Content
Editorial
CFFN: Annual Report 2009
Featured Articles
Miscellaneous
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Editorial
Enduring and temporary footprints of our toil
भर जन्म घाँस तिर मन् दिई धन कमायो
नाम केही रहोस भनेर कुवा खनायो।
.........................
यस घाँसीले कसरी आज दिए छ अर्ती
धिक्कार हो मकन् बस्नु नराखी किर्ति।
- भानुभक्त आचार्य
Some 250 years ago, Bhanunhakta Acharya, a Nepali poet who was then living in the capital city mingling with the royals, met a poor farm-helper who had saved his little money by cutting down even his survivalistic needs and constructed a wellspring for his village. What surprised the seemingly wealthy poet that the labourer was doing this to leave behind a legacy, which was an eye opener for the poet who was subsequently inspired to leave an enduring legacy of his own. Amidst the most grinding of hardships, the poor man found a profound significance in constructing the wellspring for a lasting benefit to his community expending all his life savings.
Today, we are rich in education and wealth, and work hard for ourselves and the society, but we rarely pause to scrutinize whether or not the results of our toil bring enduring legacy as aspired by the poor man. This tendency to be over captivated to achieve the short-term goals while overlooking the long-term is not only prevalent among individuals but also among the national and international organisations, where CFFN is no exception. With this realization, it seems necessary that we use our energy in such a way that our efforts could have enduring impact to the society. Imagine if the farm-helper spent his life only feeding buffalos! He would have retained a sense of purpose but it would have left no legacy despite pouring his life on the buffalos.
With our mission to help Nepal from a distant country, Canada, CFFN would reach great heights if we continue learning from our experiences and devise endeavours that carry long term implications. With this approach we will be closer to leave behind an enduring institution that acts as a wellspring for flowing knowledge not only in the proximity of the Himalayas but to the wider humanity. Let our efforts make positive contributions for now and in to the future!
CFFN Programs and Activities of Year 2008-2009:
Report from the Executive Board
The last year of Canada Forum for Nepal was full of exciting activities and achievements. While we pursued our traditional activities of organizing interaction programs and academic conference, we also shifted our gear in other legacy building pursuit in rural education in Nepal. We have acquired valuable understanding on many issues related to the education of rural children in Nepal. We have established target areas for pilot testing of our concepts.
In this respect, CFFN has continued its work with intentions of being useful in positive transformation of Nepal and in building better relations between the people of Canada with the people of Nepal. We remained a busy and energized. Here are some of the highlights of our activities of 2008-9 fiscal year:
Featured Articles:
The World As I See It
Albert Einstein
Source: American Institute of Physics, http://www.aip.org/history/einstein/essay.htm
"How strange is the lot of us mortals! Each of us is here for a brief sojourn; for what purpose he knows not, though he sometimes thinks he senses it. But without deeper reflection one knows from daily life that one exists for other people -- first of all for those upon whose smiles and well-being our own happiness is wholly dependent, and then for the many, unknown to us, to whose destinies we are bound by the ties of sympathy. A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life are based on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving...
"I have never looked upon ease and happiness as ends in themselves -- this critical basis I call the ideal of a pigsty. The ideals that have lighted my way, and time after time have given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been Kindness, Beauty, and Truth. Without the sense of kinship with men of like mind, without the occupation with the objective world, the eternally unattainable in the field of art and scientific endeavors, life would have seemed empty to me. The trite objects of human efforts -- possessions, outward success, luxury -- have always seemed to me contemptible.
"My passionate sense of social justice and social responsibility has always contrasted oddly with my pronounced lack of need for direct contact with other human beings and human communities. I am truly a 'lone traveler' and have never belonged to my country, my home, my friends, or even my immediate family, with my whole heart; in the face of all these ties, I have never lost a sense of distance and a need for solitude..."
"My political ideal is democracy. Let every man be respected as an individual and no man idolized. It is an irony of fate that I myself have been the recipient of excessive admiration and reverence from my fellow-beings, through no fault, and no merit, of my own. The cause of this may well be the desire, unattainable for many, to understand the few ideas to which I have with my feeble powers attained through ceaseless struggle. I am quite aware that for any organization to reach its goals, one man must do the thinking and directing and generally bear the responsibility. But the led must not be coerced, they must be able to choose their leader. In my opinion, an autocratic system of coercion soon degenerates; force attracts men of low morality... The really valuable thing in the pageant of human life seems to me not the political state, but the creative, sentient individual, the personality; it alone creates the noble and the sublime, while the herd as such remains dull in thought and dull in feeling.
"This topic brings me to that worst outcrop of herd life, the military system, which I abhor... This plague-spot of civilization ought to be abolished with all possible speed. Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism -- how passionately I hate them!
"The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science. Whoever does not know it and can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead, and his eyes are dimmed. It was the experience of mystery -- even if mixed with fear -- that engendered religion. A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, our perceptions of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which only in their most primitive forms are accessible to our minds: it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute true religiosity. In this sense, and only this sense, I am a deeply religious man... I am satisfied with the mystery of life's eternity and with a knowledge, a sense, of the marvelous structure of existence -- as well as the humble attempt to understand even a tiny portion of the Reason that manifests itself in nature."
In Search of Wisdom: The Values of Our Values
Dr Pramod Dhakal
Ottawa, Canada
2009 February 19
In most societies, the pressure of executing tasks is so strong that there is hardly ever time for contemplation and reflection. Our pursuits are hardly ever guided by our values - the emotionalized truths resident in us. Instead, our pursuits are driven by external pressures. We, who should have given up our lives to uphold our values, have turned into servile beings and find solace in belonging to a group, be it a community, organization, or a country. What we forget to realize is that we are most often neither united nor strong as our numbers would suggest. We are like an iron slab that is made up of magnetic particles but cannot exhibit magnetic strength. To turn into a magnet, the magnetic particles in the slab must be aligned in one direction. Similarly an organization or a group of people becomes strong only when everyone is guided by common values and aspires to reach a common goal.
