Wisdom Area: Mission and Fulfillment€¦ · Web viewOlder people, if they are healthy, have learned how to successfully regulate their emotions. And as a result of that, they can

LEGACY OF WISDOMwww.legacyofwisdom.org

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Project Directors: Jay Goldfarb Tom Valente Mostackerstrasse 11 7350 S. Tamiami Trail, Suite 214 4051 Basel, Switzerland Sarasota, FL 34231, USA Tel/fax +41- 61-361 5375 Tel. +1-941 927 5907 Fax 923-3205

Team & Sponsors: Ram Dass, Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, Roshi Joan Halifax, Harry Moody, Dr. Sarita Bhalotra, Dr. Rodolfo Musco, Mickey Lemle, Judy Goggin

Wisdom Area: Aging Lifestyles and RelationshipsOur models of aging lifestyles are dramatically shifting. We are living longer and many of us are seeking new levels of engagement, activity and meaning. Staying creative appears to be an important part of a good quality of later life. Relationships with family, friends and an extended network are vital links to this creativity, yet relationship attachments, expectations and habits often guide older people to less flexibility and to become stuck in regimen. Complete with all of the psychological & physical issues that can accompany such a picture, it remains a fact that the majority of older people today are simply living alone.

Question: What are key personal elements to pay attention to when deciding upon a style of living for my aging years?

YouTube Video: Legacy of Wisdom - Roshi Joan Halifax -Choose Lifestyle QualitiesYouTube URL: www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zRmNeWFJv8Length: 5:32

Interviewee: Roshi Joan Halifax (www.upaya.org)

is a Buddhist teacher, Zen priest, anthropologist, and author. She is Founder, Abbot, and Head Teacher of Upaya Zen Center, a Buddhist monastery in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

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http://www.legacyofwisdom.org/


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She has worked in the area of death and dying for over thirty years and is Director of the Project on Being with Dying. For the past twenty-five years, she has been active in environmental work.

A Founding Teacher of the Zen Peacemaker Order, her work and practice for more than three decades has focused on engaged Buddhism. Of recent, Roshi Joan Halifax is a distinguished invited scholar to the Library of Congress and the only woman and Buddhist to be on the Advisory Council for the Tony Blair Foundation.

She is Founder and Director of the Upaya Prison Project that develops programs on meditation for prisoners. She is founder of the Ojai Foundation, was an Honorary Research Fellow at Harvard University, and has taught in many universities, monasteries, and medical centers around the world.

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Question: What are key personal elements to pay attention to when deciding upon a style of living for my aging years?

Transcript:I think one of the most important qualities is altruism. I’ll give you an example of a person in our community. He’s in his eighties, his name is Ray Olsen, he’s a physician, he’s one of my priests and he’s head of our prison project. And he gets in his car and drives to the prison a number of times a week. And he just loves doing this. He really feels the sense of mission and purpose. And he’s not sort of soggy about it. The sense of service is just right there in his heart. He’s not prideful; it’s more a sense of absolute delight. But the delight is actually grounded in curiosity. He is interested in these men. He wants to help. But his help I think comes more from a base of genuine human interest. He cares about them. And he has phenomenal physical vitality in this regard.

So it is not just a matter of elders who are sitting on a seat of wisdom. But how can we actually engage our elders in active social service projects? Whether it is sitting in a vigil room for a dying person or working in the prison system or going down to the Salvation Army and helping to move food out to the homeless. This sense of altruism builds confidence in people as they age and gives a kind of depth. One of the components of altruism is compassion. Older people, if they are healthy, have learned how to successfully regulate their emotions. And as a result of that, they can actualize a kind of universal compassion where they feel the truth of the suffering of the world and they have the capacity to respond skillfully or to be a presence in the world of equanimity.

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The development of these pro-social mental qualities depends a little bit on the nature of the individual, but it also depends on what the society values. And that’s I think one of the critical things here. If we see a kind of Schadenfreude in the world, a sort of punishing attitude as a characteristic that is modeled in the media or in our politicians... When an elder falls down they can be responded to by Schadenfreude or through the means of compassion. To really help the development of pro-social qualities I feel we need to reach deeper into our educational system. I feel the elders should be in our educational system as resources from K-12 (Kindergarten-twelfth grade). This is not just a matter of wise old university professors but this is really reaching deep into the development of young people and the positive regard in which we hold elders in allowing others the opportunity to actually contribute to the development of young people in our society.

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Wisdom Area: Mission and Fulfillment€¦ · Web viewOlder people, if they are healthy, have learned how to successfully regulate their emotions. And as a result of that, they can