It is good to abandon what is superfluous, futile, and useless as quickly as possible and not cling to these from force of habit. If I go hiking in the mountain, and midway I find that my packsack is half-filled with provisions and half-filled with stones, I would, of course, gladly get rid of the latter.

Likewise, in life, there are so many things and concerns that in no way contribute to our true happiness. Therefore, why not give up these causes of torment?

On the other hand, we must not, under any circumstances, abandon the pursuit of what is truly worthwhile: self-transformation in order to be of better service to others.

As for the feeling of being abandoned by others, it is without a doubt a painful experience, but how senseless. What is it that is abandoned? Is it our very being or rather an inflated sense of self-importance? How could the essential nature of pure awareness, free from mental constructs, itself be abandoned by anyone else than oneself ? At the very most, we ourselves are the ones who are oblivious of it.

If we reflect on the fundamental nature of mindfulness and on that of the present moment, we will come to realize that we are not this “self” who suffers from abandonment, nor are we the suffering that we feel. Inner peace rooted in the alert presence of mindfulness cannot be affected by these mental constructs.

The year 2010 marks the hundredth anniversary of the birth of Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche (1910–1991), one of the most remarkable spiritual teachers of our time. On this special occasion, Khyentse Rinpoche’s grand son and spiritual heir, Shechen Rabjam Rinpoche is organizing, with the help of many Khyentse Rinpoche’s disciples all over the world, various activities to celebrate Khyentse Rinpoche’s life and introduce his young incarnation, Dilgo Khyentse Yangsi Rinpoche, who will, for the first time, travel to Europe, North America and East Asia.

The inaugural part of these celebrations took place in a moving and festive atmosphere at Shechen Monastery in Nepal, from February 20 to 22, and were attended by a more than fifty major teachers, including Kyabje Trulshik Rinpoche, Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche, Khamtrul Rinpoche. Thousands of devotees filed by to pay their respects to sacred relics put on display.

In conclusion of 2010 celebrations, Khyentse Yangsi Rinpoche will consecrate stupas which have been built in the eight main holy places related to the Buddha’s life in India and Nepal, in fulfillment of Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche’s wishes.

Blaming someone is an unjustified simplification of a complex human situation. We may disapprove of the actions or the behavior of someone, but that person himself is not “useless” or “evil.” No one is intrinsically “this” or “that” within their being. The fundamental nature of consciousness or pure awareness is neither “good” nor “bad”: it is simply conscious. The content of the mind is what colors the mind and this content depends on many factors.

The way people think and behave is the result of a web of causes and conditions that are changing naturally. This can be changed further through specific interventions. People are just more or less confused, more or less “sick,” in their mind. We need to approach people with the understanding that they are human beings who have gone through countless experiences under the influence of countless circumstances, which have conditioned their way of thinking.

Blame often rises from arrogance and lack of compassion. A physician does not blame his patients, even if they behave in ways that harm their health. Instead, he tries to find ways to cure them, or skillfully helps them change their habits. When someone harms others, he should be prevented from doing so with appropriate and measured means and also helped to change his harmful behavior.
Wholesale blame of a person or a group can lead to contempt, prejudice, and eventually hatred.
So, instead of engraving our judgments about people in stone, we should view them--and ourselves as well--as flowing, dynamics streams that always have the genuine potential for change and goodness.

The world has just celebrated the 20th anniversary of Nelson Mandela’s release from jail. When asked how he could make friends with his jailers during his 27 years in detention, he answered: ”By bringing out their good qualities.” And when asked whether he thought that all people had some good within them, he answered:  ”There is no doubt whatsoever, provided you are able to arouse the inherent goodness.”

In December some members of the Davos World Economic Forum in collaboration with Facebook conducted a poll on “values”. The poll was conducted with over 130,000 participants largely through the Internet. Eighty percent of the people polled were under 30 and, as these opinions expressed were mostly by young people, the result is certainly food for thought.
Responding to the question, “Do you believe that universal values exist,” only 54% responded positively, with Mexico leading the list of countries (72%). The largest group who disagreed was the French (37%), where people seem dubious that universal values exist at all.

