The Compassion Revolution

  A plea for lives built on ethics I don’t seek for happiness.  I don’t bother about whether I am happy or not.  I do what I feel as true and good and I don’t care about whether it brings happiness or unhappiness.  Only the mediocre mind seeks for happiness.  A truly cultured mind seeks for higher values like truth, beauty and goodness and it will seek it even if it leads to much pain and suffering.    Albert Einstein Personal happiness seems the ultimate goal for many in modern society. However, this is a very individualistic value. In a world filled with injustice, we too easily ignore our conscience, which may well be the reason so many of us are unhappy. Let's try to refocus our lives on living ethically and virtuously, and we may find this may end up giving us a much more profound kind of happiness. True happiness is not an individual, but a collective and a moral matter. The cult of the individual It seems like our Western society today is o...

  I have been meditating regularly for about ten years now. I have attended and facilitated meditation groups and retreats, in various places in Europe, North America, and Asia, in different (mostly Buddhist-inspired) traditions. I feel very fortunate to have had the opportunity to do so and have experienced great benefits from this practice. However, one thing has kept bothering me all those years. The Buddha claims – and I deeply believe – that his teaching can liberate all beings, yet when I join meditation groups, I often see myself surrounded by rather socially privileged people (just like myself 1 ). W hy does (Buddhist-inspired) meditation in the West seem to attract mainly an academically educated, 2 (upper) middle class audience? Is meditation not relevant for other social groups, or is there something else at play here? (I will focus on class privilege in this article. Gender and white privilege fall beyond its scope. I believe others  to be far better qualified th...