In order to survive, our civilisation needs a paradigm shift. The way to solve the enormous problems of our times must first begin with Inner Transformation. This deep conviction is based on my own journey of spiritual evolution.
In my life, I have had two major transformative experiences.
The first one was when I went on my first Vipassana retreat, nearly twenty years ago. At the time, I was living in circumstances that most people would consider desirable, with all the exterior signs of ‘success’. Yet, I felt something was missing. Thirty years in banking and finance have taken its toll. I was stressed, angry, arrogant, and full of desires. I felt ‘empty’ inside. I was looking for ‘meaning’. The ten-day Vipassana retreat was an awakening; it launched me on a spiritual journey. Ever since then, I meditate in a disciplined way every day. I go on retreats at least once a year. I only read spiritual books. From a mere ‘philanthropic’ funder, I became an agent of change. From the standpoint of a key operator in the market economy, I question its very foundations. Thanks to my hunger, my consciousness evolved.
My second transformative experience was earlier this year, at a gathering in India. A group of 80 people – most of whom didn’t know one another at the beginning, became brothers and sisters for life after seven days. Direct exposure to, and intimate interaction with, extraordinary human beings who manifest the Light through genuine acts of generosity, made me feel with all my heart – that, WITHOUT LOVE, I AM NOTHING. Twenty years of inner works had not brought about much change, because it was the ego carrying out these actions! It was the ego that has been sitting on the meditation cushion most of the time over the last twenty years. It was the ego that was conducting ‘philanthropic’ deeds.
However, this ‘sudden’ realisation would not have taken place without the twenty years of inner preparation. Another word for that inner preparation is purification. What became clear was that the purification was not enough; I must continue to work on it. At that gathering, when asked how we can serve better, a 97-year-old Swami said, “Prem and Pavitra”, Love and Purity. My mind can co-opt Prem (love), and when performing philanthropic deeds I may tell myself that I am acting out of love. But, deep down in my heart, I know whether I am acting gratuitously, or there is a motive to my action. That is Pavitra (purity) – something that cannot be co-opted, so I am deeply in the practice of that, for without Purity, love is not love.
And then, within 24 hours of that reckoning, came a second realisation. I felt with all my soul that together with kindred spirits – who by themselves are also NOTHINGS – we can be EVERYTHING! It’s a case of 1 + 1 +1 equal not 3, but infinity! WITH LOVE, I AM ONE WITH ALL CREATION, AND TOGETHER WE ARE EVERYTHING. With love, we unleash the spirit that is within us and that flows in the space between us.
What has happened is the actualisation of the Me-to-We-to-Us spiritual journey: From ‘Me’ –inner transformation; to ‘We’ – social coherence based on authentic, non-transactional human relationships; to ‘Us – emergence.
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Our world is unravelling at an accelerating rate: mental burnout and depression, societal fragmentation and obscene levels of inequity, species extinctions and environmental destruction; these are signs of a triple rupture – spiritual (with the Self), social (with society) and ecological (with nature).
Take the two biggest evils in the world today – climate and inequity. The situation with these two tragedies is worse today than it was five years ago, and is going to be worse in five years’ time than it is today, regardless of the number of philanthropic deeds that all of us perform between now and then. So, what to do?
Currently our economy consumes 1.7 times the regeneration capacity of our planet. But that’s just the average. In the advanced economies, the current consumption rate is six planets. We all know damn well that we don’t need all the things we buy, that we consume far too much. Are we ready to change our lifestyle drastically? Can leaders, countries and companies be convinced to produce less, that Degrowth is the way to save the world?
Terrible as they are, climate and inequity are not the only evils produced by our culture. The wealth maximisation motive automatically results in wars, death and famines. Profit is the reason underlying all the wars in this century. We are responsible for these deaths and destructions.
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We need a paradigm shift. Consciousness transformation at scale is necessary to stop the unravelling in the world.
When discussing the necessity for a paradigm shift, Jay Coen Gilbert, co-founder of B-Lab, says, “The current extractive and exploitative economy is not designed for the benefit of all. The source code error that runs the operating system of capitalism is called ‘Shareholder Supremacy’, meaning a company exists to maximize profits for its shareholders. Everything else flows from that core source code. Whatever we’re doing is going to run up against that edge. Until and unless we rewrite the source code, nothing will change, other than marginally…We need to transition from the slave economy to the sacred economy, with the heart at the center.”
Originally, ‘Philanthropy’ refers to the essence of what it means to be human – the love of mankind. In Vietnamese, Philanthropy is called Từ Thiện – merciful and kind. A philanthropist may also be called nhà Hảo Tâm – good heart. So, let’s not forget the sacred root of the word Philanthropy. Unfortunately, in today’s capitalist culture, it just means the act of giving money. We have forgotten that money is just one of many forms of wealth, along with compassion, attention, time, knowledge, networks, etc. Nobody would disagree if you say Mother Teresa was one of the biggest philanthropists ever, although she had no money.
The worship of money is a relatively recent phenomenon that only started 500 years ago, when Francis Bacon said “science should torture nature’s secrets out of her, and make it into a slave for human ends”, and René Descartes wrote “the purpose of science is to make ourselves the masters and possessors of nature”. From this epistemology, capitalism was born, and with it came violent appropriation acts to uphold it, like the enclosure movement, colonisation, the slave trade, etc, all of which still continue today under the guise of neoliberalism.
