I read a great article in the March 2009 issue of Ode Magazine introducing me to futurist, physicist and author on spirituality, meditation and the human mind, Peter Russell.
The article is a fascinating read, as is Peter’s website. Highlights of particular interest to fellow Buddhist practitioners:
Peter recommends measuring human age in days, not years. Here in the Northeast, we are able to experience the changing seasons that comprise a year, making the year of some relevance to our perception of age and passage of time. (Sidebar: An excellent book that uses the theme of seasons to help build a sense of gratitude is here). However, the passage of a single day may well be even more relevant, and certainly much more so for those living in regions with less or virtually no discernable change in seasons.
It was something I started doing 20 years ago. It just struck me that the day is the more natural cycle of our life. We’ve got 70, 80, maybe 100 years, but 20,000, 30,000 or 40,000 days to live on the planet. It’s a whole different perspective and makes us value each day. When you look at your life in days, time seems to expand. It helps make me more present.
Peter provides a handy age-in-days calculator on his website.
Widespread personal awakening (in the same sense of the word as understood by Buddhists) is absolutely essential for our world today.
(W)hatever happens [as a result of our global environmental crises], we’re moving into a world where there is going to be a lot of physical hardship and physical suffering…The more I looked at it, the more I realized that it didn’t matter which scenario you took. We still need to be doing exactly the same inner work to free ourselves from a self-centered, rather short-sighted mode of consciousness into a more open, compassionate, caring mode of consciousness…
My feeling is that we’re only going to come through this safely if we can let go of the old ways of thinking and have some shifts in our consciousness…What I try to do in my life and my work is focus on helping people see the value of that inner exploration and see how to do that. For me, teaching meditation is a fundamental way of doing it.
Very interesting, Mike. Russell’s quote on meditation and spiritual awakening reminds me of a quote from “The Quantum and the Lotus” by Matthieu Ricard and Trinh Xuan Thuan:
“Science does not produce wisdom. While the insights of science can help us change our world, only human thought and concern can enlighten us about the path we should follow in life. As a complement to science, therefore, we must also cultivate a ’science of the mind,’ or what we can call spirituality. This spirituality is not a luxury but a necessity.”
For me it seems fundamental challenge of our time whether we can collectively begin to relate to our world in a less greedy, aversive, and deluded way. Ultimately, however, this transformation can only take place moment to moment at the individual level — as Gandhi says, to “Be the change you wish to see in the world.”
While we’re on the topic of cultivating wisdom, I want to thank Mike for passing along this great link to Barry Schwartz’s TED talk on “the loss of wisdom”:
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/barry_schwartz_on_our_loss_of_wisdom.html
“Barry Schwartz makes a passionate call for ‘practical wisdom’ as an antidote to a society gone mad with bureaucracy. He argues powerfully that rules often fail us, incentives often backfire, and practical, everyday wisdom will help rebuild our world.”