11.14.2025 The Beauty of Community   This year marks the 19th Annual Lion’s Roar Auction, our biggest fundraising event of the year. As an independent non-profit foundation, Lion’s Roar relies on the generosity of our readers and supporters to continue sharing Buddhist wisdom. Nowhere is that support more evident than in our auction, where donors and bidders come together to help our mission flourish. This year’s auction holds special poignancy. In the spring, our beloved friend and colleague Cindy Littlefair passed away. For more than eighteen years, Cindy was the exuberant steward of the Lion’s Roar auction. Coincidentally, this will also be the final year we offer our generous donor Lorne Ridell’s sailing trip around the San Juan Islands — a faithful feature of the auction, like Cindy herself. At Lorne’s request, a portion of the trip’s winning bid will go toward a writing grant in Cindy’s honour. As in life, as one season ends, new beginnings arise, and our auction has come around once again, launching our 19th year with over 120 donors and 280 auction items. There’s retreats across North America, France, Mexico, and Italy, handmade ceramics and fine art, and signed books and jewelry. This year we’re also introducing something new: a chance to engage directly with Buddhist teachers and mentors. You can bid to have your writing reviewed by Pamela Ayo Yetunde or Barry Boyce, explore dharma translation or the art of tea with trusted guides, receive executive coaching with Dr. Joe Parent or Dan Zigmond, or even learn the sacred forms of hula or Tai Chi from home. We’ve been blessed with an abundance of riches both old and new. What’s been most inspiring for me as this year’s auction coordinator is meeting the donors — retreat centers, artists, teachers, and longtime friends — and seeing the bidders jump in with generosity and enthusiasm. Each of them contributes toward our ultimate purpose to benefit society. Cindy always ended each auction by personally connecting donors and winning bidders, which meant sending out hundreds of emails by hand. She never automated it, knowing that ultimately, the auction was about connection, and connection builds community. This Weekend Reader’s pieces speak to the beauty of our community — their generosity, kindness, and good spiritual friendship. —Pam Boyce, Digital Designer & Auction Coordinator Generosity’s Perfection Giving up, giving in, just plain giving—Sharon Salzberg says that’s the truly transformative experience. If we practice joyful giving, we experience confidence. We grow in self-esteem, self-respect and well-being because we continually test our limits. Our attachments say, “I will give this much and no more,” or “I will give this article or object if I am appreciated enough for this act of giving.” In the practice of generosity, we learn to see through our attachments. We see they are transparent, that they have no solidity. They don’t need to hold us back, so we can go beyond them. Therefore, the practice of generosity is about creating space. We see our limits and we extend them continuously, which creates an expansiveness and spaciousness of mind that’s deeply composed. This happiness, self-respect and spaciousness is the appropriate ground in which meditation practice can flourish. It is the ideal place from which to undertake deep investigation, because with this kind of inner happiness and spaciousness, we have the strength and flexibility to look at absolutely everything that arises in our experience. ADVERTISEMENT Spiritual Friendship Is the Path Each one of us, says David Viafora, can be a kalyana mitra, or “spiritual friend.” Here’s how. One day, Ananda and the Buddha were sitting alone on a hill together, overlooking the plains of the Ganges. Having served as the Buddha’s attendant for many years, Ananda often shared his reflections and insights with him. This afternoon, Ananda spoke. “Dear Respected Teacher,” Ananda said. “It seems to me that half of the spiritual life is good friendship, good companionship, good comradeship.” I imagine that Ananda said this with some level of confidence for praising the merits of spiritual friendship. But the Buddha quickly corrected him: “Not so, Ananda! Not so, Ananda!” Ouch! Probably Ananda wasn’t expecting such a stern rebuke. But the Buddha was offering a powerful teaching. He continued, “This is the entire spiritual life, Ananda, that is, good friendship, good companionship, good comradeship. When a monk has a good friend, a good companion, a good comrade, it is to be expected that he will develop and cultivate the noble eightfold path.” Generosity Comes First In any presentation of the paramitas, dana, or generosity, always comes first — Nikki Mirghafori explains why. When I started on the path of Buddhist practice, I was mainly interested in meditation. To my novice ears, other teachings sounded less relevant or interesting. I vaguely remember hearing in a dharma talk that the Buddha had emphasized the practice of generosity for lay folks such as myself. In the trilogy of meritorious deeds (puñña), he first and foremost taught generosity, or dana, which in Pali connotes both the act of giving and what is given. Only after the practitioner appreciated this teaching did the Buddha proceed to teach ethics (sila) and mental cultivation (bhavana); it was the latter I was jumping into, head (not heart) first.