We do not consider it strange to devote years to learning to walk, read and write, or to training for a profession. We spend hours exercising to stay in good physical shape, pedalling away on exercise bikes that go nowhere. In order to embark on any task, we need to have at least a small level of interest or enthusiasm, and that comes from being aware of the benefits. So why on earth should the mind be exempt from the same logic? Why should it be able to transform itself without the slightest effort, simply because we want it to? Such an assumption makes about as much sense as hoping to be able to play a Mozart concerto simply by tapping on the piano keys from time to time.

We are all a mixture of light and shadow, strengths and weaknesses. Our mind can be our best friend, and our worst enemy. But this state of affairs is neither optimal nor inevitable. Each of us has the potential to free ourself from mental states that cause suffering for ourselves and others, to find inner peace and to contribute to the well-being of others. But just wishing for this is not enough. We need to train our minds.7

We devote a lot of effort to improving the material conditions of our existence, but in the end it is always our mind that experiences the world and translates this experience into well-being or suffering. By transforming the way we perceive things, we transform the quality of our lives; and such a change can come from training the mind through meditation.

See “Why Meditate?”

On August 9 in Massachusetts, I had the opportunity to participate in the first “symposium on socially engaged Buddhism,” organized by Bernie Glassman, where I spoke on the subject of “compassion in action.” Bernie is a remarkably warmhearted man, gifted with indefatigable diligence to serve those most in need.

In the 1990s he founded “Zen Peacemakers,” an organization that integrates social action into the practice of Zen Buddhism. At first he was criticized by many of his colleagues for this unorthodox approach to Zen practice.

But Bernie’s benevolence soon triumphed over such arguments, and his organization became famous for its “street retreats” during which participants commit themselves to beg for their food and all their needs for the duration of the retreat (5 to 7 days). They sleep in the streets, under bridges, and in railway stations, using whatever they can find on the streets to use as a bed. The goal of those retreats is to bridge the gap between those who have and those who don’t.
Even though the participants of the retreat know that, after a few days, they will return to the comfort of their homes, this experience allows them to see the homeless in a different way and to never again turn their eyes away from them.

Every year Bernie also leads a retreat at Auschwitz, where he brings together survivors from the camps, or their descendents, with descendents of their persecutors.

Zen Peacemakers also organize training programs to help the homeless, prisoners, and the dying, and conduct seminars on the environment and on conflict resolution. Bernie himself participates in a program that he calls “Clowns without Borders” that offers performances in schools with poor children and refugee camps.

The Dalai Lama often describes Buddhism as being, above all, a science of the mind. That is not surprising, because the Buddhist texts put particular emphasis on the fact that all spiritual practices—mental, physical and oral—are directly or indirectly intended to transform the mind. Nevertheless, as the meditation master Mingyur Rinpoche writes: “Unfortunately, one of the main obstacles we face when we try to examine the mind is a deep-seated and often unconscious conviction that ‘we’re born the way we are and nothing we can do can change that’.”6 The truth is that the state we generally consider to be ‘normal’ is just a starting point, and not the goal that we ought to be setting for ourselves. Our life is worth much more than that! It is possible, little by little, to arrive at an ‘optimal’ way of being.

A renowned French psychoanalyst was asked the following question about Ingrid Betancourt, a French-Colombian politician who was kidnapped while campaigning in Colombia: “Can six years of detention in extreme conditions alter one’s personality?” His response was: “No. After the age of twenty-five, your personality is fixed.” Personally, it was around the age of twenty-five that I really began to change! This was also the case for most of the meditators who took part in the reseach; they changed from the moment they began to seriously engage in a process of training the mind through meditation.

To what extent can we train our mind to work in a constructive manner, to replace obsession with contentment, agitation with calmness, hatred with kindness? Twenty years ago, it was almost universally accepted by neuroscientists that the brain contained all its neurons at birth, and that their number did not change with experience. We now know that new neurons are produced up until the moment of death, and we speak of ‘neuroplasticity’, a term which takes into account the fact that the brain evolves continuously in relation to our experience, and that a particular training, such as learning a musical instrument or a sport, can bring about a profound change. Mindfulness, altruism and other basic human qualities can be cultivated in the same way, and we can acquire the ‘knowhow’ to enable us to do this.