To the question “Where do most of your personal values derive from?” 62% said that education and family were the main sources, 21% listed religion and faith, 11% professional experience, and 6% popular culture. Here too, there were significant differences among countries: only 5% of the Mexican respondents and 6% of the French derive their values from religion, as opposed to 30% of respondents from the USA and 39% from Saudi Arabia.

As for which values people consider most important in their private and professional lives, honesty, integrity and transparency come first (51%), followed by respect for others’ rights, dignity, and views (26%), the impact of their actions on the well-being of others (17%), and preserving the environment (7%).  On this last point, Turkey ranks the highest (13%), while the USA and Saudi Arabia trail with only 4%.
However, when asked about the values considered most important in the global political and economic system, preserving the environment rated higher (17% on average), France and India coming first with respectively 27 and 22%, while Saudi Arabia and the USA come last with 11 and 13%.
Finally, 68% of the participants think that the current global economic crisis is also a crisis of ethics and values.

What can we learn from such a poll? It is indeed a bit disconcerting that half of the respondents under 30 consider that there are no universal values. Could values such as honesty, justice, and altruism, impartiality and equality be relative, optional and negotiable? It would be indeed interesting to learn more about the views of those who replied negatively.

A study, recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS), showed that the Arctic tern, whose annual migration is the longest of any animal, travels 70,000 km each year during its seasonal movements between Greenland and Antarctica. When you consider that an Arctic tern can live up to 34 years, the distance traveled during a lifetime of migrations is equivalent to three round trips to the Moon. This report reminded me of my fascination, as a teenager, with ornithology; I had banded several birds, and one of them, a warbler, was later found in South Africa.

It was then I met André Fatras, a wilderness enthusiast and a great wildlife photographer. With his young 18-year-old bride and their son, just a few months old, André had gone down the Loire on a raft, which finally ran ashore onto the beach in front of the home of my uncle, the round the globe sailor Jacques-Yves Le Toumelin. We quickly became great friends, and it is André who taught me photography during my many stays at his countryside home in Sologne. André has traveled around the world, from India to the Galápagos Islands to Africa. He has been dropped off onto the Spitsbergen pack ice to photograph snow geese and other species of the Far North, bringing with him, as part of his provisions, a 70-kilo round of gruyère cheese. In Antarctica, he photographed his son Benjamin dressed up as a penguin, one among a million emperor penguins.

André also did nine trips to the Kerguelen Islands. These islands’ recent plight is a good example of the devastation caused by man. Most of these islands are now invaded by cats, rats, and rabbits, which were brought there by man; they are devouring each other up, having completely decimated the local fauna. However, a small stretch of island, approximately twenty kilometers long, still remains protected due to a snowy elevation, which predators cannot cross. This is where André spent months in a basalt cave with his family (a first in Kerguelen history), taking photos of the indigenous wildlife in all its splendor.

Last December, on a beautiful snowy winter’s day, we had the joy of getting together—Dédé, Mati, Benjamin, our pal Yves (photographer of butterflies and mushrooms, among other things) and myself, Mama, also known as “Nincompoop”—in their Sologne home.

At the Davos World Economic Forum, I also participated in a session on “Lessons from the Past to Redesign Future Values” with Jody Williams. She received the Nobel Peace Price in 1997 for relentlessly and successfully campaigning for a United Nations’ treaty banning landmines. She told the UN delegates that they were proceeding in too slowly, “You are pondering for hours about where a comma should be placed in the text, but what you need is to first feel and act as human beings. Stop keeping apart the human being you are and the job you are doing.”