Our values feed us a psychological energy that is needed for us to be devoted to a cause. The intensity of that energy determines how strong, aware, receptive, and intent we are to the cause. When we become disinterested in the cause, it is often because our inner values do not coincide with the values embodied in the cause. On the contrary, no ridicule, prosecution, and death can deter us if we are pursuing something that embodies our endeared values. Even our entrepreneurship takes social or business direction depending on the types of values we carry. And our undertakings appear easier, and positive results come sooner, when our pursuits are for upholding our values. Therefore, a success driven societies or organizations must build their foundations on common values that bind and align all members to a single direction.
While recognizing the usefulness of having values, it must also be known that we cannot succeed through randomly picked values. If making money is our primary value, we may not be able to give as much respect to a professor of physics, mathematics, or philosophy as we would to a person of wealth. We may not be able to take creativity as a foremost value of our society. Similarly, a pursuit of comparative happiness (unlike absolute happiness) may give us a sense of purpose but may keep us fixated in minor issues. Often the ideas of "superiority", "inferiority", "righteousness" and "unrighteousness" sprout out of selecting values without giving careful thought. Beliefs like "my family, clan, caste, religion, color, or gender is superior to yours" rouse in us. Therefore, there exist some "values" - call them pseudo-values or complex - that can keep us ignorant, stagnated, tense, hateful, and jealous. If pseudo-values are perceived as values, our actions may be counterproductive, erasing even the past achievements. What we think as values may very well be attachment, anger, and pride. However, thoughtfully chosen values certainly lead us to a path of inspiration, creativity, and wisdom.
Scholars group values in many different ways. Some say there are absolute and relative values. They say that our absolute values are those fundamental values that are independent of our culture, race, religion and time. And relative values are those which reflect our personal, cultural, and religious views that may not necessarily be viewed by other people, other cultures, and religions with the same way as we do. They are experience-driven and may change over time. Others say that there are intrinsic values (something worthy in its own right such as happiness, truth and wisdom) and extrinsic values (some worth derived from external means or from the intrinsic values such as welfare or happiness derived from helping others). Some say there are material values (augmentation of desirability or monetary-worth of something) and philosophical values (ethical value of owning something). I would leave it to the scholars of philosophy to determine what else there may be. However, it would be practical if we categorize our values into inspirational, ethical, and preservative categories.
Inspirational values are the ideals that motivate us to DO something. They unleash our psychological energy, which propel us to create, invent, or produce something. This is the manifestation of productive energy hidden within us. The reason societies get into explosion of innovation and creativity is that they give great importance to inspirational values. "I want to be a scientist like Einstein" like energy comes from one of those inspirational values. Being a great scientist or philosopher may not bring me riches but I would be willing to trade my riches for my ability to be like Einstein. Therefore, our inspirational values determine the extent to which we pour our energy into our endeavours. In doing so, some people may channel their energy into monetary endeavours, while others my do it for beyond-monetary accomplishments.
The ethical values are those values, which motivate us to NOT DO something dishonourable. Ethical values deter us from doing something that would not be good either to ourselves or to those who have placed trust on us. This is a form of self censorship of our own will. Why we would not take a bribe even when it is offered to us? Why we would hire a person for her abilities although she is not like us? Why we well-treat people who seek services in our offices? These may be because we have ethical values that set boundaries to our deeds. For example we may serve people well if we put people in a position of respect. When a person is given a position of trust, his or her conduct may be evaluated based on the ethical values. When someone breaks ethical values, we may derive psychological energy to stop their degeneration. Most revolutions happen because of a sense of breakdown of ethics in society.
The preservative values motivate us to GIVE PERMANENCE to our DEEDS. These values help us leave legacy by preserving, solidifying, or immortalizing our achievements so that the fruit of our labour could be enjoyed and appreciated by future generations. It is similar to how inherent mechanisms for survival and growth of a species emerge along with the emergence of a species. In organizations and societies, these values give rise to institutions and traditions, although they must evolve over time to suit the contemporary context.
All aspiring societies and organizations should better know what their common values are. Or else they may be just wandering like a crow lost in a cloud. It is not proper for me to say what those values should be. However, I would present five examples in each three categories of values. It is up to the collective aspiration of concerned people to decide what those values should be for them.
Values unleash our psychological energy that propels us to do something, to set boundaries on what we do, and to give continuity to what we have achieved. Therefore, an aspiring society or organization must establish values and propel its deeds based on those values. When the values are engrained in the mindset of the members and their actions are guided by those values, the society or the organization would attain success and leave behind institutional legacy to their future generations.
(Pramod Dhakal is the Executive Director of Canada Forum for Nepal.)
Miscellaneous:
CFFN VACANCY ANNOUNCEMENT
Executive Secretary
The Executive Secretary would be based in Ottawa, Canada and is responsible for coordinating the organizational activities and managing official publications, and would report to the executive director. The candidate must have excellent writing and communication skills and basic computer skills, with Bachelor Degree or equivalent experience. Experience in international development would be an asset. Key Responsibilities:
Application and Interview Process: Qualified individuals may email a resume and cover letter explaining interest for the advertised position to, info@cffn.ca.
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The Light of Knowledge!
This newsletter - Concern Nepal - is a periodic publication of the Canada Forum for Nepal and is circulated electronically and posted in its website. We invite you to be part of the Forum by getting involved and by sending news, views, op-ed writings and research articles. You can reach us by sending email at [info [at] cffn.ca].