Brain Plasticity

Today neuroscientists are talking more and more about brain plasticity or neuroplasticity. The brain continually evolves in response to our experience, through the establishment of new neuronal connections, the strengthening of existing ones, and the creation of new neurons.(p. 187)

Experiments:
1. Fred Gage & colleagues (1999, 1997)at the Salk Institute in California studied the response of rats to an enriched environment: In 45 days the number of neurons in the hippocampus (a brain structure associated with processing novel experiences and dispatching them for storage in other areas of the brain) grew by 15%, even in older rats.
2. Peter Erickson (1998) in Sweden studied the formation of new neurons in cancer patients found that even in elderly patients' brains new neurons were formed in their hippocampus. (pp. 187-188)
3. Daniel Goleman (Destructive Emotions, 2003) reported that musical training offers an apt model for neuroplasticity. MRI studies found profound changes in the cognitive capacities involved in the pursuit of musicians, chess players, and Olympic athletes. (p. 188)
4. Richard Davidson and his team in the W.M.Keck Lab for Functional Brain Imaging and Behavior at UW-Madison (2003, 2004, 2005) studied long-term practice of meditation, even when carried out in the neutral environment of a hermitage, induced important and lasting changes in the brain. (pp. 189-201)
In the lab there are two main ways to test the meditators: electroencephalograms (EEG)to record changes in the brain's electrical activity, and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to measure bood flow in various brain areas, and to provide precise localization of cerebral activity. (p.191)
Findings:
Striking differences between novices and expert meditators. During meditation on compassion, most experienced meditators showed a dramatic increase in the high-frequency brain activity called gamma waves, "of a sort that has never been reported before in the neuroscience literature," says Richard Davidson. Movement of the waves through the brain was far better coordinated, or synchronized, than in the controlled group, who showed only a slight increase in gamma wave activity while meditating.
This seems to demonstrate that "the brain is capable of being trained and physically modified in ways few people can imagine" and that the meditators are able deliberately to regulate their cerebral activity. (p. 191)
The monks who had spent the most years meditating generated the highest levels of gamma waves. This led Richard Davidson to speculate that "meditation not only changes the workings of the brain in the short term, but also quite possibly produces permanent changes." The fact "that monks with the most hours of meditation showed the greatest brain changes gives us confidence that the changes are actually produced by mental training," he adds (p. 192)

Emotions are complex phenomena that are functions of the interaction of several regions of the brain. Richard Davidson and his team found that those who report feeling joy, altruism, interest or enthusiasm present significant cerebral activity in the left prefrontal cortex. Those who predominantly experience negative emotional states as depression, pessimism, or anxiety manifest more activity in the right prefrontal cortex. These characteristics are relatively stable and manifest from early childhood.

Implications of these findings: "we each have a characteristic ratio of right-to-left activation in the prefrontal areas that offers a barometer of the moods we are likely to feel day to day....Each of us has the capacity to shift our moods, at least a bit, and to change this ratio. The further to the left the ratio tilts, the better our frame of mind tends to be..." Daniel Goleman (pp. 193-194)

Davidson's research also found that as the meditators began meditating on compassion, an extraordinary increase of left prefrontal activity was registered. This corroborates the research of psychologists showing that the most altruistic members of a population are also those who enjoy the highest sense of satisfaction in life. (p. 194)
Preliminary results obtained by Jonathan Cohen and Brent Field at Princeton University also suggest that trained meditators are able to sustain focused attention upon various tasks over a much longer period of time than untrained controls.
Ekman and Levenson's study about the startle response: The intensity of the startle response is known to reflect the predominance of the negative emotions to which someone is subject. Hundreds of subjects failed to repress the startle, and restrain their muscular spasms. Only the meditator was able to. "I was not actively trying to control the startle, but the detonation seemed weaker, as if I were hearing it from a distance....while in open presence you are resting in the present moment and the bang simply occurs and causes only a little disturbance, like a bird crossing the sky," says the meditator. This tells us that the body reacted...but the bang had no emotional impact on the mind. The meditator's performance suggests remarkable emotional equanimity that the ancient texts describe as one of the fruits of meditative practice. (pp.198-199)

Conclusions
The trained mind is physically different from the untrained one.Most of the meditators studied by Antoine Lutz and Richard Davidson have gone way beyond ten thousand hours of meditation. Studies by Richard Davidson and Jon Kabat-Zinn, B. Allan Wallace at Santa Barbara Institute for Consciousness Studies, and Paul Ekman (the Mind and Life Institute), and Margaret Kemeny at UC-San Francisco three-month meditation training courses also yield remarkable results.

If it is possible for meditators to train their minds to make their destructive emotions vanish, certain practical elements of that meditative training could be valuably incorporated into the education of children and help adults to achieve better quality of life. ...the current collaboration between scientists and comtemplatives could awaken people's interest to the immense value of mind training. (pp. 200-201)

Source:
Matthieu Ricard, Happiness: A Guide to Developing Life's Most Important Skill. Translated by Jesse Browner. (New York, NY: Little, Brown and Company, 2003).

Good Actions vs. Bad Actions-- The Wise vs. the Unwise

Good actions/good deeds are those that are beneficial to the doer himself/herself and to a large number of other beings. They are beneficial not only right here and now,but also all over universes, at present, in the past as well as in the future. They are beneficial not only in short terms, but also in long terms.

Bad actions/bad deeds are those that bring harm and suffering to the doer himself/herself and to a large number of other beings. They are harmful not only right here and now, but also all over universes, at present, in the past as well as in the future. They are harmful, and cause suffering not only in short terms, but also in long terms.


The wise are mindful in order to avoid bad actions, bad words, and bad thoughts.
The wise live in control of their body, feeling/emotion (heart) and thoughts (mind).
The wise are fully aware of what is happening around them, what is happening to their senses, their physical body, and their mind.
The wise have inner peace, and dwell in peace and freedom/Nirvana, free from illusion and suffering/Samsara.
The wise have no attachment to their so-called "self"/"ego".


The unwise live uncontrolled in actions, words, and thoughts.
The unwise are driven by greed, hatred, and ignorance/illusions.
The unwise see appearances and forms, not the ultimate reality, or the nature of reality.
The unwise deceive themselves by taking the unreal/form or designation as real.
The unwise do not have inner peace, and chase after transient sensual pleasures, which go hand in hand with their greed, hatred, and ignorance/illusion.
The unwise cannot survive without their self or ego. They become one with it.

There is an immense difference between the wise and the unwise.

Based on the Buddha's Teachings

Mathhieu Ricard's Happiness: A Guide to Developing Life's Most Important Skill - Part II

Deep within you there is always a potential for flourishing. This is a potential for loving-kindness, compassion, and inner peace. Try to get in touch with and experience this potential that is always present, like a nugget of gold, in your heart and mind. You need to develop this potential. Begin by becoming familiar with your own mind.

The Beginning of Meditation.
1.Sit quietly, in a comfortable but balanced posture. Whether you sit cross-legged on a cushion or more conventionally on a chair, try to keep your back straight, yet without being tense.
2.Rest your hands on your knees or thighs or in your lap,
3.keep your eyes lightly gazing in the space in front of you,
4.and breathe naturally.
5. Watch your mind, the coming and going of thoughts.... Just watch them arising and let them come and go, without trying to stop them, but without fueling them either.

At first thoughts rush through your mind like a waterfall. After a while your thoughts will become like a peaceful river. If you practice regularly, eventually your mind will easily become serene, like a calm ocean.

Whenever new thoughts arise, like waves raised by the wind, do not be bothered by them, they will soon dissolve back into the ocean.
(pp.57-58)

Using Mental Imagery
When a powerful feeling of desire, envy, pride, aggression, or greed plagues your mind, try to imagine situations that are sources of peace. Transport yourself mentally to the shore of a placid lake or to a high mountaintop overlooking a broad vista. Imagine yourself sitting serenely, your mind as vast and clear as a cloudless sky, as calm as a windless ocean. Experience this calmness. Watch your inner tempests subside and let this feeling of peace grow anew in your mind. (p. 74)

Develop Benevolence and Compassion
1.Begin by generating a powerful feeling of warmth, loving-kindness, and compassion for all beings.
2.Then imagine those who are enduring suffering similar to or worse than your own.
3.As you breathe out, visualize you are sending them all your happiness, vitality, good fortune, health and so on, on your breath in the form of cool, white luminous nectar. Picture them fully absorbing the nectar, which soothes their pains and fulfills their aspirations....
4. When you inhale, visualize your heart as a bright luminous sphere. Imagine that you are taking upon yourself, in the form of a gray cloud, the disease, confusion, and mental toxins of these people, which disappear into the white light of your heart without leaving any trace.
This will transform both your own suffering and others'.
5.You can also imagine that your body is duplicating itself in countless forms that travel throughout the universe, transforming itself into clothing for those who are cold, food for the famished, or shelter for the homeless.

