Human power has grown a millionfold since the Industrial Revolution — but human care has not kept pace. In this video, Matthieu Ricard reflects on AI as the latest expression of this imbalance, asking what happens when ethically neutral intelligence develops without compassion.
In 2013, Amanda Nguyen was three months from graduating Harvard. She'd spent summers at NASA, hunting for planets. She was the daughter of Vietnamese refugees who once read the stars to find their way to freedom by boat. She had one dream since childhood: to go to space.
Three days after her 22nd birthday, a classmate raped her.
She did everything she was told to do. Hospital. Forensic exam. Rape kit collected as evidence.
Then she found out the evidence had an expiration date.
Massachusetts gave her 15 years to decide whether to press charges. But her state would destroy the rape kit in just 6 months — unless she filed a renewal request. Every six months. For fifteen years. With no instructions on how. She'd have to relive the worst day of her life on a recurring deadline, just to stop the system from erasing its own evidence.
She checked the other 49 states. The rules were a patchwork — some kept evidence for years, some for months, some charged survivors to even collect it. Justice depended on a zip code.
So in 2014, at 23, with zero legislative experience, she wrote a bill herself.
For two years she sat in congressional offices hearing "this isn't a priority" from staffers who'd never been asked to wait six months to matter. She kept showing up anyway.
In 2016, the Sexual Assault Survivors' Rights Act passed the Senate 89–0 and the House 399–0 — unanimous, in one of the most divided Congresses in history. President Obama signed it on October 7, 2016. Nguyen stood in the Oval Office. She was 24.
That law covered federal cases only — about 1% of assaults. So she kept going, state by state, helping pass similar protections in more than 40 states.
In 2019, she was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.
And the dream she'd put on hold? On April 14, 2025, Amanda Nguyen flew to space aboard Blue Origin's NS-31 — becoming the first Vietnamese and Southeast Asian woman ever to leave Earth's atmosphere. She carried 169 lotus seeds from Vietnam with her, a gift of peace marking 50 years since the end of the Vietnam War.
When she landed, she said: "I want all survivors — or anyone who has ever had a dream deferred — to know: you will make it through."
She delayed her own dream for over a decade to fight for people she'd never meet. Then she reached for the stars anyway.
The Sun has only 22 galactic orbits left.
Earth races around the Sun at ~67,000 mph (107,000 km/h), giving us our familiar 365.25-day year and changing seasons.
But the Sun is in motion too—hurtling through the Milky Way at ~514,000 mph (828,000 km/h) on a grand orbit around the galactic center. One complete lap, known as a cosmic year, takes roughly 225–230 million years.
When the Sun finished its most recent galactic orbit, the earliest dinosaurs were just beginning to roam Earth.
Since its birth ~4.6 billion years ago, our star has completed about 20 such orbits.
Stellar models predict the Sun will keep fusing hydrogen in its core for another ~5 billion years before it swells into a red giant and eventually fades into a white dwarf. At its current orbital speed, that leaves roughly 22 more laps around the Milky Way.
Each cosmic year sweeps the entire Solar System tens of thousands of light-years across the galaxy—through dense spiral arms rich with star-forming regions, past ancient globular clusters, and amid countless other stars.
Continents drift, mountains rise and erode, entire species evolve and vanish—all within a tiny fraction of one galactic circuit.
Human civilization, from the first cities to today’s digital age, has existed for less than 0.001% of a single cosmic year.
We are passengers on a star halfway through its ~10-billion-year galactic journey across a 100,000-light-year-wide disk—witnessing just the briefest sliver of one ongoing lap in an unimaginably vast cosmic dance.
Most people misunderstand compassion — confusing it with naivety, weakness, or blind forgiveness. In this video, Matthieu Ricard explains why altruism isn't idealism — it's the only workable response to the challenges we actually face.
"🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸BREAKING: FBI & DEA Raid Ex-Chicago Police Chief's Mansion — 1.2 Tons Drugs & $98M Cash Seized!"
For 23 years, Lieutenant Marcus Delaney was a decorated hero of the Chicago Police Department, trusted with the city's most sensitive narcotics intelligence. In reality, he was the architect of a $2.4 billion criminal empire. A pre-dawn raid on his high-security mansion uncovered not just an industrial-scale cache of narcotics and nearly $100 million in cash, but an advanced underground command center used to coordinate over 8,700 drug shipments nationwide. Discover how a veteran officer exploited his badge to build a logistics machine that infiltrated the highest levels of the American justice system, operating from the shadows for years.
