Compassionante People, Compassionate Planet

SERES was recently involved with the Global Compassion Summit, held at UC Irvine on July 6-7, 2015  to celebrate the 80th birthday of His Holiness, the Dalai Lama. Of the various events help events to highlight the different areas in which His Holiness has had great impact on bringing compassion to the world, there were three that stood out for us as being particularly relevant, and carrying important messages of compassion, love and action to carry us through these challenging times. Addressing climate change, youth leadership and community resilience, I see these as being amongst the most essential ingredients in terms of determining wise action to move us forward towards building a thriving, peaceful future. They underpin all of SERES work, and I was grateful to see them show up at HHDL's birthday celebration. Here's how those themes manifest through the lens of global compassion.

• A COMPASSIONATE PLANET: a panel with His Holiness and other key scientists and community activities to look at the effects of global climate change and what must be done to take action on this critical issue. We encourage you to read this article by the Huffington Post that shares the Dalai Lama's call to action, coming so soon after Pope Francis's historic and urgent encyclical on climate change, in which he calls upon everyone to "protect our common home."
• YOUTH LEADERSHIP: a panel with his holiness and many inspiring young leaders (yay!) on the significance of teaching compassion and other universal human values through education. Our friends Play for Peace, who came to help celebrate the Community Picnic with us, also attended this session - read more about their thoughts on compassion in action through education. 
• COMPASSION IN ACTION FOR CLIMATE RESILIENCE: perhaps the most significant of all the activities for us was the Community Action Picnic - a collaboration of UCI's Sustainability Initiative and the Global Sustainability Resource Center, SERES, Play for Peace and Soul Cocina's Foodscapes with many community members, youth and students coming together to eat, play and talk about how we may step forward and engage with each other to create new systems and cultures of a life-sustaining society. Abigail Reyes, Director of the Sustainability Initiative, wrote a wonderful reflection about the importance of this work which we encourage you to read. One of our student leaders - Bushra Bangee - also wrote a beautiful piece on the climate ribbon, which was one of the central activities at the picnic.

Photo Credit: Diana Lofflin, UCI