Choosing between cooperation and selfishness

Cooperation is the creative force of evolution. Humans need cooperation in order to build increasingly complex levels of organization. It is also at the heart of humankind’s unprecedented achievement; it allows society to implement things …

The dolphinarium industry is a perfect example of institutionalized selfishness. Money is the driving force that creates and runs them. Their educational, recreational, and environmental facades are covers for the merciless enslavement of species gifted with rare intelligence and who …

Altruism is a natural manifestation of human goodness, of which we all have the potential, despite the many, often selfish, motivations that cross and sometimes dominate our minds.

Choosing altruism over selfishness

The search for selfish happiness is doomed to …

Recently during the course of only one day I heard these facts about the environment:

1) The Greenland glaciers are melting much faster than previously thought. This is because of the cumulated effects of the melting ice and the acceleration …

You have lived several times in a hermitage. How was it?

Great, beautiful! My longest retreat, initially planned for a year, lasted nine months; it was cut short in order to spend some time with my father who was at …

What is the best way to react to a “super-ego”?

The only answer it is to develop a different culture, a different mindset.

Is this realistic?

Violence has been decreasing for five centuries. Life in Europe has never been as …

What was your new life like when you became a disciple?

Kangyur Rinpoche taught me various practices: meditations, visualizations, reflection exercises on eternity, death, the value of life. He advised me to learn Tibetan. I first focused on the exercises …

Buddhism is a training of the mind. Can you explain what this means?

It is about abolishing the origin of suffering. What is the point of teaching if it doesn’t bring relief? A lot of suffering is “mind-made”, created in …

Until twelve thousand years ago, before humans had developed agriculture and animal husbandry, people lived in small hunter-gatherer societies that displayed equality, reciprocity, and cooperation between the sexes.

A few thousand years later our world, and the place of women …