Thursday, June 19, 2014
Wednesday, June 18, 2014
On the Good, the Bad and the Flourishing - and the Power of Empathy to bring the latter about
By Christophe Horváth, Primeast Southern Africa, 1
June 2014
As long as we
criticize, fight and resist “the bad”, believing that we are “the good”, we really
operate from the very same level of ego-consciousness, and can never achieve
true Peace. True transformation can only come from soul consciousness that
realizes that there is no “us” and “them”, and that the problem is not with “them”,
but with our collective ignorance, lack of love and compassion for one another,
and our failure to take responsibility to act accordingly.
On a fateful day in late July 1997, after we had twice walked like a line of ducks behind a mine detector, beeping all too often for my poor nerves, through two different minefields on our search mission earlier that morning, I found myself standing in a clearing in a jungle forest, in a valley some thirty meters down from the road over the Pich Nil Pass, which runs through the Kirirom Mountains, halfway on the road from Phnom Penh to Sihanoukville, in Southern Cambodia. Suddenly, I heard an alarmed shout from up high above us. I knew then that we had been seen. A pregnant moment of silence …, and then a violent burst of bullets from a mounted machine gun, seemingly going on forever, from right over our heads, spraying its murderous load right down at us.
The five of us were an ad hoc team working with the UN
Centre for Human Rights in Cambodia, investigating the extra-judicial killings
that had taken place during and immediately after the July 1997 coup d’état. I
was the one who, together with my Cambodian translator, had been the first to
have found the remains of several burnt and buried bodies in the same area over
the previous days. The day before our chief investigator had suggested that we’d
return with a larger team, as there might be much more evidence to find in the
same area, which was under military control. The night before we went back, I
had had a nightmare with this single continuous image which filled me with a
paralysing dread – the barrel of a machine gun sticking through a bush, pointed
straight at me…
Because of the importance of the mission, I went
along, notwithstanding my darkest fears. And here I stood then in that
godforsaken patch of forest. My colleagues had somehow managed to throw
themselves down and find shelter, but I was just standing there in the clearing,
like a crystal vase, waiting to be hit, and shattered into a million pieces.
The tree next to me was perforated, like a cardboard box, just above my head,
and branches and leafs fell all over me – my world falling apart in slow motion
around me. I have never tasted such an ugly, metallic taste of angst in my
mouth, and knew for certain I was about to die.
As by miracle, I wasn’t hit, and neither were any of
my colleagues. It turned out later that, unbeknownst to us, we were in a
natural basin in the terrain protecting us, and we simply could not have been
hit. But what became equally clear later was that the soldiers had indeed fired
with the intention to kill us all. We were later arrested by a patrol of
heavily armed adolescent soldiers, and, although seriously threatened, later reluctantly
released, grace to our UN status and credentials. But we very nearly laid down
our lives there, on the battlefield for human rights.
I am sharing this personal story, not to highlight the violent murder and
abuse often inflicted by regimes based on ego, power hunger and greed, as we
are all aware, but also to show that often our well-meant – sometimes cavalier -
attempts to expose dictators, and fight their foot soldiers and their injustices,
are actually locked in the same level of thinking, and therefore doomed to fail.
I learned this the hard way, both in my human rights work and environmental
advocacy work – in Cambodia, Burma and elsewhere. When our mission is all about
exposing the “bad guys”, we can easily fall in the trap of starting to operate from
the same low vibrancy level as the very ones we are accusing – i.e. from a
place of anger, hatred and fear. As long as there is us and them, and us being
right and them being wrong, and us blaming and pointing fingers, we are all
operating from the same ego consciousness level – whether as perpetrator,
victim, or vindicator - and there will never be true peace.
“Good” and “Bad” will be forever in a struggle for the upper hand. We
will forever be stuck in this war between “good” and “evil”, unless we find a
better way. It is only “Greatness” in our being, leadership and actions of
service that can overcome and transform this.