September 29, 1978.
A 15-year-old girl named Mary Vincent was hitchhiking from Northern California to visit her grandfather in Los Angeles.
A 50-year-old man named Lawrence Singleton offered her a ride.
Two other hitchhikers warned her not to get into the van.
She got in anyway.
Hours later, Singleton drove into a remote area, attacked her, raped her, and struck her unconscious.
Before dawn, he used a hatchet to sever both of her forearms.
Then he dragged her body into a drainage culvert and left her there to die.
What happened next sounds impossible.
Mary regained consciousness.
Alone.
Bleeding.
Without either arm.
She remembered something she had learned years earlier: pack the wounds with dirt to slow the bleeding.
So she did.
Then she climbed out of the ravine.
And started walking.
Nearly four miles.
A passing couple finally found her on Interstate 5 and rushed her to a hospital.
She survived.
Most people would understand if survival was the end of the story.
For Mary, it was only the beginning.
While recovering, she helped police create a detailed description of her attacker.
Singleton was arrested within days.
Six months later, Mary entered the courtroom wearing prosthetic arms and testified against the man who had tried to kill her.
He was convicted.
The sentence shocked the nation.
Just 14 years.
He served only 8 years and 4 months before being released.
Mary spent those years fighting battles nobody could see.
Depression.
Nightmares.
Poverty.
Homelessness.
The daily reality of learning how to navigate a world without hands.
She raised two sons.
She survived.
And then she discovered something unexpected.
Art.
Using prosthetics, she taught herself to create colorful portraits and sculptures.
She became a speaker, an advocate, and a voice for survivors of violent crime.
Then, in 1997, the phone rang.
Lawrence Singleton had been arrested again.
This time he was accused of murdering a woman named Roxanne Hayes.
Mary wasn't required to testify.
She chose to anyway.
She walked into another courtroom.
Faced him a second time.
And told the jury exactly who he was.
Singleton was convicted and sentenced to death.
He died of cancer in prison in 2001.
But Mary's story was never really about him.
It was about what happened after.
She helped inspire changes to sentencing laws.
She founded a support organization for victims.
She became a mother, an artist, a mentor, and a survivor.
Years after the attack, Mary said something that captures her entire life:
"I will never get over being attacked. I wake up every morning with a constant reminder. But I can move past it."
Not everyone gets a second chance.
Mary Vincent got one.
And spent the rest of her life making it count.
A submerged Buddha revealed in 2017, when the water level was lowered by a construction project. Carved into a riverside cliff, it was meant to protect travelers. Fuzhou, China, Ming dynasty, around 1400 AD....
The statue is known as the Hongmen Buddha and is believed to date to the early Ming period. For centuries it stood along an important stretch of the Gan River, a major north-south transportation route linking inland China with the Yangtze River system.
Local tradition held that the carving was created to calm dangerous currents and safeguard boat traffic. River travel was the lifeblood of commerce in imperial China, but floods, rapids, and shifting channels made many waterways hazardous. Religious monuments were often placed at strategic locations where travelers sought protection and good fortune.
The Buddha remained largely hidden after the construction of a reservoir in the 20th century raised water levels. During a period of unusually low water in 2017, the carving became visible again, drawing archaeologists and historians eager to study a monument that had been concealed for decades.
The Gan River corridor was one of the most important trade arteries in southern China, carrying goods such as tea, porcelain, silk, and rice between central and southeastern regions for more than a thousand years.
#archaeohistories
Eighty-seven-year-old Dorothy Mitchell fired her professional home care nurse and replaced her with a heavily tattooed biker. Her children were furious and even threatened to have her declared mentally unfit.
I’m her neighbor in apartment 4A, and I saw the whole situation unfold. What her family never understood — what almost no one knew except me — was exactly why she made that choice.
Dorothy had lived in 4B for over four decades. After her husband George passed away in 2003, her three adult children moved to different states and only visited a couple of times a year. She battled advanced Parkinson’s and osteoporosis, but the deepest pain was the crushing loneliness that never seemed to leave her.
The home care agency kept rotating different nurses. They performed their duties efficiently — feeding her, bathing her, giving medication — then left. Dorothy started leaving her front door slightly ajar just to hear the sounds of life in the hallway.
Then one cold Tuesday in January, Michael arrived.
I spotted him through my peephole: a towering man, maybe 6’4”, covered in tattoos, with a long beard and a patched leather vest, carrying grocery bags. I stepped out quickly to confront him.
