Stress is a natural response that marshals all our energies to deal with an emergency — such as fleeing from a charging elephant for example. However, if you spend your entire day thinking that you are being charged by an elephant, it is very bad for your health. Chronic stress weakens the immune system, damages brain neurons, generates un...

A few years ago I went on a hike in the mountains with an eighty-one year old friend who is a brisk walker. After an hour, we reached a 10,000 feet high pass with a view of a breathtaking landscape that stretched for a hundred miles in front of our enchanted eyes. As we sat on a log and gazed at this magnificent scene, he asked me: - Wha...

Meditation essentially means to train the mind. The purpose of meditation is to develop qualities such as loving-kindness and attention, as well as a correct understanding of reality. For 2,500 years, Buddhists have used meditation to eliminate ignorance and mental toxins, that is to say destructive emotions, which are the principal causes o...

Imagine a ship that is sinking and needs all the available power to run the pumps to drain out the rising waters. The first-class passengers refuse to cooperate because they feel hot and want to use the air-conditioner and other electrical appliances. The second-class passengers spend all their time trying to be upgraded to first-class statu...

Choosing between cooperation and selfishness Cooperation is the creative force of evolution. Humans need cooperation in order to build increasingly complex levels of organization. It is also at the heart of humankind's unprecedented achievement; it allows society to implement things a single person could not. From an egotistical poin...

The dolphinarium industry is a perfect example of institutionalized selfishness. Money is the driving force that creates and runs them. Their educational, recreational, and environmental facades are covers for the merciless enslavement of species gifted with rare intelligence and who enjoy a rich and complex social life. In the people who ...

Altruism is a natural manifestation of human goodness, of which we all have the potential, despite the many, often selfish, motivations that cross and sometimes dominate our minds. Choosing altruism over selfishness The search for selfish happiness is doomed to fail for several reasons. Being self-obsessed leads us to look at the world...

Recently during the course of only one day I heard these facts about the environment: 1) The Greenland glaciers are melting much faster than previously thought. This is because of the cumulated effects of the melting ice and the acceleration of the movement of the glaciers toward the sea. We know that the complete melting of the Greenland ...

https://shechen.org/

You have lived several times in a hermitage. How was it? Great, beautiful! My longest retreat, initially planned for a year, lasted nine months; it was cut short in order to spend some time with my father who was at the end of his life. I received mail every two weeks and, because of minimal infrastructure at the hermitage, was fed by vi...