This visualization practice can be carried out anytime and during your day-to-day activities. (pp.78-79)

The Deconstruction of the Self
It is worthwhile to devote a few moments of our life to letting the mind rest in inner calm and to understanding, through analysis and direct experience, the place of the ego in our lives. So long as the sense of the ego's importance has control over our being, we will never know lasting peace. The very source of pain remains intact deep within us and deprives us of that most essentials of freedom. (pp. 95-96)

Calming the Mind and Looking Within
Experience the gradual calming of chaotic thoughts. When thoughts arise neither attempt to block them, nor let them multiply. Simply continue to watch your breath.
Turn your gaze inward and look at the mind itself. Observe your awareness itself, not the content of your thoughts. (p. 118)

Freeing Emotions Directly
Bring to mind a situation in which you felt very angry and try to relive this experience. When anger arises, focus on the anger, not on its subject. Look at anger as a separate phenomenon. Observe the anger; it will evaporate under your gaze.

Apply this process of liberation in your daily life. With time your anger will grow ever more transparent and your irritability will wane.
Practice the same way with obsessive desire, envy, and other painful emotions.
(pp.132-133)

Meditate on Love and Compassion
1. Bring realistically to mind the suffering of someone who is dear to you.
You will soon feel a deep wish and resolve to ease the person's suffering and remove its cause. Let this feeling of compassion fill your mind, and remain in it for a while. Then extend that feeling to all beings.
2. Another method is to shift your meditation to impartiality by extending your feelings of love and compassion to all beings equally: dear ones, strangers, and enemies.
3. You can also focus on selfless love.Let loving-kindness permeate your mind and rest in this feeling of altruistic love. (p. 155)

At the end of your meditation ponder the interdependence of all things.... You need to develop wisdom and compassion.
Before engaging in your daily activities, dedicate to all sentient beings all the good you have accrued from your meditation. (p. 156)

Appreciate the Value of Time, Savor the Present Moment
Instead of being an endless succession of feelings, images, and scattered thoughts, time becomes pure awareness. When past thoughts have ceased, and future thoughts have not yet arisen, in the interval is there not a perception of nowness, a pristine, clear, awake, and bare freshness? (p. 232)

Practice Attentive Walking
Walking just for the pleasure of walking.....walk as free people... feel our steps growing lighter as we walk.... (p. 236)

Enter into the Flow of "Open Presence"
Sit in a comfortable meditation position, eyes gently open, posture straight, and quiet your mind. Try to make your mind as vast as the sky. Don't focus on anything. Remain relaxed, calm, and yet fully aware. (p. 238)

Source:
Matthieu Ricard. Happiness: A Guide to Developing Life's Most Important Skill. Translated by Jesse Browner. (New York, NY: Little, Brown, and Company, 2003)

Mathhieu Ricard's Happiness: A Guide to Developing Life's Most Important Skill

Introduction
Happiness does not come automatically....It depends on us alone. One does not become happy overnight, but with patient labor, day after day. Happiness is constructed, and that requires effort and time. In order to become happy, we have to learn how to change ourselves.
Luca and Francesco Cavalli-Sforza

The psychoanalyst C.G.Jung once described the role of a "Gnostic intermediary" as someone who himself plunges into spiritual depths and emerges to bring the vision of that inner possibility to the rest of us. Matthieu fills that role.

....Matthieu often represents the Buddhist perspective, speaking with a fluid intelligence that easily weaves together spiritual and scientific paradigms.
In Happiness he draws on both his ease in the world of scientific studies and philosophy and his intimate familiarity with the wisdom traditions of Buddhism, bringing these streams together in a seamless offering. The resulting insights are both inspiring and pragmatic. The vision of happinessconjured here challenges our everyday notions of joy, making a convincing argument for contentment over collecting "good times," for altruism over self-centered satiation. And beyond that, Matthieu suggests how we can all cultivate the very capacity for such happiness.
On the other hand, Matthieu offers no quick fix, for he knows well that training the mind takes effort and time. Instead he goes to the root of the mechanisms that underlie suffering and happiness, offering refreshing insights into how the mind functions and strategies for dealing with our most difficult emotions. The result is a sound road map, one based on cultivating the conditions for genuine well-being. (p. xv)

Daniel Goleman's Foreword (Oct. 2005)

....achieving durable happiness as a way of being is a skill. It requires sustained effort in training the mind and developing a set of human qualities, such as inner peace, mindfulness, and altruistic love. (pp. 7-8)
All the ingredients... to find a way to a fulfilled life...: a profound and sane way of thinking and the living example of those who embodied wisdom in their words and actions. There wasn't any of the "do what I say, not what I do" that discourages many seekers all over the world. (p. 8)

Tibet under China's occupation (between 1967 and 1972 when Matthieu visited it):
I also served as Khyentse Rinpoche's interpreter and travel with him to Europe and to Tibet when he first returned to the Land of Snows after thirty years in exile. In Tibet, all that was left was ruins. Six thousand monasteries had been destroyed, and many of the people who had survived --unlike the million Tibetans who died of famine and persecution --had spent fifteen or twenty years in labor camps. Khyentse Rinpoche's return was like the sun suddenly rising after a long dark night. (pp. 8-9)

A friend of mine who spent many years in a Chinese concentration camp in Tibet told me that when he was being interrogated, he was forced to stand motionless on a stool for days on end. When he collapsed, those brief moments lying on the icy cement floor of his cell, before he was dragged to his feet again, were delightful relief to him. While this may be an example...of happiness resulting from the attenuation of suffering, my friend took pain to point out that only his stable condition of inner well-being allowed him to survive years of incarceration and torture. (p. 51)

The quest:
...when I was twenty words like happiness and benevolence did not mean much to me. I was a typical young Parisian student....But I didn't have much sense of how to lead my life except playing it by ear, day in and day out. I somehow felt that there was a potential for flourishing in myself, and in others, but had no idea about how to actualize it. Thirty-five years later, I surely still have a long way to go, but at least the sense of direction is clear to me and I enjoy every step on the path. (p. 14)

The purpose:
...This book... is not a "Buddhist" book as opposed to a "Christian" or an "agnostic" book. It was written from the perspective of "secular spirituality"....As such it is intended...for the heart and mind of anyone who aspires to a little more joie de vivre and to let wisdom and compassion reign in her or his life. (pp. 14-15)

What is happiness?
By happiness I mean here a deep sense of flourishing that arises from an exceptionally healthy mind. This is not a mere pleasurable feeling, a fleeting emotion, or a mood, but an optimal state of being. Happiness is also a way of interpreting the world, since while it may be difficult to change the world, it is always possible to change the way we look at it. (p. 19)

...it is the purging of mental toxins, such as hatred and obsession, that literally poison the mind. It is also about learning how to put things in perspective and reduce the gap between appearances and reality. To that end we must acquire a better knowledge of how the mind works and a more accurate insight into the nature of things, for in its deepest sense, suffering is intimately linked to a misapprehension of the nature of reality. (p. 23)

Sukha is the Sanskrit word for happiness. It refers to the state of lasting well-being that manifests itself when we have freed ourselves of mental blindness and afflictive emotions. It is also the wisdom that allows us to see the wold as it is, without veils or distortions. It is, finally, the joy of moving toward inner freedom and the loving-kindness that radiates toward others. (p. 25)

Reality and Insight
We read the world wrong and say that it deceives us.
Rabindranath Togore, Stray Birds (New York: Macmillan, 1916)

Like a rainbow that forms when the sun shines across a curtain of rain and then vanishes when any factor contributing to its formation disappears, phenomena exist in an essentially interdependent mode and have no autonomous and enduring existence. Everything is relation; nothing exists in and of itself, immune to the forces of cause and effect.  Once this essential concept is understaood and internalized, the erroneous perception of the world gives way to a correct understanding of the nature of things and beings: this is insight. Insight is not a mere philosophical construct; it emerges from a basic approach that allows us gradually to shed our mental blindness and the disturbing emotions it produces and hence the principle causes of our suffering. (pp.24-25)

Ignorance
When we talk of ignorance, it has nothing to do with stupidity.  In a way, ignorance is very intelligent, but it is an intelligence that works exclusively in one direction. That is, we react exclusively to our own projections instead of simply seeing what is there.
Chogyam Trungpa, Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism (Boston: Shambhala, 1973).