One of the great tragedies of our time is that we significantly underestimate our capacity for change. Our character traits continue as long as we do nothing to improve them, and as long as we tolerate and reinforce our habits and patterns, thought after thought, day after day, year after year.

See Why Meditate?

In voting to ban bullfights, Catalan Parliamentarians have launched a national debate in Spain. Those who support bullfights put forward two arguments: bullfighting is a cultural tradition as well as an art. However, to kill is not an art, and torture is not culture.

Let us consider this by going through the stages involved in bullfighting.  First, the bull is “prepared.” His horns are shaved by sawing through them, leaving an open wound; this is as painful as sawing through a tooth without anesthetic. The points are then reshaped by polishing them or by coating them with resin. Modifying the length of the horns ensures that the bull’s head-butting ability will lack precision and make him miss his target. The bull is then transported, sometimes for some 20 hours, in a narrow container, without water or food, which weakens and dehydrates him. The bull sometimes dies from this. Before the bullfight, no qualms are felt about administering tranquilizers and injecting petroleum jelly in the eyes of the bull, needles are inserted in the testicles and wood shims are wedged within the hooves, the bull is also beaten with planks on his backbone and loins so as to not leave any marks.

The bullfight itself then follows. Picadors (“lancers”) on horseback drive lances deeply into the body of the bull in order to slit his neck muscles and the ligaments in the nape of his neck thereby preventing the bull from lifting his head and giving head butts up and down with his horns. This procedure is repeated half a dozen times. The intercostal arteries are often cut. The point is to weaken the animal by making him lose half of his blood supply, i.e., 7 liters. At the same time, the bull is spurred into making charges to tire him out as much as possible. He is then seen opening his mouth because he lacks oxygen.

Now comes the time to plant the banderillas. As sharp as razor blades and with harpoon points on their ends, banderillas are plunged into the bull’s back to drain his blood and to avoid his dying too soon of internal bleeding due to the picador’s endeavor.

The matador then thrusts an 85cm-long sword into the withers of the exhausted animal. Often the blade will trigger internal bleeding or else rupture a lung. In the latter case, the bull vomits his blood and dies of asphyxiation. Otherwise, the matador repeats the procedure. He uses a small sword that he sticks into the head of the animal between the horns in order to lacerate the brain. The matador then destroys the animal by repeatedly stabbing the nape of the bull’s neck and sections off his spinal cord. However, the bull is robust and, one time out of three, he is still alive when a team of mules drags him out of the arena.
So much for art. So much for culture.

Several years ago, in speaking about bulls, the director of the Nîmes arenas maintained that, “In the arena, there’s no proof that the bull suffers.”
So much for good faith.

As for the philosopher Francis Wolff, he declared that, “bullfighting upholds a consistent and respectful ethics with regards to bulls” and that its banning would constitute “not only a great cultural and esthetic loss but also a loss of morality.”
So much for morality.

According to Alain Renaut, another philosopher, bullfighting represents, “the savage nature (i.e., violence) being subjugated by human free will, a victory of freedom over nature.”
What freedom? The freedom to kill?

Regarding bullfighting, the torero Vincente Barrera declared in recent days that, “If the Spanish State recognizes bullfighting as an art, its banning would be as absurd as censoring a painting that some people do not appreciate.”
Is it enough to declare that an activity is an “art” in order to suppress all ethical objections and to ignore the ban on deliberately making another living being suffer, one who has not committed the slightest harm? If this were the case, then a sharpshooter and a Grand Inquisitor of the Middle Ages would be great artists, judging from their mastery of the art of killing and torturing.