Money has not always been universally revered like it is today. The old indigenous cultures of or the cultures of the East – not that they were flawless, they had lots of issues too, but none mortal – did honour values like communalism, cooperation, reciprocity, non-violence, and solidarity with all Life. In the old Confucianist societies of China, Korea, and Vietnam, scholars were at the top of society because they had the knowledge to maintain social order; then came farmers, because they fed the people; then artisans because they produced goods for everyday use; last were merchants – all they did was buy and sell things. Even in India, the four castes were the Brahmins (or the priestly class) at the top, then the Kshatriyas (rulers, administrators and warriors), then the Vaishyas (merchants and other semi-educated individuals), and the Shudras (or the labouring classes who serve others). In other words, those who had money were at the bottom, because the elders understood that the corrupting power of money needed to be reined in. That’s the opposite of today’s world, where billionaires are at the top.
We have got to this point because for the last 500 years, we have lost spiritual direction. A paradigm shift is required to re-introduce spiritual direction to the world, and liberate ourselves from the deity of money.
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Satish Kumar, a former Jain monk, made this amazing statement: “The urgent challenge facing the world is not to give more to the poor, but to take less from the poor.”
What does Satish mean? Jains originated from India over 2500 years ago. For them, there is a moral imperative to live within reasonable limits. Their response to consumerism is to reduce what we consider to be our need. For Jains, to take more than one’s essential requirements means depriving other people and is theft; to use up finite resources at a greater rate than they can be replenished is stealing from future generations. The urgent challenge facing the world is to stop ‘stealing’. To live simply so that others may live.
The late Bishop Desmond Tutu said the same thing in a different way: “There comes a point when we need to just stop pulling people out of the river. We need to go upstream and find out who pushed them in.” When we do that and if we look carefully, we will find out that it’s also we who push all these people into the river, with our support for a civilisation founded on the pursuit of self-interest.
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Many of us might accept the need for a paradigm shift. Some of us might even be willing to let go of greed and personally lead a simpler life. However, most of us still believe that it’s impossible to convince the vast majority that Less is More, when the stated objective of every nation on earth (except a tiny one, Bhutan) is to pursue GDP growth, when the goal of most companies is to grow revenues, and when the aim of most people is to have more money?
It’s very hard indeed. It is hard because our heart has been hardened, by 500 years of trauma caused by capitalism and its children. We need to be healed, to be purified via Inner Works.
That’s why everything must start with Inner Transformation. It is at least 80% of the work. That’s the ‘Me’. On the journey, nurtured by the energy of kindred spirits in our ‘awaking circles’, we will see solutions emerge; that’s the ‘We’ and the ‘Us’.
Inner Works is not necessarily contemplative. Purification may take other forms – like art, music, poetry – as long as they lead to the Inner Light. Worldly activities need not be radically from what we do today. We may change career, or we may continue in the same occupation, but why and how we do anything is now guided by the Inner Light, in a spirit of Service for the well-being of all.
But purify we must; act we must; change paradigm, change the system we must. Not to change the current system – or to nourish it via a lifestyle of excessive consumption, or to support companies that pursue profit at the expense of societal well-being – is to continue taking from the poor.
How we affect change in the world is up to each of us, and depends on our individual gifts and callings. Teach mindfulness to children. Heal migrants and refugees. Do impact investing. Fund climate initiatives. Be an advocate. Buy organic. Fly less. In general, consume less. Produce longer-lasting goods. Cut advertising expenditures. Shift from ownership to usership. End food waste. Scale down ecologically-destructive industries. Treat everyone and everything – your employees, customers, suppliers, animals, nature – kindly.
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Even at this 11th hour, I am still hopeful.
First, I am hopeful because of the lessons of history.
Based on studies of human spiritual development, the philosopher Ken Wilber has found that whenever the leading edge of spiritual evolution covers around 10% of the population, far-reaching changes occur. This happened in the late 18th century, when 10% of the population in the West reached the rational stage. Then, in the 1960s, with the pluralistic stage. Today, many believe that the 10% tipping-point for the next level – the Integral stage – may be reached by the 2030s.
For a paradigm shift to happen, 10% of the population need to awaken to the fact that we are all interconnected. I want to be part of that 10%. I want to be an active participant in helping nudge humanity towards the next stage of spiritual development. In fact, I consider that to be the #1 objective of all my activities.
I am also hopeful because of the younger generations. They are much more holistic and inclusive than their elders. These younger folks are actively working for a better world – a world built on union instead of separation, compassion rather than self-centeredness, a world focusing on well-being and sustainability instead of just economic and material development. The changes that they demand start with the inner selves. They demand that we live in truth. Now.
Finally, I am hopeful because I trust the universe. I deeply believe that when we are sincere in committing ourselves to change, Nature will help. Like the murmurations of starlings that form amazing patterns in the sky, sacred networks of noble friends can unlock a field of beauty and greater emergence that is invisible to its individual parts.
Namaste. “I honour the place in you which is of love, of truth, of light and of peace. When you are in that place inside you and I am in that place inside me, we are One.”
In 2018, Nguyễn Phương Lam retired as Co-founder and Co-head of the Private Equity business of Capital Group, and CEO of Capital International’s Singapore branch. In that position, he travelled to over 130 countries spanning the globe, which taught him the value of diversity and the importance of seeing life from the viewpoint of other people. A native of Vietnam, Lam graduated from high school in Brasil, university in France, and obtained his MBA from the Stanford Business School. Lam is involved (as an advocate, donor, or mentor) with numerous local civil society organisations and global NGO’s, including Acumen.org, Ashoka.org, and Endeavor.org. The philanthropic activities of Lam’s family aim primarily at promoting inner transformation and systems change, in pursuit of dignity and justice. A committed meditator, Lam believes deeply in Interspirituality and the Perennial wisdom.