Ignorance, in the Buddhist lexicon, is an inability to recognize the true nature of things and of the law of cause and effect that governs happiness and suffering.
(p. 27)

When selfish happiness is the only goal in life, life soon become goalless.
Romain Rolland, Jean-Christophe, Volume VIII (Paris: Albin Michel, 1952).

Seeking happiness outside is like waiting for sunshine in a cave facing north.
Tibetan saying

We are very much like birds that have lived too long in a cage to which we return even when we get the chance to fly away. We have grown so accustomed to our faults that we can barely imagine what life would be like without them. The prospect of change makes us dizzy. (p. 38)

Those who seek happiness in pleasure, wealth, glory, power, and heroics are as naive as the child who tries to catch a rainbow to wear it as a coat.
Dilgo Khynentse Rimpoche (p. 40)

Happiness and Pleasure: The Great Mix-Up
Pleasure is the only shadow of happiness.
Hindu proverb

Pleasure is the direct result of pleasurable sensual aesthetic, o intellectual stimuli. It is fleeting, dependent on circumstances, on a specific location or moment of time, unstable, exhausted by usage and repetition, centered on the individual experience, and may lead to selfishness or conflict with the well-being of others. (pp. 40-41)

Happiness and Joy
If joy is to endure and mature serenely... it must be linked to other aspects of true happiness: clarity of mind, loving-kindness, the gradual withering of negative emotions, and the disappearance of selfish whimsy. (p. 44)

Inward freedom
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, one chief energy must be concentrate on achieving reform from within. (p.4)
Mahatma Ghandi

Spiritual Practice or Mind Training
....achieving durable happiness as a way of being is a skill. It requires sustained effort in training the mind and developing a set of human qualities, such as inner peace, mindfulness, and altruistic love. (pp. 7-8)
All the ingredients... to find a way to a fulfilled life...: a profound and sane way of thinking and the living example of those who embodied wisdom in their words and actions. There wasn't any of the "do what I say, not what I do" that discourages many seekers all over the world. (p. 8)

Spiritual Practice can be enormously beneficial. The fact is, it is possible to undergo serious spiritual training by devoting some time every day to meditation. More people than you may think do so, while leading family lives and doing absorbing work. The positive benefits of such a life far outweigh the few problems of schedule arrangement. In this way we can launch an inner transformation that is based in day-to-day reality.
When I was working at the Institute Pasteur and immersed in Parisian life, the few moments I reserved every day for contemplation brought me enormous benefits. They lingered like a scent in the day's activities and gave them an entirely new value. By contemplation I mean not merely a moment of relaxation, but an inward turning of the gaze. It is very fruitful to watch how thoughts arise, and to contemplate the state of serenity and simplicity that is always present behind the scrim of thoughts, be they gloomy or upbeat. This is not as complicated as it might seem at first glance. You need only give a little of your time to the exercise in order to feel its impact and appreciate its fruitfulness. By gradually acquiring through introspective experience a better understanding of how thought are born, we learn how to fend off mental toxins. Once we have found a little bit of inner peace, it is much easier to lead a flourishing emotional and professional life. Similarly, as we free ourselves of all insecurities and inner fears (which are often connected to excessive self-centeredness), we have less to dread, and are naturally more open to others and better arms to face the vagaries of existence. (p. 56)

(to be continued)

Source:
Matthieu Ricard. Happiness: A Guide to Developing Life's Most Important Skill. Translated by Jesse Browner. (New York, NY: Little, Brown, and Company, 2003)

Tomas Gösta Tranströmer

To me, poetry is a concise form of high level human expression in which image, rhythm, and other properties of oral and written language (sound, alliteration, rhetoric, etc.) are selectively used to describe reality at both conscious and subconscious levels. I find Tomas Tranströmer's poetry uniquely special, for one may continue to find new surprising values after many readings.

In Rober Bly's words,Tomas Tranströmer has a strange genius for the image; images rise seemingly without effort on his part. The wide space we feel in his poems perhaps occurs because the four or five main images in each poem come from widely separated sources in the psyche. His poems are a sort of railway station where trains that have come enormous distances stand briefly in the same building....
In Tranströmer's poems, the link to the worldly occasion is stubbornly kept, and yet the mystery and surprise never fade, even on many readings.
....

Tranströmer's poems are a luminous example of the ability of good poetry in one culture to travel to another culture and arrive. As Tranströmer said in a letter to the Hungarian poets, published in the magazine Uj Iras in 1977, "Poetry has an advantage from the start....Poetry requires no heavy, vulnerable apparatus that has to be lugged around...."

Following are some of Tomas's poems :

At Funchal
(Island of Madeira)

On the beach there's a seafood place, simple, a shack thrown up by survivors of the shipwreck. Many turn back at the door, but not the sea winds. A shadow stands deep inside his smoke hut frying two fish according to an old recipe from Atlantis, tiny garlic explosions, oil running over sliced tomatoes, every morsel says that the ocean wishes us well, a humming from the deep places.
She and I look into each other. It's like climbing the wild-flowered mountain slopes without feeling the least bit tired. We've sided with the animals, they welcome us, we don't age. But we have experienced so much together over the years, including those times when we weren't so good (as when we stood in line to give blood to the healthy giant --he said he wanted a transfusion), incidents which should have separated us as if they hadn't united us, and incidents which we've totally forgotten --though they haven't forgotten us! They've turned to stones, dark and light, stones in a scattered mosaic. And now it happens: the pieces move toward each other, the mosaic appears and is whole. It waits for us. It glows down from the hotel-room wall, some figure violent and tender. Perhaps a face, we can't take it all in as we pull off our clothes.
After dusk we go out. The dark powerful paw of the cape lies thrown out into the sea. We walk in swirls of human beings, we are cuffed around kindly, among soft tyrannies, everyone chatters excitedly in the foreign tongue. "No man is an island." We gain strength from them, but also from ourselves. From what is inside that the other person can't see. That which can only meet itself. The innermost paradox, the underground garage flowers, the vent toward the good dark. A drink that bubbles in an empty glass. An amplifier that magnifies silence. A path that grows over after every step. A book that can only be read in the dark.
(p. 64)

Kyrie

At times my life suddenly opens its eyes in the dark.
A feeling of masses of people pushing blindly
through the street, excitedly, toward some miracle,
while I remain here and no one sees me.

It is like the child who falls asleep in terror
listening to the heavy thumps of his heart.
For a long, long time till morning puts his light in the locks
and the doors of darkness open.
(p. 7)

Tomas Transtromer loves music, and plays the piano brilliantly. Even after he suffered from a stroke in 1990, which left the right side of his body partially paralyzed and his speech impaired, he continues to play the piano with his left hand. Composers in Sweden have sent him piano works which they have written for his left hand. This suggests how much affection there is for Tomas and his poetry.
We can hear music in his poetry.


Allergo

After a black day, I play Haydn,
and feel a little warmth in my hands.

The keys are ready. Kind hammers fall.
The sound is spirited, green, and full of silence.

The sound says that freedom exists
and someone pays no taxes to Caesar.

I shove my hands in my haydnpockets
and act like a man who is calm about it all.

I raise my haydenflag. The signal is:
"We do not surrender. But want peace."

The music is a house of glass standing on a slope;
rocks are flying, rocks are rolling.

The rocks roll straight through the house
but every pane of glass is still whole.
(p.12)


Lamento

He put the pen down.
It lies there without moving.
It lies there without moving in empty space.

So much that can neither be wrtten nor kept inside!
His body is stiffened by something happening far away
though the curious overnight bag beats like a heart.

Outside , the late spring.
From the foliage a whistling --people or birds?
And the cherry trees in bloom pat the heavy trucks on the way home.

Weeks go by.
Slowly night comes.
Moths settle down on the pane:
small pale telegrams from the world.


