How we can make our lives richer and more meaningful? Forget about resolutions to “do better” and get down to what is truly important…

As we look forward to celebrating a New Year, how we can make our lives richer and more meaningful?
Forget about your endless resolutions to “do better”—lose weight, get more work done, organize your life and your closets. Let’s get down to what is truly important to us, and resolve to do something every day to make our lives more meaningful—actions that are possible, don’t take much time, and truly improve our well-being.

Buddhist economics says:
Stop.
Sit quietly, focus on your breath, and appreciate the wonders of the moment.

As you breathe quietly, feel your Buddha heart.
You can do this early in the morning when you first wake up. You can do this during your lunch break. You can do this when you go to bed.
Do this any time you want to pause, appreciate life, and feel refreshed. Sitting quietly can last from a minute to a half hour—whatever feels comfortable to you.

You can even practice this when you are in a stressful meeting that is causing anxiety and confusion. Focus on your breath, let your thoughts and judgements pass by, and feel your interconnection with the other people. Then let your thoughts return to the meeting, and feel your freedom to be at the meeting and participate in a more meaningful way.

You have freed yourself from the bad feelings and confusion of others, so what is important in life shines out. Freedom in Buddhist economics is stopping the constant chatter of thoughts flowing through your mind, so you can enjoy the moment and focus on what is important to you.
During the day, feel your interconnection with other people. Don’t confuse being hyperconnected on social media with being interconnected in human spirit.

Put your iPhone down.
Look for ways to connect with the people around you—family, colleagues, friends, strangers.
When all the demands on your life make you miserable, stop and help someone you know. In Buddhist economics, helping others makes everyone feel better.

In your New Year, think about what is important to you, what you really care about,
what makes life meaningful. Let the other things fall off your to-do list.

May you enjoy life, may you be free!

Everyone wants to be happy!

Today’s blog will focus on the question, “What makes people happy?”

This question takes us to the heart of the difference between free market economics and Buddhist economics, which have fundamentally difference assumptions about human nature. According to Buddhist economics, human nature is generous and altruistic, even as it also cares about itself. People’s suffering comes from their own mental states that cause them to desire more and more. The Dalai Lama tells us that our feelings of not having enough and wanting more do not arise from the inherent desirability of the objects we seek, but from our own mental illusions. In Buddhist economics, we end suffering by changing our states of mind—we become happy by caring for others and living a meaningful life.

Free market economics rests on the very different assumption that human nature is self-centered and people care only about themselves as they push ahead to maximize their incomes and fancy lifestyles. According to this approach, buying and consuming—new shoes or a new video game—make you happy. Yet soon you grow tired of the shoes, become disappointed with the game, and are shopping again. In this endless cycle of desire, we are left wanting more without ever finding lasting satisfaction. Free market economics is not showing us how to live meaningful lives in a sustainable world, nor is it offering solutions to our concerns about wars, inequality, and global warming.
Buddhist economics provides a path for being happy in our daily life. “Practice compassion” replaces “More is better,” as we move from a “Closetful” to a “Mindful” way of living. Buddhist economics also guides governments in how to restructure the global economy to create well-being for all in a healthy environment. “Everyone’s well-being is connected” replaces “Maximize your own position,” and “The welfare of humans and Nature is interdependent” replaces “Pollution is a social cost that can be ignored.”
British Professor Layard, who is a co-author of the important book The Origins of Happiness, writes, “The evidence shows that the things that matter most for our happiness and for our misery are our social relationships and our mental and physical health. This demands a new role for the state – not ‘wealth creation’ but ‘wellbeing creation’.”

The reality that having more money and buying more stuff is not the road to happiness has been studied for decades, and yet our society still keeps us on the treadmill (see http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/26/your-money/more-money-more-success-more-stuff-dont-count-on-more-happiness.html?ref=your-money).
Buddhist economics show us how together we can live balanced meaningful lives and heal the earth. There’s no time to lose!

“One interesting thing about greed is that although the underlying motive is to seek satisfaction, the irony is that even after obtaining the object of your desire, you are still not satisfied.” —Dalai Lama, The Art of Happiness (p. 95)

To embrace and practice Buddhist economics, you need courage. Courage to change, courage to protect the environment, courage to promote justice, and courage to live with joy.

At the personal level, you need courage to quit the rat race of overworking to make more money, courage to live mindfully as you help others, and courage to enjoy life off the treadmill.

At the local and national level, you need courage to demand that your government provide the infrastructure needed for an economy that protects the environment and becomes carbon-free, and one that defines economic growth as improved well-being for all people rather than more income for the rich.
We join with others to amplify our energy and create change. Together we have the political will and courage to take action for ourselves on behalf of all species and future generations. We know the fossil fuel industry will fight back with vicious attacks on our demands to transition to a fossil-free economy and ensure a comfortable, dignified life for all people.

Together we can create meaningful, happy lives for ourselves and our communities. The guidelines are:

• live mindfully with love and compassion
• care for others and relieve suffering
• enjoy and rejuvenate the earth.