The first step in transforming the wrongs of the world, has to therefore start
with ourselves. I have come to see that our outer world is a - delayed –
reflection of our inner world. Transformation therefore has to start with our
own awareness and consciousness, our own presence and authenticity, and our own
love and compassion. With seeing our oneness, interconnectedness, and
interdependence as humankind. With truly “getting” that there is no “them”;
there is only “us”.
One deep insight I got from the Spirit of Humanity Forum 2014 is this
sense of higher synthesis. Where we all know about the destructive systems,
practices and behaviours that threaten people and life on our Planet (the
“bad”), and the democracy, human rights, development, humanitarian and sustainability
movements and organisations (the “Good”), the new insight that emerged was the
one of the Flourishing (the “Great”) of humankind in healthy, dynamic and
enduring harmony with Nature and Planet Earth, and the new, higher level of
collective human consciousness that is required to bring it about. In my view,
the Flourishing can never be achieved by fighting and exposing the bad, but it
can only be attained by transforming the mind-sets, heart-sets and behaviours
of ourselves and all of humankind. What this requires is no war or revolution,
but nothing less than the widespread evolution of human consciousness.
And this all begins with our own self-acceptance, for we cannot truly
care for others, and see them for who they truly are, if we have not first
learnt to love ourselves, all of us, our strengths and weaknesses, our shine
and our scars. And this means self-forgiveness, and full open-eyed engagement
with all of our guilt and shame. It requires us to learn to become fully naked,
authentic and vulnerable. Only then can we truly engage with others, from the
deepest heart and soul level.
Inquiries
for self-reflection:
·
What can you do to be more present, to be more aware, to be more in the
here and now?
·
What attachments and addictions can you let go of that drain you from your
energy to be present and available in the here and now?
·
What can you stop craving and chasing, so you can enjoy a life of more
simplicity and enoughness, and presence to, and acceptance of, what is (rather
than what we believe should be)
·
What shortcomings and wrongdoings, guilt and shame, can you forgive
yourself for, or ask forgiveness for, so that you can let them go once and for
all?
·
What other incompletions are occupying your mind, that you either need to
deal with or let go of?
Once we are starting to fully accept ourselves, we can become fully
present for and truly empathize with others, recognizing our own humanity in
all their trials and tribulations. To experience true empathy, we need to
feel other beings’ pain and suffering, as well as their pleasure and joy,
acutely within ourselves, as if it were our own.
Inquiries
for self-reflection:
· How can you make it a practice to really
truly listen to another, without being in the course of formulating your own
righteous answer in your mind – just being fully open and welcoming to the
message of the other, without any judgment, bias or distraction?
· Can you listen to the listening of the other,
behind their story – and see that it may come from the same ‘thrown-ness’ or
victimhood that you may have experienced, now or in the past?
· Can you see yourself in the other, and see
that, fundamentally, you share the same humanity, the same needs, and,
ultimately, the same aspirations?
What marks the
greatest leaders of our time, such as Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Ghandi and Mother
Theresa, is precisely their ability to empathize with those who struggle,
engage those who thrive to the cause, see a greater future, and facilitate its
co-creation with all involved. A great leader is committed to the success of
the whole group, rather than just that of himself, or of some smaller interest
groups. Only a leader who empathizes with all can be truly of service.
Ubuntu is the essentially
African understanding that I am who I am
because of who you are. “Umuntu Ngumuntu Ngabantu” in Zulu language means that a person only becomes a full person through
other persons. This signifies that for us to be fully human we need a
profound sense of empathy with others. This empathy, in turn, requires us to
truly love and accept ourselves, as, if we do not have love and compassion for ourselves,
then how can we truly feel love and compassion for anybody else? It also
requires us to have the courage to be vulnerable, as, when we can love and
accept ourselves, and be authentic about both our strengths and weaknesses, then
we can also accept the light and shadow in others, and love them anyway for who
they are.
