lundi 4 janvier 2016

IF YOU WISH TO BE HAPPY PRACTICE COMPASSION, IF YOU WANT TO MAKE OTHERS HAPPY PRACTICE COMPASSION

Yesterday I was watching a TED talk video from the director of the Harvard Project , which had followed a cohort of people in Boston, including Harvard College students 1938, for the past 75 years. It is illuminating what amounts for Happiness Health and Longevity!
In short: GOOD RELATIONSHIPS!
If you have time, you may wish to watch it. It is in English with no subtitles available.


The day before I had read a blog on addiction to Sadness! How to feel good being sad for yourself or for others or showing interest in their sadness.
http://theinnbythehealingpath.com/
In another blog I will write about wounded healers, a concept first expounded by CG Jung himself but the idea of wounded warriors appeal to me. I am not sure whether you need to be wounded to be a good healer, but as the TED talks would help you discover there are some fundamental principles that is universal to all religions and philosophies.
As I had been thinking about these things in the bright new days of this year 2016, as if on cue, I received yet another link to a TED talk by Barry Kerzin (a buddhist monk and a medical doctor and an international figure in the world of meditation).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNmR8rGKz5g&sns=em

The combination of all the above, two TED talks and the blog by David Spero calmed my mind this night before departure from Brittany.
I immediately wrote back to my friend. I was also thinking of MGM in Miami as well as NK in Little Rock and that delicious bakery of affections in the sky called CUBA...
I am sure my friend in Kuala Lumpur would forgive me to put here in my blog what is a private letter to her.
My dear friend MC:
It is evening here in Brittany and tomorrow I will begin my journey back to the American Indians.
So your video of Barry Kerzin arrived in time, to put my mind at ease for the days ahead with the Winnebago and Omaha Indians, then with my beloved Cubans.

Love Compassion Humour Laughter Sacrifice Mindfulness
we have talked about these things a lot of times and needless to say, You among my friends who live in the West have large doses of each of these. and I am glad that I benefited from your knowledge and search for knowledge when we were able to share the gift of time with each other as well, during my many trips to the Far East.



I have included the ted talk about Harvard Study where they followed a set of men over 75 years, an unique study group and then did every two years extensive interviews and over the years, found out what is the fundamental of Happiness... It is relationships.. paying attention to all sorts of relationships is what makes one happy, healthy as well an important predictor of good ageing and good old age, without memory loss. For a good life to be lived well and enjoyed well, you need good relationships, I do not only  mean a romantic relationship but solid relationships of people who practice Love and Compassion and who are living in the present and who are willing to give you the gift of time and with whom you can laugh out loud. 
I consider you one such friend
I am lucky to be with the Indians where I can count on so many friends, and also in Cuba where I am lucky to be amidst my good friends.
A man is only capable of having 10-15 good friends , unless of course they are Indians or Cubans, and just take good care of them, like you do, going out of the way to be there for your friends, regardless of what they could do for you or did for you .

I can truly say that you have been a great gift of a friend to me, one of the best friends I have had in my life

Things happen for a reason, we are not intelligent enough to understand why, Indians have said to me. I feel a Special Dawn in my life as I depart from Europe. Yogic philosophy teaches you to get rid of attachments, and if you practice what was outlined in these talks, the structural defects in our ways of thinking would simmer down as well.

This note will not be complete if I do not express my gratitude to my sister J and her husband J
my sister friends in the Indian country, DBSG in Yakama, MS in Winnebago and my Omaha sister WS in Nebraska.




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