“Whether you believe in God or not does not matter so much, whether you believe in Buddha or not does not matter so much; as a Buddhist, whether you believe in reincarnation or not does not matter so much. You must lead a good life. And a good life does not mean just good food, good clothes, good shelter. These are not sufficient. A good motivation is what is needed: compassion, without dogmatism, without complicated philosophy; just understanding that others are human brothers and sisters and respecting their rights and human dignity.” ~Dalai Lama XIV
Servant Leaders understand that vision is what helps to move us forward in leadership as well as in our lives. Jonathan Swift characterizes vision saying it, “is the art of seeing things invisible to other people.” As does the Dalai Lama in the book, A Force For Good: The Dalai Lama’s Vision for Our World by Daniel Goleman.
In the chapter, Reinvent the Future, Goleman provides The Dalai Lama’s vision for a force for good. Our journey provides us with the key points that represent a set of interlocking scenarios that articulate the Dalai Lama’s vision with living examples, people, and projects that are already making his vision a reality.
Emotional Hygiene
Emotional hygiene is about taking responsibility for better managing our minds and emotions. It is about lessening the power of destructive emotions and fostering more-positive modes of being. This kind of self-mastery allows us to target better, cultivate, and act on human values that form a universal ethic whereby the oneness of humanity is expressed as compassion toward all. This universal ethic does not look toward any religion or ideology, but rather grounds this worldview in empirical findings. The Dalai Lama call is a science of compassion.
Muscular Compassion
Muscular compassion acts to expose and hold accountable toxic social forces such as corruption, collusion, and bias. Compassion in his area helps us to upgrade systems like economics, politics, and science. In action, this compassion can is transparency, fairness, and accountability in everything that we do in the stock market, financing an election, or reporting data.
A Compassionate Economy
A compassionate economy reflects concern for all and not greed. IN the realm of economics, compassion leads to focusing on how goods are distributed, not just on how to accumulate them. So that from compassion, an imperative is to care for those in need- the poor, the powerless, and the disenfranchised. But this means going beyond charity to empower those in need to begin to take care of themselves with dignity.
Heal the Planet
Human activity of all kinds is degrading the global systems that support life on this planet. We must begin to heal the planet.
Education of the Heart
We should help students cultivate tools for self-mastery and caring so that they can live with these human values. If such an education becomes universal and standard, the future generations would naturally act with compassion.
Take a Long View of History
We are urged to take a long view of history but to act now towards fulfilling this vision in any way we can using whatever means we have at hand. Of course, these changes will take generations but even if we do not live to see the fulfillment, we can start this evolution toward compassion.
Taken together, these interlocking scenarios are synergistic, the whole being greater that any single part. Indeed, we can change the course through compassion for navigating our lives and our society for a better tomorrow.
What is presented offers us an opportunity to live our lives with generosity, discernment, and joy, rather than false fulfillment through money, power, and fame. In the coming weeks, we will encounter people and projects that are already signaling how we might move from vision to action. The Dalai Lama inspired some; others simply align with his vision.
In articulating his vision to us, the Dalai Lama speaks to us not from his religion role but by wearing the hat of a global leader, a futurist of sorts, who genuinely cares about the well-being of every person on the planet.
Servant Leaders know that the more altruistic the guiding values, the longer the time horizon, and the broader the human needs a leader addresses, the greater that leader’s vision can be.
Transformative leaders that are Servant Leaders serve a transcendent purpose, pointing the way to a new reality. This is what the Dalai Lama’s vision is all about.
Everyone one of us can be a force for good.
To Reinventing the Future,
Dr. Crystal
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