The 17th Karmapa, head of the Kagyu lineage talks about community:
“[..] calling the qualities and love that we innately have to mind and bringing them into our Dharma practice is so much better than hundreds or thousands of conceptually fabricated practices. Many of you have Dharma friends, but usually you only think about the lama and do not particularly pay any attention to your Dharma friends. Yet you should keep your Dharma friends in mind, and consider how you can create Dharma connections with one another and develop those Dharma connections through harmonious samaya commitments with one another. Considering this, you should rely upon each other. This is how you should think of the Three Jewels as you go for refuge today. [..] The main point is that on this earth, communities are extremely important. If communities act in negative ways toward each other, it harms the entire earth. If communities act well toward each other and do good things, it brings good things to the whole world. Now that you have gathered here and I have given you the refuge vow, the main thing for all of you is that you take greater responsibility for this world. I hope that you develop more courage to work for happiness in the world, and that when your courage increases, all the particular intentions you now have for this world do not just remain mere thoughts but can really and truly be demonstrably shown on this earth. Do as much as you can as an individual to train in altruism and loving-kindness, and then do what you can to bring happiness from the small scale of within your family up to the larger scale of society in general and to all beings in this world.” — Ngoendro for our current day, 17th Karmapa
Walter Kasper, theologian, writes about the christian concept of “Heaven”, not as a real place, but as something that can happen in the moment, between people or within yourself, right here and now.
“The newness which has come into our sphere through Jesus’ arrival with God and through his new coming to us, is traditionally called ‘heaven’, borrowing from the language of myth. Heaven means originally the upper place (the empyrean), the floor which is above the earth (the empyrean). Usually this heaven is imagined as empty space into which Jesus was taken up and into which the saints will move in solemn procession at the end of time. These are more or less mythological ideas: theologically, heaven is the dimension which arises when the creature finally arrives with God. To go to heaven means to come to God; to be in heaven, means to be with God. Heaven is an eschatological phenomenon; it does not simply exist; it comes into being, more precisely, at the moment when the first created being is eschatologically and finally taken up by God. Heaven takes shape therefor in the Resurrection and Exaltation of Christ. Jesus is not actually taken up into heaven, but in being finally accepted with God, heaven starts to exist. Heaven is the pneumatic resurrected body of Christ. The whole of reality arrives at its apex in God with the body of Christ. Heaven projects into time. It is only logical that the Church as the place where Christ is present in faith, hope and love, should be called the body of Christ. When Paul says our home is in heaven (Phil 3.20) and that we are taken up with Christ in heaven (Eph 2.6; cf Col 1.5; 3:3), that heaven is first of all there where men are ‘in Christ’ in faith and love as well as in hope and patience and commit themselves with their world to the finality which has come with Christ.” – Walter Kasper, Jesus the Christ. p. 152-152