Save the World: Become Happy

~ "But how will meditation and the development of "consciousness" help us solve the critical problems that face our society, our economy, our environment?"

~ The real solution to our economic, social, and environmental problems is not a new government or a new economic system, but a new state of consciousness.

When people enliven their perceptions through meditation and yoga, they begin to experience how happy they can be just taking a breath, just opening an eye to the stars, just hearing a sparrow at dawn, just smelling the hyacinth in April. Not through amassing wealth, but through enlivening perception, we become rich, owning little. We become content, desiring less. We are at peace with ourselves, and so with others.

Through this transformation of the heart, cravings vanish, and with them the need to exploit, to do violence, to steal, to acquire in a large house, an energy-guzzling car, or an elaborate wardrobe, to seek constant sexual stimulation, or to build vast armies for protecting all that we hoard.

It is in the simplest sacraments of the ordinary that the world is healed. It is in the exquisitely small and delightfully local that we invite waves of bliss, waves of God, waves of love into this word.

But if we do not develop this inward joy, no political program either of the Left or the Right will redeem us. Friend, if you want to save the planet, save your awareness.