In Robin Fulton's words, Tomas Tranströmer's modest body of works has generated enormous interest. For over half a century...his poems have attracted special attention in his native Sweden, and in the course of the last three decades, they have caught the interest of an extraordinary range of readers throughout the world. The first two volumes of his bibliography, taking up to 1999, amount to almost eight hundred pages and list translations into fifty languages. (p. xiii)

17 Poems (1954) written in his late teens announced the presence of a distinct poetic personality....The very first poem, "Prelude," reveals a quality characteristic of all his writings: the very sharply realized visual sense of his poems. The images leap out from the pages, so the first-time reader or listener has the immediate feeling of being given something very tangible. "Prelude" also points forward thematically. It describes the process of waking up, not in the usual terms of rising to the surface, but in terms of falling... into a vivid teeming world. And this fascination with the borders between sleep and waking, with the strange areas of access between an everyday world we seem to know and another world we can't know in the same way but whose presence is undeniable --such a fascination has over the decades been one of Tranströmer's predominant themes....certain aspects of the relations between waking and dreaming states....
(p. xiv)

...there is a profoundly religious aspect to his poems....The following is a characteristic response to the comment that reviewers sometimes refer to him as a mystic and sometimes as a religious poet:

...you could at least say that I response to reality in such a way that I look on existence as a great mystery and that at times, at certain moments, this mystery carries a strong charge, so that it does have a religious character, and it is often in such a context that I write. So these poems are all the time pointing toward a greater context, one that is incomprehensible to our normal everyday reason. Although it begins in something very concrete.
Interview with Gunnar Harding, 1973
(p. xiv-xv)

Specifically or overtly religious allusions in the early poetry soon disappear from succeeding work. This has been interpreted as a process of secularization....

Sources:
Tomas Tranströmer. The Great Enigma --New Collected Poems (New York, NY: New Directions Books, 2006). Translated by Robin Fulton.

The Great Enigma --New Collected Poems gathers all the poems Tomas Tranströmer has ever published. All twelve of his poetry books are collected here.

Robin Fulton is a Scottish poet and long-time resident of Norway. He has been translating Tranströmer for over thirty-five years. He has published several prize-winning books of translation, as well as books of his own poetry and essays.

Tomas Tranströmer.The Half-Finished Heaven. Chosen and translated by Robert Bly. (Minneapolis, MN: Graywolf Press, 2001).

Robert Bly is a poet, essayist, cultural critic and translator. He won the 1968 National book Award in Poetry. His recent collections are Eating the Honey of Words: New and Selected Poems, and The Night Abraham Called to the Stars. He lives in Minneapolis, MN.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomas_Transtromer

Leardership --Some Notes

"...to comprehend fully the nature of the people, one must be a prince, and to comprehend fully the nature of princes, one must be an ordinary citizen,"
Nicolo Machiavelli, Il Principe

One can best understand leadership from the "outside" perspective of the follower," (p. 5)but "[l]eadership has to be seen from the inside as well, to have a well-rounded appreciation for what it involves." (p.6)

Chapter 1 What is leadership?
Leaders determine or clarify goals for a group of individuals and bring together the energies of members of that group to accomplish those goals. (p. 23)
What do leaders do? make decisions, devise and implement strategies, compromise to achieve goals, listen to proposals or petitions, adjudicate conflicts, assemble resources, deploy incentives, seek counsel and issue statements about the decisions they have made or the problems they must confront... They take stands, and attempt to persuade. seek partners, require or force others to follow a course of actions....
Methods they use:active, visible, or subtle, behind the scene.
Characteristics of public leadership: in higher education: transparency about goals and methods, consultation...
Categories of "good" or "bad" leaders on grounds of either morality or effectiveness.

Chapter 2 Connections between leaders and followers
multifaceted and complex, the influence of followers on leaders can be exercised in many ways.
There are no leaders without followers, or subordinates who have less power, and who fall into line. They differ according to their place in complex organizations. It is like a set of concentric circles, with a leader in the middle.
The difference between leaders and followers is especially hard to defined in a democracy, where ultimate authority resides in the body of the citizens, and ordinary individuals may take initiatives in policy making. In a democracy leaders are chosen by the followers, and charged with carrying out their will. Actions and decisions of leaders are shaped by the actual and anticipated reactions and preferences of followers. Even in lass democratic situations, the desires and preferences of followers help define what it is possible. But good leaders use their best judgment to formulate goals and strategies, and to determine outcomes.

Our world is so interconnected that behaviors by any individual has the potential to change lives of others in profound and unpredictable ways. Followers sometime engage in activities whose scope and range of impact is greater than that of many leaders.
Problems in complex organizations seldom have one best solution. The best solutions are more likely to be found if other people help you look than if you insist on finding them on your own.

Responsibilities of leaders to their subordinates: help them develop and exercise their talents as leaders; mentoring, providing appropriate opportunities for initiatives, regular reviews of their performance, and thoughtful counseling.
A reciprocal relationship between leaders and their close subordinates, helping or hindering one another in performing their tasks.

Machiavelli: "It is desirable to be both loved and feared; but it is difficult to achieve both; and if one of them has to be lacking, it is much safer to be feared than loved."

Resistance:
Richard Morrill: "from the gathering of elders to the ballot box, from passive resistance to violence in the streets, followers know how to influence and replace their leaders."

In most democracies, the role of the opposition party is to offer critical attacks on the leader's work, and attempt to create the conditions for a different policy, or a different leadership. Robert C. Tucker points out: " democratic government entails primarily the institutionalized possibility of active political participation in the defining of problem situations for the political community."
Examples of minimal involvement in politics: bloggers and talk-show participants.

In authoritarian governments and states, such participation is discouraged or suppressed, but social networks and cell phones, and Internet publications can circumvent such prohibition. The authorities may frown or ignore such activities, but the masses, especially those directly affected by the circumstances in question, may respond. and movements for change may arise.

Subversive Resistance and Revolution:
The ordinary weapons of relatively powerless groups: Foot dragging, dissimulation, false compliance with behind-the-scenes resistance, pilfering, feigned ignorance, slander, arson, sabotage, and so forth.
Passive resistance of those engaged in civil disobedience to a leader's policies
Active non-violent activities.
Violent resistance against the leaders, which may result in revolve or revolution.

Chapter 3 Personality characteristics and skills leaders demonstrate in different contexts and why such qualities are helpful.
Maria's letter to Malvolio in Twelfth Night: "Some are born to leadership; some achieve leadership; others have leadership thrust upon them." The categories are not mutually exclusive.
Leadership traits: self-confident, sociable, articulate, persistent, having strategic intelligence
Skills: problem-solving and social judgment.
getting and using information strategically; ability to use effective ways to communicate well and symbolically and persuasively; good listeners and good decision makers, compromising well;

Judgment is the nucleus of leadership: good judgment involves gathering multiple perspectives, possessing imagination and peripheral vision; foresight; a good sense of timing; selecting the right people for the key jobs.

Sun Tzu: five qualities which are dangerous in the character of a general: recklessness, cowardice, being quick-tempered, having too-delicate a sense of honor, and being of a compassionate nature.
Other personal characteristics relevant to leadership are passion and proportion, empathy and detachment, courage and moderation.
A guiding vision: leaders have a clear idea of what they want to do.
Psychological complexity or complex personality

Chapter 4 Does gender make any difference? Do women lead differently from men?
Effects of organizational culture and the demands of institutional leadership outweigh any effects of gender.

Chapter 5 Leadership in democratic communities
A successful democracy needs to make sure the work of leadership gets done, so that the community does not ignore problems that cause difficulties for the citizens.
Leaders who overreach their responsibilities or amass privileges or power that overshadows those of other citizens pose threat to participation and popular sovereignty.
The collective exercise of judgment is an important element of democratic decision making, along with the perspective, experience, and wisdom brought by those occupied positions of responsibilities in the community.
Aristotle: All citizens should share alike in a system of government under which they rule and are ruled by turns.
To prevent abuses of power: the classical Athenian democracy devised such ways as ostracism for those who displayed arrogance, overreached their power, and threatened to dominate other citizens through deploying their expertise. In modern democracy there are ways to prevent the perpetuation of the same people in leadership positions, emphasize accountability of leaders, ensure citizens' free access to sources of information, enlarge the extent of popular participation in government, and limit the accumulation of privilege.

