit Love Give

“We make a living by what we make, but we make a life by what we give”

Bodhipaksa“We make a living by what we make, but we make a life by what we give.” These words are often attributed to Winston Churchill, but they appear to be the work of the prolific “anon.”

I had trouble sleeping last night, which is very unusual for me. I was rather anxious about money, since Wildmind had a very bad year financially and lost a lot of money. I’d actually expected to make a loss since we moved into a larger office and I took on an office assistant to free me up to spend more time on creative tasks. But working on the end of year accounts was rather troubling, because the losses were larger than expected and we are running seriously short of wiggle-room and are having trouble juggling our bills.

At the same time I’m optimistic! On the one hand there’s a (bad) financial cusp looming, but on the other hand what we’ve been doing on Wildmind, which is making meditation available to people throughout the world, is starting to turn into a community. On Google+ [update: Google pulled the plug on Google+ in 2019] we’ve brought together meditation practitioners — from old hands to complete newcomers — and people are sharing what’s going on in their practice, whether that’s painful or blissful. They’re also giving and receiving advice, support, and encouragement. I don’t think I’ve ever seen an unkind word there. It’s inspiring I’m inspired by our community. And it’s only just beginning! I hope that more and more of the many people we reach through our blog will join us.

I’m inspired, and that’s why, at the very time we’re facing a financial crisis, we decided to get rid of the Google ads we’d been carrying on our website. I know that this was the right thing to do esthetically and ethically. And I’m optimistic that this was the right thing to do financially, because I have faith that the Wildmind community will continue to expand, and that it will rally around and carry us through the present challenge and into a much, much better future.

So if you value what we do here, I’m encouraging you to make a regular donation to Wildmind, so that we can not only replace the lost income from the old Google ads, but build up a stronger basis of financial support. One-time donations are great, but recurring donations are ideal because we don’t find ourselves in the situation of having to chase after money month after month.

That basis of financial support will allow me to concentrate on practicing and teaching, and that’s going to help you personally in a number of ways. The more depth there is to my practice, and the more I can focus on writing and teaching, the more I’ll have to offer you in terms of support and advice. But you can also know that your gift is percolating out into the world. Something like 2 million people read the articles and meditation guides on Wildmind’s website every year. I’d like to offer even more, and to have guides on compassion meditation and the other “divine abodes.” I’d like to expand the section on the six element practice. I’d like to have more recordings that are freely available. I’d like to have many more blog posts. I’d like to have 10 million, 20 million people visit our site every year. Heck. 100 million would be better. I’d like to help bring about a meditative transformation of modern society, by giving people the tools they need to develop mindfulness and compassion. Let’s think big.

In time I’d like to make our courses available completely free of charge, so that more people can participate. We’d then ask the participants to make donations, to “pay it forward” and allow others to benefit.

So, the tl;dr (that’s “too long; didn’t read” in the modern internet vernacular) is that Wildmind really needs regular monthly donations from people like you who enjoy and benefit from what we do. Regular donations don’t need to be large. Others will join in and the total support will build. And you’ll help not just yourself, but many, many other people.

If you feel inspired and would like to help us, please consider becoming a subscriber and supporting us with a recurring monthly donation of your choosing. Recurring donations, however small, are particularly helpful because they give us a reliable foundation. Rather than spending our time and energy scrabbling for resources to keep going, we can simply help the world become a more mindful and compassionate place

[Update] Wildmind’s former Google+ community now has its own home, and is accessible to Wildmind’s monthly sponsors, who get access to more than 40 meditation courses that Bodhipaksa has created, plus a number of other benefits. We call this Wildmind’s Meditation Initiative. Click the link to learn more.]
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Sit : Love : Give (Part II)

sit : love : giveSit : Love : Give is two things.

First, it’s what we do. We believe in the power of meditation to bring more mindfulness and compassion to the world in order to make it a better place. So we sit.

Through sitting we develop love.

Out of love we offer Wildmind to the world, in order to make meditation more accessible. Google Analytics tells us that there were 2.5 million page views on out site last year. That represents a lot of learning about meditation, and hopefully a lot of practice of meditation too. That’s our giving.

And second, we encourage you to sit, to develop love, and to give to the world around you.

We invite you to give back to Wildmind, to help us provide you and other meditators with even more resources.

This is particularly important now because we decided to get rid of Google’s ads on our site. They brought in valuable income, but they spoiled the look of the site and sometimes carried messages that clash with what we’re trying to do here. This is an expensive site to run. It’s not just the web-hosting, but the time and effort put into curating, creating, and editing material for our blog and for the rest of our website.

We’d like to do so much more. We’d like to offer even more extensive guides on a variety of meditation practices. We’d like to have more recordings available on our site. Any by the end of this year we’d like to make all of our online courses available free; we’ll simply ask participants for donations at the end of the course.

If you feel inspired and would like to help us, please consider becoming a subscriber and supporting us with a recurring monthly donation of your choosing, from the equivalent of a cup of coffee at $3, to a fancy dinner at $100. Recurring donations, however small, are particularly helpful because they give us a reliable foundation. Rather than spending our time and energy scrabbling for resources to keep going, we can simply create:

Sit : Love : Give.





Or you can also become a one-time benefactor with a single donation of any amount:





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Sit : Love : Give

Portrait of beautiful young woman meditatingWildmind recently went ad-free. The income from carrying ads was certainly useful — it costs a lot to run a site this size — but carrying advertising here seemed both esthetically and ethically ugly. So they’ve gone! And we feel great about it!

However, it takes about 80–100 hours a month to curate, write, edit, and post the articles you read here, and if you enjoy and benefit from what we do, we’d ask you to consider making a regular donation.

Dana, or giving, is an ancient Buddhist tradition, and we’d much rather rely on the generosity of you, our readers, than bombard you with advertising.

We’re calling this project “Sit : Love : Give.” It’s what we do. We meditate; we cultivate love; we try to influence the world for good through our website. And it’s what we hope you’ll do, too: meditate; cultivate love; give something back.

The content on Wildmind will remain free and open! This isn’t a paywall. It’s just an opportunity to show love, generosity, and solidarity with those who want to make the world a better place through the cultivation of mindfulness and compassion.

So please consider becoming a subscriber and supporting us with a recurring monthly donation of your choosing, from the equivalent of a cup of coffee at $3, to a fancy dinner at $100.





Or you can also become a one-time benefactor with a single donation of any amount:





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