We want to change the world for the better.
Human beings have the capacity to do this, for making life satisfying and meaningful for all human beings, for being kind, for resolving conflicts intelligently, for protecting other species and using all the planet’s resources wisely – for building the world rather than tearing it down.
Why aren’t we doing this?
First, in some ways of course we are making progress but we have not taken our creative potential seriously enough. We don’t seem to realize that humans have this potential, that there is an impulse in everyone toward betterment that can be freed from grasping and fear, that can be fostered and set free. We can support people in creating their own lives. Together, paying attention to all voices, hearing clearly, letting everyone contribute, we can change the world.
What can any one person do?
Changing the Earth is of course a very broad goal, too much to handle all at once. What makes it possible, like the Bodhisattva vow, is surrendering one’s own agenda without giving up hope. Trusting both what we can do together and what the mind can offer beyond our analytical processes.
Having specific agendas is valuable as long as one is not attached to the outcomes or the agenda as the way things must be done. Something everyone can do is have a consistent meditation practice, a practice that is open to change, to emptiness, and to possibility, to the kind of practice the opens the mind and heart to transformational potentials because of its receptive nature, its readiness to flow with unfolding processes, riding the waves of transformation rather than accommodation.