Chapter 6 The complex interactions among character, ethics, and leadership. The distinctive temptations that leaders face, the corrupting effects of power, virtues valuable to leaders in many contexts

The permanent exercise of leadership exerts upon the moral character of the leaders an influence which is essentially pernicious. (Michels)
Many attractions, temptations, and potentially corrupting effects of being a leader are consequences or attributes of power holding: power, status, authority and leadership. A leader must avoid developing close relationships with people who work for her/with her. Or she may lose her objectivity (detachment) and may be accused of favoritism. She must develop tolerance for having everything she does be the subject of others' speculation, and must be watchful of every word and action of hers. Top leaders are always on duty, always on show, sometimes give themselves wholly to their work.
There are two kinds of deadly sins in the field of politics: lack of objectivity and ...irresponsibility. Vanity ... strongly tempts the politician to commit one or both of these sins. (Weber)
Michael Maccoby: "narcissistic leaders": some high-profile, gifted leaders may suffer from "self-involvement, unpredictability, and ...paranoia" and lead their organizations into disaster.
Weber: some politicians fall prey to vanity, lose their objectivity, and sense of proportion, and their holding power becomes purely personal self-intoxication.
Leaders need to maintain "distance towards one's self," (Weber) A sense of pragmatic realism, or a sardonic sense of humor, and humility in the face of uncertainty, a willingness to accept partial successes... contribute to leaders' long-term effectiveness and equanimity.
Corruption in leadership extent beyond the temptations of financial gain or the desire to hold on to power at all costs. Corruption encompasses using power to gain access to privileges of status, nepotism or spousal advancement. It may be shown in the willingness to engage in cruelty and ruthless behavior. It is easy to fall into the trap of assuming that you can always shape things to your will. Countless leaders have been brought down by such assumptions.

Aristotle: To be denied the power of doing just as one pleases, is an advantage, since the power to act at will leaves no defense against the evil that is present in every human being.

Leaders will be better prepared against corrupting effects of power if they have clear values and an effective moral compass, as well as enough humility to avoid arrogance and complacent certainty.
Weber: the ethics of responsibility --a form of consequential morality.
Responsibility for other human beings, and responsibility to themselves in the sense of accountability.

Conclusion Significant points in the book, issues and questions for two sets of readers -would-be leaders and political theorists

Source:

Nannerl O. Keohane. Thinking About Leadership. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010).

A Convergence of Modern Science and Buddhism

One of the great challenges of our time is how to reconcile advances in technology and science (materialism and cognition) with compassion, or moral and spiritual development (spiritualism or the heart and the mind). Many have explored and discovered the remarkable convergence between traditional contemplative insights in Buddhism and the empirical investigations in modern science. In Einstein and Buddhism--The Parallel Sayings, a new paradigm for a synthetic view of truth and reality seems to have emerged to meet the 21st-century challenges.

In order to search for truth or the nature of reality, both Buddhism and science demand rigorous training and discipline. When practicing meditation or carrying out a scientific investigation, the Buddhist pratitioner(meditator) and the scientist must develop mindfulness, or "a non-interfering, non-judgmental awareness" (Wes Nisker, p. ix). They both have to be as objective as possible. However, even when the scientist examines the seemingly external world, and the meditator observes his own mind and body, what they investigate is relative to their own mind as observers --the co-creator of the observed. And yet their respective experiment should be replicable; so that those who follow the same procedures will finally attain similar results or insights into the nature of reality. Knowledge of the ultimate reality requires both reason and intuition, facts and values, doubt and faith, internal and external factors or conditions. There is no distinction between inner and outer, the observed and the observer as one approaches the nature of reality. Doctrines and conceptual models or theories are just metal designations of reality, not ultimate reality itself, which is beyond all ordinary perceptions and verbal descriptions.

Buddhism and quantum physics reveal that the world is an intricate, coherent whole of interconnected and interdependent objects and events, and that space and time are only theoretical designations, or names. Like causality in physics, the law of karma links actions with results, but it is not absolute. There is spontaneity and freedom.

There are many parallel sayings in both modern science and Buddhism:

Interdependence
An object does not have any “intrinsic” properties (for instance, wave or particle) belonging to itself alone; instead, it shares all its properties mutually and indivisibly with the systems with which it interacts.
David Bohm

Things derive their being and nature by mutual dependence and are nothing in themselves.
Siddha Nagarjuna

Time and Space
Eternally and always there is only now, one and the same now; the present is the only thing that has no end.
Erwin Schrodinger


The past and future are both rolled up in this present moment of illumination, and this present moment is not something standing still with all its contents, for it ceaselessly moves on.
D.T. Suzuki

Direct Experience
Truth is what stands the test of experience.
Albert Einstein

The real meaning of the Dhamma must be directly experienced.
Nagarjuna

Conventional Reality vs. Ultimate Truth
The classical concepts, i.e., “wave” and “corpuscle”…do not describe the real world and are, moreover, complementary in part, and hence contradictory. Nor can we avoid occasional contradictions; nevertheless, the images help us to draw nearer to the real facts. Their existence no one should deny. “Truth dwells in the deeps.”
Niels Bohr

If a man becomes attached to the literal meaning of words and holds fast to the illusion that words and meanings are in agreement, especially in such things as Nirvana which is unborn and undying…then he will fail to understand the true meaning and will become entangled in assertions and refutations.
Buddha

The Mind
Every man’s world picture is and always remains a construct of his mind and cannot be proved to have any other existence.
Erwin Schrodinger

The objective world rises from the mind itself.
Buddha

Time and again the passion for understanding has led to the illusion that man is able to comprehend the objective world rationally by pure thought without any empirical foundations –in short, by metaphysics.
Albert Einstein

By becoming attached to names and forms, not realizing that they have no more basis than the activities of the mind itself, error arises and the way to emancipation is blocked.
Buddha

Matter is like a small ripple on this tremendous ocean of energy, having some relative stability and being manifest.... And in fact beyond that ocean may be still a bigger ocean… the ultimate source is immeasurable and cannot be captured with our knowledge.
David Bohm

Universal Mind is like a great ocean, its surface ruffled by waves and surges but its depth remaining forever unmoved.
Buddha

The environment of space and time and matter, of light and color and concrete things which seem so vividly real to us has melted into a shadow.
Sir Arthur Eddington

All the minds arbitrary conceptions of matter, phenomena, and of all conditioning factors and all conceptions and ideas relating thereto are like a dream, a phantasm, a bubble, a shadow.
Buddha

The plurality that we perceive is only an appearance; it is not real.
Erwin Schrodinger

Wherever you see as duality is unreal.
Shankara

The original and the mirror-image are identical. The world extended in time and space is but our representation.
Erwin Schrodinger

There is only one world; there are not two worlds....People think there are two worlds by the activities of their own minds. If they could get rid of these false judgments and keep their minds pure with the light of wisdom, then they would see only one world and that world bathed in the light of wisdom .
Buddha

(see also Science and Buddhism , a blog entry in January 2012)

Source:

Einstein and Buddhism--The Parallel Sayings. Edited by Thomas J. McFarlane. (Berkeley, CA: Ulysses Press, 2002). ISBN I-56975-337-7.

Searching for a Model to Sustain in the Future --Part 2

D.Jeevan Kumar recently advocated Gandhism, and the Gandhian vision of sustainable development. This model emerged as a critique of the Western-centric dominant model of development with its misplaced emphasis on the promotion of individual growth and self-advancement, the harnessing of Nature, the achievement of technological sophistication, the spurring of urbanization and the increased use of markets for the distribution of economic goods and services. Gandhism challenges the basic assumptions that the Western model of development makes about the use of Nature and natural resources, the meaning of progress, the ways in which society is governed and also about how public policy is made and implemented.

The Gandhian Vision of Sustainable Development is expressed in a ‘Ten-Point Charter’:

1. Humankind would act in a manner that it is a part of Nature, rather than apart from Nature.
2. Materials available on the earth are not used with an element of greed.
3. Human beings practice non-violence not only towards fellow human beings but also towards other living organisms and inanimate materials, because overuse of such materials also amounts to violence.
4. Women are respected, and are made partners in, and are given their rightful place in all spheres of human endeavor.
5. Bottom-up shared view is preferred to the top-down authoritarian overview.
6. Conservationist and sustainable life-saving approach prevails over the unsustainable, consumerist, self-destructive approach.
7. Human beings care for and share with the poor and the destitute in society, as a moral obligation towards them.
8. The human race thinks about how much is enough for a simple, need-based, austere and comfortable lifestyle.
9. All development, as far as is possible, leads to local self-reliance, and equity with social justice.
10. Ethics and self-discipline in resource use is an overriding criterion of development.