To exemplify her words, Jody and her team created a mock landmine field outside the UN headquarters in Geneva so that the delegates had to walk through it to reach the venue. A noisy blast occurred in the hall, in the public section, every 20 minutes to remind negotiators that at each of these moments, a landmine was blowing up somewhere in the world. She brought mutilated live witnesses who had barely survived a landmine explosion to meet the delegates. She reconnected the negotiators with living experience, painful reality, and palpable humanity.

In that session, I suggested that a “witness” program should be included in the proceedings of the World Economic Forum. In the case of Haiti, for instance, Bill Clinton made an impassionate appeal for help. The presence by his side of a survivor from the rubble would have struck an even more powerful chord in donors’ hearts.  When discussing climate change, women’s issues, and other pressing topics, a testimony by someone who is actually suffering from these challenges would certainly put economists and world leaders more directly in touch with the fate of humanity.

I attended the recent Davos World Economic Forum as a speaker and was inspired by the voices that called for a greater sense of values and altruism in the world. In the session “Rethinking Values in the Post-Crisis World,” Mohammad Yunus, the Nobel Laureate who created the system of micro-credit to help people free themselves from poverty, said in essence that we do not have to change the way business is done, we simply need to change its goals. There is selfish business, the purpose of which is just profit. It reduces humanity to a single dimension, money, and thus ignores our humanity. Then there is selfless business, the goal of which is primarily to serve society. This is also known as social business. Charity is a one-time giving that can be very helpful, but does not have sustainable effects.

Social business can help society in a sustainable way. It is viable and can be as profitable as selfish business, but the direct beneficiary is society. You may, for instance, start a business for the very purpose of creating one hundred jobs, or to provide cheap and clean water to many communities. These are your direct goals, not making money just for the sake of it. If you succeed in creating these jobs or in providing the needed water, this is your indicator of success, and this number makes up your balance sheet at the end of the year.

Today, most of technology is put at the service of selfish business. But the same technology could be used for selfless business. We could also create a social business stock market, functioning like any other stock exchange, which would give people the choice to invest in selfless economy. The goal is not to replace or compete with the traditional economy, but to provide an alternative, so that selfless economy can have an opportunity do more good in this world.

“When you look closely at life in a city, you have the impression that all the facets of individuals’ lives must be defined with great precision, like a screw that has to fit exactly in its hole. In one sense, you have little control over your own life. To survive, you have to follow that model and the rhythm you’re provided with.”

The Dalai Lama, in The Good Heart

In conventional terms, we can talk about an “individual” consciousness, even if the individual doesn’t exist as an isolated entity. The fact that there’s no such discontinuous entity being transferred from one life to the next doesn’t mean that there can’t be a continuity of functioning and a particular history.

That the self has no true existence doesn’t prevent one particular stream of consciousness from having qualities that distinguish it from another stream. The fact that there’s no boat floating down the river doesn’t prevent the water from being full of mud, polluted by a paper factory, or clean and clear. The state of the river at any given moment is the result of its history. In the same way, an individual stream of consciousness is loaded with all the traces left on it by positive and negative thoughts, as well as by actions and words arising from those thoughts. What we’re trying to do by spiritual practice is to gradually purify the river.

The ultimate state of complete clarity is what we call spiritual realization. All the negative emotions, all the obscurations that render the underlying wisdom invisible, have then been dissolved. It’s not a question of annihilating the self, which has never really existed, but simply of uncovering its imposture. Indeed, if the self did have any intrinsic existence we’d never be able to bring it from existence into non-existence.

First of all, it’s important to understand that what’s called reincarnation in Buddhism has nothing to do with the transmigration of some “entity” like an autonomous “self”. It’s not a process of metempsychosis.
As long as one thinks in terms of entities rather than function and continuity of experience, it’s impossible to understand the Buddhist concept of rebirth. As it’s said, “There is no thread passing through the beads of the necklace of rebirths.”
Over successive rebirths, what is maintained is not the identity of a “person,” but the conditioning of a stream of consciousness.
(to be continued)