This image of seven Tibetan and Bhutanese Buddhist monks jumping on the beach in front of the ocean was taken in France, at Dieppe, on a bright winter morning in 1997. This image is an original slide; it is not a multiple exposure and no tricks were employed. It is simply a single exposure of seven monks jumping for joy and, contrary to most viewers’ belief, the image has not been modified in any way.

I used a manual FM2 Nikon camera to take the photograph. The monks jumped three consecutive times and I shot each of them. One of these jumps was perfectly synchronized, giving the illusion of a single monk bouncing off the ground from his two feet, crossing the air, and landing seven meters away.

Actually, the monks were rehearsing an acrobatic movement in the sacred dance called “Dances of the Heroes” (pacham in Tibetan). This traditional dance is normally performed in the courtyard of Tibetan and Bhutanese monasteries during an annual sacred dance festival. During the dance, the monks jump a number of times touching their forehead to their feet, a movement that indeed requires a lot of training. You can better understand this movement by looking at these other images of the dance.

This particular dance was inspired by a vision that the great Bhutanese spiritual master Pema Lingpa had in the fifteenth century. He described the vision in this way: ‘At the summit stood a palace of light, glittering with the brilliance of primordial wisdom, vast like the sky. In the center of the palace, in an expanse of sparkling dots and interlacing rainbows, Padmasambhava was seated, the embodiment of all buddhas of the past, present, and future. He was surrounded by a gathering of enlightened beings and male and female deities who danced, gestured, and beautifully sang the profound teachings of the Great Vehicle. They came together like a magnificent cloud, performing actions for the good of beings in unimaginable ways.’

For further details on this dance see “Bhutan: Land of Serenity,” Thames and Hudson.

That’s a question the Dalai Lama’s frequently asked. His usual reply is to joke, “Poor Buddhism! Rejected by religions as an atheistic philosophy, a science of the mind; and by philosophers as a religion—there’s nowhere that Buddhism has citizen’s rights. But perhaps that’s an advantage that could allow Buddhism to build bridges between religions and philosophies.”
In essence, we could say that Buddhism is a path of transformation toward enlightenment, a contemplative science, and a rich philosophical tradition from which a wisdom applicable in every instant and in all circumstances is derived.

Chinese climatologists have called the Himalayan glaciers and other major mountains located in the Tibetan plateau the “third pole” of our ailing planet. Why? There are 40,000 large and small glaciers on the Tibetan plateau and this area is melting at a rate three to four times faster than the North and South Poles. The melting is particularly accelerated in the Himalayas by the pollution that settles upon the snow and darkens the glaciers, making them more absorbent to light.

In Bhutan, recent investigations have shown that a natural moraine dam that separates two glacial lakes in the Lunana area is today only 31 meters deep, in comparison to 74 meters in 2003.  If this wall gives way, some 53 millions cubic meters of water will rush down the valley of Punakha and Wangdi, causing immense damage and loss of life. Yet, Bhutan has only one glaciologist, Mr. Kharma Thoeb, with limited funds and technology to tackle this imminent danger.

Altogether there are 400 glacial lakes in Nepal and Bhutan that may break their natural dams and flood populated areas lower in the valleys. If these floods happen, the glaciers will increasingly shrink. This will cause drought as the streams and rivers will not be fed by melting snow.

Some 47% of the population of China, India, and other countries is dependent upon the watershed that comes from the rivers of the Tibetan plateau (Indus, Brahmaputra, Yangtze, Yellow, Salween, and Mekong) for their agriculture, general water supply, and, therefore, survival. The consequences of the drying up of these great rivers will be catastrophic.

During the last six months, Nepal has not had any significant rainfall. Throughout this winter, the entire majestic Himalayan range appeared grey and only the highest peaks (above 6000 m) remained covered with snow.

Other disturbing changes are happening on the Tibetan plateau. The permafrost that determines the hydrological and nutritional status of the soil and its flora is also melting. Wetlands, which act like sponges to absorb water during summer and release it in winter thus regulating the flow of the main rivers, are shrinking. These disturbances have been aggravated by the intense deforestation of the Tibetan plateau and the Himalayan slopes that, except in Bhutan, have caused 40% of the forests to disappear during the last 50 years. The result has been floods, landslides, and desertification.

The fate of the local population has also been jeopardized by the relocation and settlement of Tibetan nomads imposed by the Chinese administration. In Amdo province (Qinhai), for example, more than 100,000 nomad families have been forced to move to permanent communities. Such authoritarian political interventions add to the nomads hardship caused by climate change.

But knowledge like this, however widely available and vital it might be, is useless if it is ignored by the authorities. The time to swim upstream is not at the point when we reach the edge of a precipitous waterfall. Too little, too late, seems to be the sorrowful response to this impeding tragedy. If major steps are not taken very, very soon, when this disaster does happen, it will be irreversible, and even our tears will run dry.

The easiest way to distinguish between our emotions is to examine their motivation (mental attitude and objective) and their results. If an emotion strengthens our inner peace and seeks the good of others, it is positive, or constructive; if it shatters our serenity, deeply disturbs our mind and is intended to harm others, it is negative, or afflictive. As for the outcome, the only criterion is the good or the suffering that we create by our acts, words and thoughts, for ourselves as well as for others.

That is what differentiates, for instance, “holy anger” – indignation before injustice – from rage born of the desire to hurt someone. The former has freed people from slavery and domination and moves us to march in the streets to change the world; it seeks to end the injustice as soon as possible or to make someone aware of the error of his ways. The second generates nothing but sorrow.

As the Tibetan poet Shabkar said: “One with compassion is kind even when angry; one without compassion will kill even as he smiles.”

Empathy is to feel what others are experiencing and to resonate with them. When we meet someone filled with joy, we also experience joy. The same applies to suffering; though empathy we experience the suffering that another person is going through. Experientially, these empathic feelings are similar to real joy and real suffering. Therefore, when an empathic person is constantly confronted with others’ sufferings, he or she becomes continually affected by those sufferings. We find this happens to the most dedicated caregivers, such as health care professionals. Their deep experiences of empathy lead to either “burn out” (the inability to cope with feelings of empathy), or to a dysfunctional avoidance of others’ feelings and emotions.

Last year, I participated in a study of empathy and compassion in collaboration with the neuroscientist Tania Singer.  We examined the phenomena of “empathy fatigue” which is wide spread throughout the medical community. How can a caregiver maintain the warmth of empathy and yet keep the courage and optimism needed to help their patient?

The meditators who participated in the study discovered that a way to deal with this challenge effectively is to cultivate unconditional love and compassion toward the suffering person. This is much more than merely resonating emotionally with the suffering person. Altruistic love, according to Buddhism, is an attitude that consists of wishing others to be happy and find the true causes for happiness. And compassion is defined as the desire to put an end to the suffering of others and the causes of that suffering. Such altruistic love can pervade the mind so that one wishes for nothing more than the wellbeing of the suffering. Compassion is nothing else than love applied to suffering. Such love and compassion can override the feelings of distress and powerlessness that empathy alone generates and lead to constructive states of mind such as compassionate courage.

A secular training in loving kindness and compassion thus could enable health workers to better serve suffering patients without experiencing the debilitating “burn out” that often arises from prolonged exposure to empathy alone.  It also seemed to us that even though there can be “empathy fatigue,” there cannot be “compassion fatigue,” since compassion is essentially a wholesome, positive state of mind, while empathy is only the tool that allows one to correctly perceive the state of mind of others.  The more one experiences compassion and loving kindness, the more one progresses towards authentic well-being, and becomes unconditionally available to others.