It needs to be recognized that the Gandhian vision aims at fulfilling human material and non-material needs, advancing social equity, expanding organizational effectiveness and building human and technical capacity towards sustainability. The objectives of sustainability require the protection of the natural resource base upon which future development depends. To Gandhi, valuing Nature and non-human life forms in an intrinsic way, has also to become an integral part of development. The Gandhian model of development is aimed not just at protecting Nature but at creating an ecological society that lives in harmony with Nature. This calls for reconciling economic activity with social progress and environmental protection. In the Gandhian model, the promotion of human well-being does not have to depend upon the destruction of Nature.
The Gandhian model represents an important example of the new environmentalist approach. It seeks to reconcile the ecological, social and economic dimensions of development, now and into the future, and adopts a global perspective in this task. It aims at promoting a form of development that is contained within the ecological carrying capacity of the planet, which is socially just and economically inclusive. It focuses not upon individual advancement, but upon protecting the common future of humankind.

Gandhi challenges industrial societies not only to reduce the resource intensity of production (sustainable production), but also to undertake new patterns of consumption that reduce the levels of consumption and change what is consumed and by whom (sustainable consumption). This would create the conditions necessary for equitable development.

Gandhian Principles and Action Plans for Sustainable Futures are as follows:
The need of the hour, at the present juncture, is to acknowledge the contemporary relevance of the following six Gandhian eternal Principles and to develop suitable Action Plans to realize them, as emphasized by the Global Greens, an international network of Green parties and political movements at the Global Greens Conference in 2001:

1. Ecological Wisdom
We acknowledge that human beings are a part of the natural world and we respect the specific values of all forms of life, including non-human species.
This requires:
· That we learn to live within the ecological and resource limits of the planet;
· That we protect animal and plant life, and life itself that is sustained by the natural elements, namely earth, water, air and sun.
· Where knowledge is limited, that we take the path of caution, in order to secure the continued abundance of the resources of the planet for present and future generations.

2. Social Justice
We assert that the key to social justice is the equitable distribution of social and natural resources, both locally and globally, to meet basic human needs, and to ensure that all citizens have full opportunities for personal and social development.

This requires:
· A just organization of the world and a stable world economy which will close the widening gap between rich and poor, both within and between countries; balance the flow of resources from South to North; and lift the burden of debt on poor countries which retards their development;
· The eradication of poverty as an ethical, social, economic and ecological imperative;
· The elimination of illiteracy; and
· The carving out of a new vision of citizenship built on equal rights for all individuals, regardless of gender, race, age, religion, class, ethnic or national origin, sexual orientation, disability, wealth or health.

3. Participatory Democracy
We strive for a democracy in which all citizens have the right to express their views, and are able to directly participate in the environmental, economic, social and political decisions which affect their lives, so that power and responsibility are concentrated in local communities, and devolved only where essential to higher levels of governance.

This requires:
· Individual empowerment through access to all the relevant information required for any decision, and access to education to enable all to participate;
· Breaking down inequalities of wealth and power that inhibit participation;
· Building grassroots institutions that enable decisions to be made directly at the appropriate level by those affected, based on systems which encourage civic vitality, voluntary action and community responsibility;
· Strong support for giving young people a voice through educating, encouraging and assisting youth involvement in every aspect of political life, including their participation in all decision-making bodies;
· That all elected representatives are committed to the principles of transparency, truthfulness, and accountability in governance.

4. Non-Violence/Ahimsa
We declare our commitment to non-violence and strive for a Culture of Peace and Cooperation between states, inside societies and between individuals, as the basis of global security.
We believe that security should not rest mainly on military strength but on cooperation, equitable economic and social development, environmental safety and respect for human rights.

This requires:
· A comprehensive concept of global security which gives priority to social, economic, ecological, psychological and cultural aspects of conflict;
· A global security system capable of the prevention, management and resolution of conflicts;
· Removing the causes of war by understanding and respecting other cultures, eradicating racism, promoting freedom and democracy and ending global poverty;
· Pursuing general and complete disarmament including international agreements to ensure a complete and definite ban of nuclear, biological and chemical armaments, anti-personnel mines and depleted uranium weapons;
· Strengthening the United Nations as the global organization of conflict management, peace-keeping, and peace-building.

5. Sustainability
We recognize the limited scope for the material expansion of human society within the biosphere, and the need to maintain biodiversity through sustainable use of renewable resources and responsible use of non-renewable resources.
We believe that to achieve sustainability, and in order to provide for the needs of present and future generations within the finite resources of the planet, the continuing growth in global consumption, population and material inequity must be halted and reversed.

This requires:
· Ensuring that the rich limit their consumption to allow the poor their fair share of the earth’s resources;
· Redefining the concept of wealth, to focus on quality of life, rather than capacity for consumption;
· Creating a world economy which aims to satisfy the needs of all, not the greed of a few;
· Eliminating the causes of population growth by ensuring economic security; providing access to basic education and health for all; and giving both women and men greater control over their fertility;
· Redefining the roles and responsibilities of multinational corporations in order to support the principles of sustainable development;
· Ensuring that market prices of goods and services fully incorporate the environmental costs of their production and consumption;
· Achieving greater resource and energy efficiency, and development and use of environmentally sustainable technologies;
· Encouraging local self-reliance (Swadeshi) to the greatest practical extent.

6. Respect for Diversity
We honour cultural, linguistic, ethnic, sexual, religious and spiritual diversity, within the context of individual responsibility towards all beings.

We promote the building of respectful, positive and responsible relationships across lines of division in the spirit of a multi-cultural society.

This requires:
· Recognition of the rights of indigenous peoples to the basic means of their survival, both economic and cultural, including rights to land and to self-determination, and acknowledgement of their contribution to the common heritage of national and global culture;
· Recognition of the rights of ethnic minorities to develop their culture, religion and language without discrimination, and to full legal, social and cultural participation in the democratic process;
· Recognition of and respect for sexual minorities;
· Equality between women and men in all spheres of social, economic, political and cultural life; and
· Significant involvement of youth culture, and recognition that young people have distinct needs and modes of expression.


Sources:

D.Jeevan Kumar. "Gandhian Values for Sustainable Futures." Meeting Rivers Series - 33. http://www.inebnetwork.org/news-and-medias/6-articles/219-gandhian-values-for-sustainable-futures.
Dr. D. Jeevan Kumar is Professor of Political Science, and Director of the Centre for Gandhian Studies at Bangalore University.

Searching for a Model to Sustain in the Future

On the afternoon of November 9, 2011, around 70 Harvard students walked out of their Economics 10 class to show solidarity for the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations in New York City, and to express their discontent against the conservative bias they perceive in that class, taught by Gregory Mankiw'80.

Today, we are walking out of your class, Economics 10, in order to express our discontent with the bias inherent in this introductory economics course. We are deeply concerned about the way that this bias affects students, this University, and our greater society.

(A statement issued by the protest organizers)

The Harvard Crimson reported that protesters walked out of Sanders Theater, several of them carrying signs, at 12:15pm. Walkout organizer Gabriel Bayard told the Crimson that he sees Economics 10 as "a symbol of the larger economic ideology that created the 2008 collapse." He said, "Professor Mankiw worked in the Bush administration, and he clearly has a conservative ideology. His conservative views are the kind that created the collapse of 2008. This easy money focus on enriching the wealthiest Americans--he really operates with that ideology."

This year has witnessed a global wave of social and political turmoil and instability, with masses of people pouring into the real and virtual streets: the Arab Spring; riots in London; Israel’s middle-class protests against high housing prices and an inflationary squeeze on living standards; protesting Chilean students; the destruction in Germany of the expensive cars of “fat cats”; India’s movement against corruption; mounting unhappiness with corruption and inequality in China; and the “Occupy Wall Street” movement in New York and across the United States.
While these protests have no unified theme, they express in different ways the serious concerns of the world’s working and middle classes about their prospects in the face of the growing concentration of power among economic, financial, and political elites. The causes of their concern are clear enough: high unemployment and underemployment in advanced and emerging economies; inadequate skills and education for young people and workers to compete in a globalized world; resentment against corruption, including legalized forms like lobbying; and a sharp rise in income and wealth inequality in advanced and fast-growing emerging-market economies.

(Nouriel Roubini's "The Instability of Inequality")

Obviously, both the communist model and the capitalist model have failed to protect humanity and human civilization from their inherent destructive power in terms of moral and sustainable development, as well as equality and social justice.