When there is lack of
responsibility, ownership, vision and integrity in a country, and when abuse,
complacency and indifference are the norm, I suggest that this is a consequence
of both a prevailing lack of empathy, as well as of lack of self-love,
self-esteem, self-worth and sense of fundamental human dignity in society. If this
is so, then the fundamental inquiry is really the following:
Inquiries
for self-reflection:
· How can we inspire, heal, liberate and
empower others to accept and love themselves more, so that empathy for self and
others can become the primary lens through which we all look at each other?
· How can we start with ourselves, accepting
and loving ourselves fully, so we can be the transformation that we want to see
in the world?
When we operate from
Soul – beyond ego – we can connect with other Souls, and experience their pain
and suffering, as well as their joy and elation, as our own. This is a
manifestation of our Oneness. Empathy then, is our ability and practice of
stepping into the shoes of another, and bringing the best of who we are to
their support, knowing that this, ultimately, is only in our own enlightened
Self-interest.
In closing,
self-love and empathy are the essential conditions for us to become true transformational
servant leaders – so that we can be love and compassion in action, and
contribute to bringing about the Flourishing of Humankind and Nature on Planet
Earth, which is, I believe, the greatest purpose we can have in our life.
At the 2014 Spirit of Humanity Forum, Christophe
Horváth co-facilitated Session V
“Stories of Nations” on the value of empathy, and provided musical inspiration
together with his colleague, Masankho Banda. Since 2008, Christophe has been a consultant, facilitator, trainer
and coach with Primeast, working as its Head serving the Change Agents and
Social Entrepreneurs Sector. His current work is all about inspiring,
liberating and empowering leaders and teams of purposeful organisations in the
non-profit sector to be the best they can be and to contribute to the
Flourishing. Christophe is also an inspirational singer, writer and public
speaker. Married with three children, he operates from his base in Lilongwe,
Malawi. Prior to his current position, Christophe worked for 15 years in
refugee protection, human rights, environmental advocacy and development
cooperation, in Belgium, Turkey, Cambodia, Burma, Indonesia, East Timor and
Malawi.
You can find more about Christophe and his work on:
You can find more about Christophe and his work on:
Tuesday, June 17, 2014
Christophe Horváth
Primeast’s Head serving the Change Agents and Social Entrepreneurs Sector, and heads Primeast's Southern Africa office in Lilongwe, Malawi.
Websites:
Monday, May 26, 2014
Yaqing Mao
Three stories in developing ‘Child Friendly Schools’ in China
By Yaqing Mao,
Deputy Dean, College of Education Administration, Beijing Normal University
I was pleased to have the opportunity to attend the Spirit of Humanity Forum in Reykjavik in April this year, and shared my thoughts on the topic of core values in governance. As a Chinese educator and researcher, I deeply believe that love is the source of a truly happy life, and therefore love must be at the core of the values in any schools. In my experience of leading the ‘Child Friendly Schools’ project funded by the UNICEF and the Chinese government, I have learned a great deal with regard to the importance of love and compassion in education.
Here I recall three stories.
In June 2006, for the UNICEF project, I went to spend some time at the University of Lund, Malmo, Sweden. Whilst in Malmo, I also visited some local schools, and in one of the schools, I met a Swedish teacher who had recently returned after an extended stay to China. She told me that she fell in love with Chinese culture and has been sharing her experiences in China with her students. I noticed, on the one of the boards in her classroom, the Chinese character “LOVE” written in its traditional form of which the Chinese character "heart" was a part (held with hands). In 1950s, Chinese language underwent reform and the characters taught in schools have since then been in their simplified forms. However, the traditional forms are more pictographic and more expressive of the etymology of each word. Therefore I was impressed by this teacher’s sensitivity to the deeper meaning of this Chinese word, and had been contemplating on this particular character and the notion of love since then, especially when I considered the aim of our Child Friendly Schools project. What kind of place should a school be, if not a place of love, a place built with our hearts and with care? What should be the mission of a school if not enabling each child’s flourishing?