He turned with a warm, disarming smile. “Just bringing some groceries for Miss Dorothy. She called me.”
From inside, Dorothy called out happily, “Michael? Come on in — and bring my nosy neighbor with you!”
Inside, Dorothy sat in her recliner, glowing with a smile I hadn’t seen in months. She introduced Michael as her new helper and announced she had already fired the agency.
As Michael put away the groceries in all the right places, he handed her medications with such tenderness it was striking. Dorothy patted his big hand affectionately and thanked him.
When I asked how they met, Dorothy’s eyes lit up. “He tried to steal my purse,” she said with a grin.
Michael chuckled and told the real story. Three weeks earlier, he had been riding through the neighborhood and saw Dorothy stranded on a bench outside in freezing weather. The elevator was broken, and she couldn’t get back up to her fourth-floor apartment.
He stopped to help. She assumed he wanted money and tried to give him her purse. Instead, he carried her up all four flights of stairs. When she asked why he was helping a stranger with nothing in return, he simply said she needed it and he was there.
That moment broke something open in Dorothy. She invited him for tea. He stayed for hours. He returned the next day, and the day after. A week later, she let the agency go.
“They treat me like a job,” she told me firmly. “Michael treats me like a human being.”
Michael later shared that Dorothy reminded him of his own grandmother, who had died alone in a nursing home while he was overseas in the military. He vowed never to let another elderly woman feel that abandoned if he could prevent it.
In the months that followed, their routine became beautiful. Michael arrived every morning at nine. He helped her with personal care, cooked meals, and spent hours talking with her. He bought a wheelchair out of his own pocket and took her out — to the park, the library, and the café she used to visit with George. People stared at the sight of this massive, tattooed biker pushing a tiny elderly woman, but Dorothy loved it.
She started attending his motorcycle club events, where dozens of bikers called her “Miss Dorothy” and competed to bring her treats. For the first time in years, she felt truly alive.
Then her children found out.
Her daughter Sarah called me, outraged, accusing Michael of being dangerous and taking advantage of their mother. When the three siblings eventually showed up unannounced, they stormed in while Michael was there, shouting accusations of elder abuse and exploitation.
Dorothy rose from her chair — something she rarely managed anymore — and told them to leave. With tears and fury, she defended Michael, pointing out that he had been there every single day while they were absent. “He makes me feel like I matter,” she said.
The family pushed for a competency hearing. But after the judge spoke with Dorothy, Michael, me, and other neighbors, he ruled in her favor. He described her decision as unconventional but clearly well thought out, and even highlighted improvements in her health records.
In the end, her children cut off contact completely. Dorothy was hurt, but realistic. “They were only interested in my money, not in me.”
Months later, Dorothy suffered a bad fall and broke her hip. Michael rode in the ambulance with her, holding her hand, and stayed by her side through surgery and recovery. When the hospital suggested a nursing home, he refused. He moved into her apartment, slept on a cot, and learned everything needed to care for her — wound care, physical therapy, medications. His club brothers stepped up too, bringing food, cleaning, and covering shifts so he could rest.
When her children visited one last time suggesting she go to a facility, Dorothy sent them away. “I already have my family right here.”
That was eight months ago. Though her health continues to decline, Dorothy is surrounded by love and care. Last week, she took my hand while Michael was out and asked me to share her story one day.
“Tell them about Michael,” she said. “Tell them a tattooed biker gave an old woman the happiest years of her life. Tell them he’s the reason I’m leaving this world with dignity instead of in loneliness.”
So I’m keeping my promise.
The next time you see someone who looks like Michael, don’t be too quick to judge. Sometimes the most dangerous-looking people are the ones who show up every day — while the ones in suits only appear when there’s an inheritance at stake.
Dorothy knows the difference.
And now, so do you.
We are deeply saddened by the passing of Dr. Robert A. F.
Thurman.
Bob Thurman was not only one of the world's foremost scholars and teachers of Tibetan Buddhism, but also a longtime friend of our founder, Dr. Alexander Berzin. They were classmates at Harvard and remained close friends throughout their lives.
Reflecting on Bob's passing, Dr. Berzin writes:
"It was through Bob's encouragement and influence that I went to Dharamsala on a Fulbright Fellowship and began my lifelong association with His Holiness the Dalai Lama and his teachers. For that, and for his enduring friendship over so many years, I remain profoundly grateful."
Through his scholarship, teaching, translation work, and tireless efforts to make Tibetan Buddhism accessible to the modern world, Bob touched and inspired countless lives.