We reach out with empathy to those who voted for Trump, and find common ground in ensuring everyone has clean air and water. We look for the inner Buddha in each person. Trump supporters are confused people who need help as we uproot delusions. Buddhism views ignorance as the cause of greed, hatred, and delusions, which then cause conflict. People everywhere are frightened, and in pain.

We work with our Sangha and community groups to support each other. We must not fight among ourselves about petty differences, as we remember that we all want the same goals: clean air and water, a healthy earth, and happiness for all. Ignorance is the enemy, and we must vigorously oppose wrongdoing around the world that harms people and Mother Earth. Buddhist economics reminds us that everyone is interconnected, with each other and with nature. Harm to a person or harm to earth is harm to all people.

Vietnamese Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh, writing in his Love Letter to the Earth, focuses on our interdependence with Mother Earth and on the need for us to appreciate and care for her. Earth gave birth to us, and we return to her when we die. Earth provides us with everything we need to live healthy, joyful lives. Thich Nhat Hanh asks us to express our gratitude at each meal, which represents the gifts, such as tea and bread that Nature has produced.
All economies must decouple fossil fuel energy use from economic growth. But Buddhist economics wants us to push further in creating sustainable lifestyles that reduce wasteful consumption and reduce overwork so people have time to enjoy life and help one another.

“Our collective compassion, mindfulness, and concentration nourishes us, but it also can help to reestablish the Earth’s equilibrium and restore balance. Together, we can bring about real transformation for ourselves and for the world.”
Thich Nhat Hanh, Love Letter to the Earth (p. 69)

Human interdependence with our environment is an integral part of Buddhist economics. All activities by companies, governments, and people can be undertaken in a way that protects rather than exploits nature and our natural capital.

Over Thanksgiving, my husband Richard and I, along with our greyhound Belvedere, traveled to Boulder Creek in the Santa Cruz mountains so we could commune with old growth redwood trees that are 1000 to 2000 years old. You can feel their energy as you ponder their ability to live through fires and drought along with massive clear cutting of forests. Yet some ancient redwoods remain for us to enjoy and to appreciate for their providing clean air, weather systems, and shelter for many species. As we walked through the redwood forests, the stark choice between destroying our planet with global warming or moving rapidly to a fossil free economy becomes clear. Buddhist economics shows us a path for transitioning to a low-carbon world, and we heal Mother Earth as we heal ourselves.

As Thich Nhat Hanh writes, “Caring about the environment is not an obligation, but a matter of personal and collective happiness and survival. We will survive and thrive together with our Mother Earth, or we will not survive at all.”

Love Letter to the Earth, p 82

“Ode to the Redwoods”

You care for each other and many creatures,

As humans gaze at your magnificent glory.

For centuries, you courageously stand tall through

storms, and fires, and drought.

You ask for nothing, until now.

You reach out to humans,

Beg them to stop their violence to Nature,

To go beyond the carbon economy, to stop war.

May we listen

And learn.

—Forest Nymph, August 2015

In a time of national turmoil, we can turn to Buddhist economics for guidance.

Trump’s free market economics will not provide a prosperous meaningful life to most people because it is based on three gravely erroneous policy approaches:

1. Humans dominate nature, which is used to increase consumption, and we don’t worry about destroying critical ecosystems.
2. National well-being is based on average income growth, and increasing the incomes of the very rich with reduced taxes and other perks is how we will increase average income.
3. The United States does not have to care about the well-being of people in other countries, and an individual ego-centered free market economy will automatically make the US great again.

Buddhist economics shows us the path for creating comfortable, meaningful lives for all people and a healthy planet:

• Humans are interdependent with nature, and our health depends on caring for all living creatures and healthy ecosystems. Violence and greed lead to misery.
• Chasing more and more income does not make us happy. Living in harmony with each other and with nature, as we live with loving kindness to help others, makes us happy. As we transfer income from the wealthy to those in need, both at home and abroad, everyone is better off and our economies perform better.
• The United States leadership in reducing global warming, in transferring income to relieve poverty and suffering globally, and in stopping wars and conflict, will make the country truly great as we all come together to live mindfully.

Buddhist economics reminds us that people are interconnected with each other and with Earth. Now is the time to connect with our sangha—our family and neighbors, our community—and mobilize to protest policies that can harm people and nature.

One mandate of Buddhist economics is to reduce suffering of all people. Now is the time to honor the Buddha Nature of all people, those who will join us in the fight to protect the rights and dignity of immigrants, LGBTs, Latinos, African-Americans, Muslims—everyone, and also those who felt isolated and left behind and supported Trump in their confusion.

Buddhist economics looks to the basic goodness in all of us, our Buddha Nature, and reminds us that the suffering of one person causes suffering for everyone. Now is the time to reduce the painful anger of the Trump supporters, along with the pain of people around the world who are suffering from hunger and from climate change.

As we care for each other and for Earth, our love and compassion for one another and for our planet grows. As peace and harmony pervade the world, as hunger and physical deprivation end, as everyone lives comfortable lives with dignity, and as Earth’s ecosystems are protected—then we are happy.

This takes moral courage to act, to speak out, to mobilize with people around the world. Mobilization to stop harmful policies by the Trump Administration and to demand that our governments at the local, state, and national levels do the right thing must be our top priority.

We have no time to lose, and together we can accomplish much!