Change the Story, Change the World
"All major world religious traditions carry the same message: the message of love, compassion, forgiveness, tolerance, contentment, self-discipline - all religious traditions. So these are the common ground, and common practice. On that level we can build genuine harmony on the basis of mutual respect, mutual learning, mutual admiration." Watch video
"To find solutions to the environmental crisis and violent conflicts that confront us in the 21st century, we need to seek new answers. Even though I am a Buddhist monk, I believe that these solutions lie beyond religion in the promotion of a concept I call secular ethics. This is an approach to educating ourselves based on scientific findings, common experience and common sense — a more universal approach to the promotion of our shared human values. "It is not enough simply to pray. There are … Continue reading
Awakening from the illusion of separation from a Native American perspective.... In this 4-minute video, author and spoken word activist, Alixa Garcia, artfully describes the meaning of wetiko and why seeing it can help change the world. "Cree Native Americans named Wetiko as a cannibalistic entity taking over the mind in an insatiable and lethal embrace. Wetiko is characterised as a psychic starvation that leads to an insatiable hunger. To see wetiko is to dispel its hold on us. Conscious … Watch video
"Who is the happiest man in the world? If you Google it, the name "Matthieu Ricard" pops up. "Matthieu Ricard, 69, is a Tibetan Buddhist monk originally from France who has been called "the world's happiest man." "That's because he participated in a 12-year brain study on meditation and compassion led by a neuroscientist from the University of Wisconsin, Richard Davidson. "Simple Capacity details the findings: "The scans showed that when meditating on compassion, Ricard’s brain produces a … Continue reading
Bhutan is a living example that it is possible to develop in a different way, and is creating a caring economy based on values, altruism, compassion and collaboration. Watch video
Buddhist scholar, author, activist and Findhorn Fellow, Joanna Macy, tells the story of the coming of the Kingdom of Shambhala as related to her by Choegyal Rinpoche. The story of the human heart and the interplay between compassion and wisdom. Watch video
"Test subjects taking part in an 8-week program of mindfulness meditation showed results that astonished even the most experienced neuroscientists at Harvard University. The study was led by a Harvard-affiliated team of researchers based at Massachusetts General Hospital, and the team’s MRI scans documented for the very first time in medical history how meditation produced massive changes inside the brain’s gray matter. "The participants spent an average of 27 minutes per day practicing … Continue reading
Greed is good. War is inevitable. Whether in political theory or popular culture, human nature is often portrayed as selfish and power hungry. UC Berkeley psychologist, Dacher Keltner, challenges this notion of human nature and seeks to better understand why we evolved pro-social emotions like empathy, compassion and gratitude. We've all heard the phrase 'survival of the fittest', born from the Darwinian theory of natural selection. Keltner adds nuance to this concept by delving deeper into … Watch video