Shortly after returning from Sweden, I went for a meeting in Shanghai. Arriving at the airport, I found a gigantic billboard showing the same Chinese character "love" in its traditional form, accompanied by a sentence saying "The character can be simplified, but love, missing a heart, cannot be." Indeed, in the contemporary version of the character of love, the part of heart (held with hands) is removed, leaving just the hands, which is the origin of the character “friend”. In changing the form, the character “love” has now missed out the heart and instead is stressing the meaning of support, camaraderie and friendship. Once again, I contemplated on the nuanced but most significant difference in the two ways of writing the same word. This had made me realise the need to persist on our greater mission: no matter how the aims and goals of our projects may vary, the heartfelt love must be undoubtedly what underpins all our educative endeavours.
博愛
At the beginning of the Child Friendly Schools project, many school Principals considered the idea of inclusion as being receptive. That is to say that the schools are open to children of all backgrounds and all abilities within the community. However I noted that in the day-to-day running of the school, there was little engagement with children with special educational needs or disabilities. Often they were permitted to stay on their own when the rest of the class participate in outdoor activities. When I enquired, I realised that this was because school leaders and teachers recognised these children’s special needs, had sympathy for them and therefore allowed different treatments for these students. Despite the good intention, the result was that these students were feeling isolated from the rest of the school.
Indeed, it took some time for school leaders to truly understand the difference between commiseration and compassion. Our commiseration/sympathy for the child with special needs can create emotional distance between us and the child. This is what happened in some schools. Although intending to be humanising, our commiseration can equally be dehumanising and belittling because by pitying the child’s physical difficulties and other educational needs, we were reducing the rich reality of his/her life. By contrast, our compassion for the child with special needs will enable us to understand his/her desire to be treated equally and as normal. This understanding would urge us to act on our deepest feeling and love for the child by providing the support he/she needs in order to participate in the school’s activities fully, and thereby to be included.
One headteacher told me that the most important thing for him was to help every student find his/her own values in life and self-worth, but to do so, a caring environment must be in place in the school. When a school shifts its approach to inclusion from commiseration to compassion, the children also change their attitudes towards special needs in themselves and in others. As our results show, children with special needs are becoming more confident and happier and feel that they can indeed do better for themselves.
Based on the three stories above, I try to response to topics of the SOH Forum.
First, heartfelt love is fundamental to children’s happiness and thriving in education. What does heartfelt love consist of? I believe that the following elements are fundamental: understanding, respect, care, compassion and responsibility. In other words, love without understanding is blindness; love without respect is arrogance; love without care is sham; love without compassion is pity; love without responsibility is indulgence. In the Child Friendly Schools project, each teacher and school leader must ask himself/herself whether he/she is offering the children truly heartfelt love, and whether his/her love is proactive, rigorous and nurturing and contains these key elements above. The Chinese sage Confucius implores us to cultivate love as a primary virtue. Therefore, as an educator, I believe that love must be at the centre of a school’s ethos.
Second, humanity is a core value of any school. This, I believe, is of great importance for contemporary Chinese society.
China is at the new historical junction where the society is gradually adopting a more “people-oriented” development strategy. During this transition, a single-minded pursuit of economic growth cannot meet the overall needs of the society or engender hope for its people. I believe that such shift must begin with transforming our educational system. In the past, education was considered as an important means to promote economic growth, and therefore education in China was focusing on the cultivation of skills for employment and market competition and basing its long-term evaluation mechanism on measuring students’ academic attainments. At present, the aim of education is being re-considered by the Chinese government and Chinese people. We recognise that the older view of education, although was once helpful in China’s contemporary history, also had detrimental effects, i.e. children’s critical thinking skills, creativity, imagination and the abilities take to responsibility for themselves and for others were hugely neglected. Therefore, we are updating our educational system aimed to help our children become knowledgeable, ethical and responsible citizens.
I am convinced that a truly happy life for a young person is more than academic achievement, but also involves his/her ability to connect with others and with the world, and above all with his/her inner values. In other words, education in China must explicitly be aimed at cultivating humanity which can encompass the cultivation of many essential attributes, such as talents, good personality, the ability to be free, rationality, moral sentiment, self-worth, and more. And equally important is that schools are places of humanity – of love, care and respect, so that children and young people educated in this way can aspire to be fully human themselves.