One of the the reasons of their failure lies in the ruling elite parties' and their satellites' greed for money and power. They have turned their backs against, and completely ignored the multitude's voice and interest, crushed democracy while advocating for these loudly and hypocritically in their propaganda agendas and election campaigns. Exploiting and squandering at the same time human labor and natural resources, while promoting destructive and immoral individualistic lifestyles, conflicts and wars between diverse cultural groups and nations, they only focus on their short-term profits and current group interests. They do not seem to have learned any from repeated historical lessons about despotism and oligarchy. They remain insensitive, and keep following their obsolete and bloody path even when watching the horrific death of Gadaffi, and the collapse of one after another narrow-minded and greedy and dictatorial rulers.

[T]he rise in inequality, in Nouriel Roubini's view, has many causes: the addition of 2.3 billion Chinese and Indians to the global labor force, which is reducing the jobs and wages of unskilled blue-collar and off-shorable white-collar workers in advanced economies; skill-biased technological change; winner-take-all effects; early emergence of income and wealth disparities in rapidly growing, previously low-income economies; and less progressive taxation.
The increase in private- and public-sector leverage and the related asset and credit bubbles are partly the result of inequality. Mediocre income growth for everyone but the rich in the last few decades opened a gap between incomes and spending aspirations. In Anglo-Saxon countries, the response was to democratize credit – via financial liberalization – thereby fueling a rise in private debt as households borrowed to make up the difference. In Europe, the gap was filled by public services – free education, health care, etc. – that were not fully financed by taxes, fueling public deficits and debt. In both cases, debt levels eventually became unsustainable.
Firms in advanced economies are now cutting jobs, owing to inadequate final demand, which has led to excess capacity, and to uncertainty about future demand. But cutting jobs weakens final demand further, because it reduces labor income and increases inequality. Because a firm’s labor costs are someone else’s labor income and demand, what is individually rational for one firm is destructive in the aggregate.
The result is that free markets don’t generate enough final demand. In the US, for example, slashing labor costs has sharply reduced the share of labor income in GDP. With credit exhausted, the effects on aggregate demand of decades of redistribution of income and wealth – from labor to capital, from wages to profits, from poor to rich, and from households to corporate firms – have become severe, owing to the lower marginal propensity of firms/capital owners/rich households to spend.
The problem is not new. Karl Marx oversold socialism, but he was right in claiming that globalization, unfettered financial capitalism, and redistribution of income and wealth from labor to capital could lead capitalism to self-destruct. As he argued, unregulated capitalism can lead to regular bouts of over-capacity, under-consumption, and the recurrence of destructive financial crises, fueled by credit bubbles and asset-price booms and busts.
Even before the Great Depression, Europe’s enlightened “bourgeois” classes recognized that, to avoid revolution, workers’ rights needed to be protected, wage and labor conditions improved, and a welfare state created to redistribute wealth and finance public goods – education, health care, and a social safety net. The push towards a modern welfare state accelerated after the Great Depression, when the state took on the responsibility for macroeconomic stabilization – a role that required the maintenance of a large middle class by widening the provision of public goods through progressive taxation of incomes and wealth and fostering economic opportunity for all.
Thus, the rise of the social-welfare state was a response (often of market-oriented liberal democracies) to the threat of popular revolutions, socialism, and communism as the frequency and severity of economic and financial crises increased. Three decades of relative social and economic stability then ensued, from the late 1940’s until the mid-1970’s, a period when inequality fell sharply and median incomes grew rapidly.
Some of the lessons about the need for prudential regulation of the financial system were lost in the Reagan-Thatcher era, when the appetite for massive deregulation was created in part by the flaws in Europe’s social-welfare model. Those flaws were reflected in yawning fiscal deficits, regulatory overkill, and a lack of economic dynamism that led to sclerotic growth then and the eurozone’s sovereign-debt crisis now.
But the laissez-faire Anglo-Saxon model has also now failed miserably. To stabilize market-oriented economies requires a return to the right balance between markets and provision of public goods. That means moving away from both the Anglo-Saxon model of unregulated markets and the continental European model of deficit-driven welfare states. Even an alternative “Asian” growth model – if there really is one – has not prevented a rise in inequality in China, India, and elsewhere.
Any economic model that does not properly address inequality will eventually face a crisis of legitimacy. Unless the relative economic roles of the market and the state are rebalanced, the protests of 2011 will become more severe, with social and political instability eventually harming long-term economic growth and welfare.

But what alternative is there to replace the unsustainable old path?
What we actually need is a constructive perspective, a new model that could save the world for younger generations. Capitalists, communists or socialists, whatever the title or label the rulers may have, must think about the heritage they are going to leave behind for their children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren. What model would work? Definitely not the philanthropic patchwork, but a global long-term solution that really works for every nation and being on earth.

(to be continued)

Sources:

Nouriel Roubini. "The Instability of Inequality." 2011-10-13. Project Syndicate, 2011. http://www.project-syndicate.org
Nouriel Roubini is Chairman of Roubini Global Economics, Professor of Economics at the Stern School of Business, New York University, and co-author of the book Crisis Economics.

The Daily Princetonian, November 9, 2011. Vol. CXXXV No. 99.

The Engaged Buddhism Movement

The Engaged Buddhism Movement is a movement in which Buddhist spiritual practice is inseparable from social action on humanitarian and environmental issues. The term "Socially Engaged Buddhism" refers to active involvement by Buddhists in society and its problems. Participants in this nascent movement seek to actualize Buddhism's traditional ideals of wisdom and compassion in today's world. The "Tiep Hien" Buddhist Order (The Order of Interbeing), the Buddhist Peace Fellowship (BPF),and the work of the Sakyamuni Buddhist Centre are examples of non-sectarian,socially engaged and ecologically responsible Buddhist practice.
(Philip Russell Brown)

The Tiep Hien Order (The Order of Interbeing) and its Precepts
The Tiep Hien Order was founded in Vietnam in 1964 during the war. It derives from the Zen School of Lin Chi, and is the 42nd generation of this school. (Thich Nhat Hanh, 1987a,p85) "The words "Tiep" and"Hien" have several meanings. "Tiep" means to be "in touch with" and"to continue". "Hien" means "to realize" and "to make it here and now". (Thich Nhat Hanh, 1987b,p11)

The order was founded in the following manner. In 1964, responding to the atmosphere of hatred, intolerance and suffering during wartime, a group of Vietnamese Buddhists, many deeply grounded in Buddhist philosophy and meditation,founded ..(the).. Order to become an instrument of their vision of engaged Buddhism. Composed of monks and nuns, laymen and laywomen,the Order of Interbeing (Tiep Hien) never comprised great numbers,yet its influence and effects were deeply felt within their country. Highly motivated and deeply committed, members of the Order and their supporters organized anti-war demonstrations, printed leaflets and books, ran social service projects, organized an underground for draft resisters,and cared for many of the wars suffering innocent victims.

During the war, many members and supporters died, some from self-immolation,some from cold-blooded murder, and some from the indiscriminate murder of war. At this time, it is impossible to say whether any remnant of the Order still exists in Asia, even though several members did emigrate to the West, and have recently ordained a number of Westerners and Vietnamese refugees.

Yet the Fourteen Precepts that they recited weekly, while war, political repression, and immense suffering tore apart their familiar world, are now being offered to us. (Epp Steiner,1985,pp. 152-153)

"The fourteen precepts of the Tiep Hien Order are a unique expression of traditional Buddhist morality coming to terms with contemporary issues. These precepts were not developed by secluded monks attempting to update the traditional Buddhist Precepts. Rather, they were forged in the crucible of war and devastation that was the daily experience for many Southeast Asians during the past several decades." (Epp Steiner in Thich Nhat Hanh,1987, p5.) They are as follows:

The First Precept:
Do not be idolatrous about or bound to any doctrine, theory, or ideology,even Buddhist ones. All systems of thought are guiding means: they are not absolute truth.

The Second Precept:
Do not think the knowledge you presently possess is changeless, absolute truth. Avoid being narrow-minded and bound to present views. Learn and practice non-attachment from views in order to be open to receive others' viewpoints. Truth is found in life and not merely in conceptual knowledge. Be ready to learn throughout your entire life and to observe reality in yourself and in the world at all times.

The Third Precept:
Do not force others, including children, by any means whatsoever,to adopt your views, whether by authority, threat, money, propaganda or even education. However, through compassionate dialogue, help others renounce fanaticism and narrowness.

The Fourth Precept:
Do not avoid contact with suffering or close your eyes before suffering.Do not lose awareness of the existence of suffering in the life of the world. Find ways to be with those who are suffering by all means,including personal contact and visits, images, sounds. By such means,awaken yourself and others to the reality of suffering in the world.