We extend our heartfelt condolences to his family, friends, students, and all those whose lives were enriched by his wisdom, kindness, and extraordinary dedication to the Dharma.
May his memory and his contributions to the Dharma continue to benefit beings for generations to come. 🙏
Before he became a Hollywood star, Denzel Washington was just a 7-year-old boy who walked into a library looking for a book for school.
The person who helped him was Connie Mauro, a children’s librarian in Mount Vernon, New York. She found him a small book to read over the weekend and issued him his very first library card.
For her, it was an ordinary act of kindness. For him, it was the beginning of something he would never forget.
Nearly 50 years passed.
Denzel became a world-famous actor. Connie reached the age of 99 and was living in a nursing home in Georgia. When he learned about her, he called her. Then he kept a promise: he went to visit her.
He walked in, hugged her, took her hands, and told her that he still remembered that day. That small gesture had left a lasting mark on his life.
Connie had no idea who that little boy would become. She had simply done her job with kindness.
Sometimes we change someone’s life without even realizing it.
All it takes is a book. A word. A heartfelt act of kindness.
And maybe, half a century later, that person comes back for one simple reason: to say, “Thank you.”
🇺🇸🇵🇸🇮🇷 Confrontación brutal a Marco Rubio.
Ciudadanos estadounidenses lo enfrentaron sin piedad antes de que saliera huyendo.
“¡Eres un criminal! ¿Nos escuchas con tus grandes orejas?
¡Eres un cocu de Israel! ¡
Eres un criminal de guerra! ¡Tienes sangre en las manos!
¡Vete a la mierda!
¡Suelta a Palestina, Líbano, Irán y Cuba!”
Rubio no supo cómo responder y escapó visiblemente incómodo.
El pueblo americano ya no se calla.
Cada vez más ciudadanos confrontan directamente a los políticos que sirven al lobby sionista y financian el genocidio.
“I want to see Donald Trump hung by the neck till death according to the Constitution of the United States.” — Kenneth O’Keefe, former U.S. Marine and Gulf War veteran.
After visiting the graves of 168 children killed in Minab, O’Keefe says he broke down crying “like a baby” for the first time since his mother died.
What follows is one of the most furious anti-war condemnations you will hear from an American veteran.
Stay tuned for the full interview on The Sanchez Effect.
🇹🇭 Thai police arrested six Nigerians running a romance scam ring built on AI-generated faces and fake video calls.
They posed as pilots, doctors, and engineers, targeting Thai women, and claimed a package was stuck in customs requiring a transfer fee.
“I see every person simply as another human beingbeyond nationality, religion, or status. Divisions create conflict, but our shared humanity is the true foundation for peace, compassion, and a happier world.” (Video: 11 Nov 2014)
#DalaiLama#BeyondDifferences#Compassion #OneHumanity
The Intha fishermen of Myanmar row with their legs, balancing skillfully while navigating the waters of Inle Lake.
[📹 Culture Trip]
#WhatsHappeningInMyanmar#InleLake
À 95 ans, le philosophe et professeur américain Noam Chomsky a perdu la capacité de parler et d’écrire, marquant la fin d’une époque durant laquelle il a dévoilé des vérités profondes sur les systèmes mondiaux. Parmi ses réflexions les plus mémorables, on retrouve :
« Il n’existe pas de pays pauvres — seulement des systèmes ayant échoué dans la gestion des ressources. »
« Personne n’insérera la vérité dans votre esprit ; c’est quelque chose que vous devez découvrir par vous-même. »
« Pour dominer un peuple, créez une menace imaginaire plus grande que vous-même, puis proposez-vous comme son protecteur. »
« L’une des leçons les plus claires de l’histoire : les droits ne sont pas simplement accordés — ils se gagnent par l’effort et la lutte. »
« Dénaturer l’histoire pour glorifier de “grands hommes” enseigne aux gens qu’ils sont impuissants et doivent attendre un héros, au lieu d’agir eux-mêmes. »
« Le monde est complexe et déroutant ; si vous refusez de faire face à cette confusion, vous risquez de devenir une copie de l’esprit de quelqu’un d’autre. »
« Pour contrôler les gens, faites-leur croire qu’ils sont la cause de leurs propres échecs et que le salut viendra d’une force extérieure. »
« Le monde finira par regretter les idées qui détournent l’humanité de sa véritable nature. Reconnaître les valeurs authentiques est essentiel. »