Thursday, May 22, 2014
Reflection on Contribution
Christoph Quarch-Reflection on contribution
It was a great experience for me to participate in the 2nd of Humanity Forum and to share some insights of mine concerning the general Topic: The Power of Love and Compassion in Governance and Leadership. On Friday, 11th April, I had the honour and privilege to contribute my reflections in the section "Philosophy, Religion, Spirituality". Doing this I focussed on the issue of language: How can we talk about love without talking about love but in love? I noticed: It happens so easily that speakers fall into their usual jargon, e.g. when religious leaders speak about "love and compassion" as a stereotype. How might a fresh and authentic language look like - a language in which the word "love" triggers a particular vibrations within our souls and hearts? That we so rarely experience love in our social institutions might have got something to do with the simple fact that usually there is a language of hostility, competition and technocracy. What actually seems to be required is a new kind of "Universal Poetry" (F. Schlegel), which enables people to talk in a pure and authentic way.
Tuesday, April 29, 2014
Dharma Master Hsin Tao
Love and Compassion
as Core Values of the New Era
Ven. Dharma
Master Hsin Tao
I was born during World War 2nd, in a poor village in northern Burma. I was separated from my parents around age 4, and entered a Burmese guerrilla army at age 9 as a child soldier. Seeing all the people who were displaced by the war, my heart felt very sad and heavy. I wished that there could be more happiness in the world, and not this much suffering.
One day when I was teenager, I heard the chanting of the holy name of Guanshiyin, the Bodhisattva of Compassion. It deeply touched my heart, and made me understand what it means to have a heart of compassion for others. It was a moment in which compassion and the power of love completely merged – making me realize that this whole world of ours is deeply interconnected, that it is one living body in all of its diversity.
Ever since that experience, I made up my mind emulate Guanyin`s compassion in “saving people from suffering” myself and help this world change for the better.
How to be compassionate? What to do to really help people? I myself found out through the practice of Ch’an meditation, which helped me to settle and purify my heart and mind. It is this inner purity that gives birth to true love and compassion. The practice of Ch`an makes us discover that we are all one deeply interconnected body. It makes us realize compassion, joy and freedom from attachment. In the past thirty years of teaching Ch’an meditation, I have led students to understand the nature of reality through contemplation, to become unbound and free by observing the nature of our heart and mind, and then to give back and devote themselves to others.
I have traveled all around the world to spread my faith in this kind of governance – namely achieving inner peace of heart and mind, which gives birth to compassion, to unwavering self-sacrifice and devotion. It is this eternal promise that can transform the world into one real body of interconnectedness.
With the rapid development of the internet, people have become more separated, since they lack direct, personal interaction. Virtual interactions driven by personal interest have taken the place of a wholesome partnership based on harmony and mutual benefit.
From now on, we must change to let love and compassion become the values of the new era! We can start from Ch’an meditation to recover the spiritual connections among us. Through Ch’an we can uncover freedom and balance of our heart and mind. When our heart is at peace, everything that happens will be harmonious. This is very important for the world!
“Governance by harmony” is to understand the actual needs of co-existence in its diversity. It means the ability to create co-existence based on love. It is similar to the interdependence and co-existence of all the things in the biosphere. We must accept the fact of our mutual dependence and coexistence in order to be able to transform the many conflicts in our world.
I have created the “The Museum of World Religions” as a platform to promote “respect, tolerance and love” among religions and to strive for their peaceful co-existence. The Museum is also a venue for Life –Education, in children and students are taught a life based on the values of caring for self and others. Currently I am planning a “University of Life and Peace” with the mission of further fostering “Love and Peace”. In this interdisciplinary university we want to equip students of all ages with the caring attitude, insight and knowledge to address the pressing issues of our times and help find solutions, to cultivate peace. Please join us in giving birth to this ““University of Life and Peace”!
My deepest thanks go to the hosts and organizers of this important Forum. May it contribute to spreading love and compassion to all the ends of the World.
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