The Fifth Precept:
Do not accumulate wealth while millions are hungry. Do not take as the aim of your life fame, profit,wealth or sensual pleasure. Live simply and share time, energy and material resources with those who are in need.

The Sixth Precept:
Do not maintain anger or hatred. As soon as anger and hatred arise,practice the meditation on compassion in order to deeply understand the persons who have caused anger and hatred. Learn to look at other beings with the eyes of compassion.

The Seventh Precept:
Do not lose yourself in dispersion and in your surroundings. Learn to practice breathing in order to regain composure of the body and mind, to practice mindfulness and to develop concentration and understanding.

The Eighth Precept:
Do not utter words which can create discord and cause the community to break. Make every effort to reconcile and resolve all conflicts,however small.

The Ninth Precept:
Do not say untrue things for the sake of personal interest or to impress people. Do not utter words that cause division and hatred. Do not spread news that you do not know to be certain. Do not criticize or condemn things that you are not sure of. Always speak truthfully and constructively. Have the courage to speak out about situations of injustice, even when doing so may threaten your own safety.

The Tenth Precept:
Do not use the Buddhist community for personal gain or profit, or transform your community into a political party. A religious community,however, should take a clear stand against oppression and injustice and should strive to change the situation without engaging in partisan conflicts.

The Eleventh Precept:
Do not live with a vocation which is harmful to humans and nature. Donot invest in companies that deprive others of their chance to live.Select a vocation which helps realize your ideal of compassion.

The Twelfth Precept:
Do not kill. Do not let others kill. Find whatever means possibleto protect life and to prevent war.

The Thirteenth Precept:
Possess nothing that should belong to others. Respect the property of others, but prevent others from enriching themselves from human suffering or the suffering of other beings.

The Fourteenth Precept:
Do not mistreat your body. Learn to handle it with respect. Do not look on your body as only an instrument. Preserve vital energies( sexual, breath, spirit ) for the realization of the Way. Sexual expression should not happen without love and commitment. In sexual relationships, be aware of future suffering that may be caused. To preserve the happiness of others, respect the rights and commitments of others. Be fully aware of the responsibility of bringing new lives into the world. Meditate on the world into which you are bringing new beings.

The Order is truly non-sectarian. It "does not consider any sutra or any group of sutras as its basic text. Inspiration is drawn from the essence of the Buddhadharma as found in all sutras. The Order does not recognize any systematic arrangement of the Buddhist teaching as proposed by various schools of Buddhism. The Order seeks to realizethe Dharma spirit within primitive Buddhism as well as the development of that spirit throughout the sangha's history and the teachings in all Buddhist traditions". (Thich Nhat Hanh,1987)

In the Order there are two communities. The Core Community whichconsists of men and women who have taken the vow to observe the 14 precepts of the Order. Before being ordained as a brother or sister of the Order, one should practice at least one year in this way.

Upon ordination, the person has to organize a community around himself or herself in order to continue the practice. That community is called the Extended Community. This means all those who practice exactly the same way, but have not been ordained into the Core Community. The people who are ordained into the Core Community do not have any special sign at all. They don't shave their heads, they do not have a special robe. What makes them different is that they observe a number ofrules, one of them is to practice at least 60 days of retreat, of mindfulness, each year, whether consecutively or divided into several periods.

If they practice every Sunday, for instance, they will have 52 already. The people in the Extended Community can do that, or more,even if they don't want to be ordained. In the Core Community people can choose to observe celibacy, or lead a family life. (Thich Nhat Hanh, 1987, pp. 87-88).

The Zen Buddhist Master, Thich Nhat Hanh, believes that this type of Buddhist practice will be acceptable to many Western practitioners. He and his colleagues have experimented with it for 20 years and in his opinion it seems suitable for modern society.(Thich Nhat Hanh, 1987,p. 85.)

The Buddhist Peace Fellowship (BPF)
The "Statement of Purpose" of the Buddhist Peace Fellowship is as follows: "To make clear public witness to the Buddha Way as a wayof peace and protection for all beings; to raise peace and ecology concerns among American Buddhists and to promote projects through which the Sangha may respond to these concerns; to encourage the delineation in English of the Buddhist way of nonviolence, building from the rich resources of traditional Buddhist teachings a foundation for new action;to offer avenues to realize the kinship among groups and members ofthe American and world Sangha; to serve as liaison to, and enlist support for, existing national and international Buddhist peace and ecology programs; to provide a focus for concerns over the persecution of Buddhists, as a particular expression of our intent to protect all beings; and to bring the Buddhist perspective to contemporary peace and ecology movements."

The fellowship "was founded in 1978 to bring a Buddhist perspective to the peace movement and the peace movement to the Buddhist community. Buddhists of many traditions join the Buddhist Peace Fellowship to explore personal and group responses to the political,social,and ecological suffering in the world. Drawing on the teachings of nonviolence and compassion,and recognizing the essential unity and interdependence of all beings,BPF members and chapters seek to awaken peace where there is conflict,bring insight into the institutionalized ignorance of political systems,and offer help in the Buddhist spirit of harmony and loving kindness where it is needed."

"As a network of individuals and local chapters, BPF serves to promote communication and cooperation among sanghas in the work of nourishing all beings and resisting the forces of exploitation and war. The Buddhist Peace Fellowship is a member organisation of the Fellowship of Reconciliation and participates with other denominational peace fellowships in programs of ecumenical concern. National staff and local chapters respond to regional, national, and international peace and social action issues. Operating within the broad guidelines of the BPF Statement of Purpose, chapters retain their autonomy and function independently. New chapters may form wherever BPF members and friends are actively supporting each other in practices of engaged Buddhism. Members and local chapters have been involved in disarmament, environmental activities, and human rights, including campaigns opposing political oppression of Buddhists in Bangladesh, Vietnam, and Tibet. Chapter and national activities have included":

- education and support for personal choices to live simply, conserving energy, and resist harmful products and policies

- sponsoring teaching retreats and conferences

- letter-writing campaigns for human rights

- participation in vigils and demonstrations

- work with refugees from struggling countries

- support for socially conscious financial investment and consumerism,

- days of mindfulness practice

(The above information has been quoted from the BPF Membership information Leaflet.)

The Sakyamuni Buddhist Centre
"The Vietnamese tradition of Mahayana Buddhism to which the Abbotof the Van Hanh Monastery and director of the Sakyamuni Buddhist Centre,Venerable Thich Quang Ba, belongs is engaged Buddhism. In this tradition, to practice the Buddha's teaching is not to withdraw from society but to become engaged with it as Dharma practitioners. Accordingly,the Sakyamuni Buddhist Centre operates a range of social welfare programs."(Robleski,in Sakyamuni News,Oct,1991) Two particularly noteworthy programs are the Refugee Assistance Fund and the Vietnam Sangha Appeal. The aim of the Refugee Assistance Fund is "to assist one of those groups most in need, those who have found the Government in their native country so oppressive that they have risked their lives to escape. The program assists mainly (but not only) Vietnamese refugees, most ofwhom have been in refugee camps for years."(Robleski,in Sakyamuni News,Oct,1991,p3.)

The Vietnam Sangha Appeal aims to provide financial support for the training of monks and nuns who will be reestablishing Buddhism in Vietnam. "Since the Communist victory in Vietnam Buddhism has suffered persecution and oppression, leaving it in a very weakened state. Although conditions are still bad, over the past few years the Vietnamese Government has found it necessary to develop contacts with the outside world and attend to its international image, and so there has been some toleration of religious activities. As part of this new reform policy about ten Buddhist training institutes have been allowed to open,for the education of monks and nuns."

"These institutes are under Government control, but still Sutra Vinaya and other Buddhist subjects can be studied by approximately 1,000 students. These institutes are, however, desperately poor. They are in need of even the most basic requirements - food, clothing andshelter - as well as money for books and their study materials."

"If Buddhism is to revive in Vietnam it must have the leadership of a trained and educated Sangha....In a country as poor as Vietnam a little hard currency goes a long way, and even $7.00 a month would provide a scholarship that could support a student monk or nun."

"Thich Quang Ba hopes to be able to provide these institutes with much-needed financial support. He plans to send money direct to the individual institute, and also wants to launch a scheme in which people can sponsor a single sangha member, providing him or her with a personal scholarship. These students, the best and brightest, would be selected by the head of their school." (Kearney,1992)

Source:
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