Aficionados have announced that if bullfighting were banned throughout Spain, they would file a complaint, viewing this as an attack on their right to work, a fundamental right written into the Spanish Constitution. Of course, this work would have to not affect others adversely; otherwise, professional killers, who make a living with their trade, could insist upon the same rights and so could do arms and drug dealers.

This celebration of man’s dominion over nature, the insistence on presenting bullfighting as an art, the related financial considerations, and the claims regarding tradition are merely specious, unfounded arguments that flout basic human values. Only a lack of awareness about the suffering that is inflicted and the cynical arrogance of some men, only these could lead some to grant themselves the right to dispose of the life of other living beings for the purpose of eating, getting richer, having fun, practicing sports, and entertaining themselves, all with “art” and in the name of tradition. But this art is one of cruelty, and this tradition, its perpetuation.

“Wherever blood flows, art is not possible,” wrote the great French painter Eugène Delacroix.

When will there be a ban in France and in all of Spain? This would show that it is not a question of political manipulation, but simply one of humanity.

A few days ago, in Portland in the USA, Dilgo Khyentse Yangsi Rinpoche, a 17 year old Tibetan lama whom I am accompanying in his travels, put back to the sea over one thousand lobsters who were destined to be boiled alive and eaten by gourmets.
In June, the same lama, while visiting eastern Tibet, similarly saved over 2000 yaks from being slaughered.
This practice of buying and freeing live animals to save them from death is common among Buddhist populations.

“Our inner freedom knows no limits other than those we impose on it or allow to be imposed on it. And that freedom also holds great power. It can transform an individual, allow him to nurture all his capacities and to live every moment of his life in utter fulfillment. When individuals change by bringing their consciousness to maturity, the world changes too, because the world is made up of individuals.”

Luca et Francesco Cavalli-Sforza

The outward freedom that we shall attain will only be in exact proportion to the inward freedom to which we may have grown at a given moment. And if this is a correct view of freedom, our chief energy must be concentrated on achieving reform from within.

Mahatma Gandhi

To be free is to be master of oneself. For many people, such mastery involves freedom of action, movement and opinion, the opportunity to achieve the goals they have set themselves. This conviction locates freedom primarily outside oneself and overlooks the tyranny of thoughts. Indeed, it is a commonplace in the West that freedom means being able to do whatever we want and to act on the least of our whims. It’s a strange idea, since in so doing we become the plaything of thoughts that disturb our mind, the way a mountaintop wind bends the grass in every direction.

“For me, happiness would be doing anything I want with no one having to say anything about it,” said one young Englishwoman interviewed by the BBC. Can anarchic freedom, the only goal of which is the immediate fulfilment of desires, bring happiness? There is every reason to doubt it. Spontaneity is a precious quality so long as it is not confused with mental chaos. If we let the hounds of craving, jealousy, arrogance and resentment run amok in our mind, they will soon take the place over.  Conversely, inner freedom is a vast, clear and serene space that dispels all pain and nourishes all peace.

Inner freedom is above all freedom from the dictatorship of “me” and “mine,” of the ego that clashes with whatever it dislikes and seeks desperately to appropriate whatever it covets. Learning to find the essential and to stop worrying about the extraneous brings profound contentment over which the fantasies of the self have no hold. “He who experiences such contentment,” goes the Tibetan proverb, “holds a treasure in the palm of his hand.”

So being free comes down to breaking the bonds of afflictions that dominate and cloud the mind. It means taking life into one’s own hand, instead of abandoning it to tendencies forged by habit and mental confusion. If a sailor looses the tiller, let the sails flap in the wind and the boat drift wherever the currents take it, it is not called “freedom” – it is called “drifting”. Freedom, here, means taking the helm and sailing toward the chosen destination.

Canon Mark III Ds, 100-400mmCanon Mark III Ds, 100-400mmCanon Mark III Ds, 100-400mm

Canon Mark III Ds, 100-400mmCanon Mark III Ds, 100-400mmCanon Mark III Ds, 24-70mm

Canon Mark III Ds, 24-70mmCanon Mark III Ds, 100-400mmCanon Mark III Ds, 24-70mm