Wednesday, February 11, 2009

All the way from Tibet!

I began reading a book by His Holiness the Dalai Lama over the holidays. It's about science and spirituality, and it includes certain aspects of living responsibly with our environment. I found his Web site and emailed him to ask him to explain his ideas a little better, and asked if we could ever truly achieve the "oneness with Nature" he hopes for.

His assistant Wangdue just wrote back this morning:

Dear Matt,

Thank you for your thoughtful mail. His Holiness also takes bath without using soap in order to save water for others' use.I think it is possible for us to achieve a state of equilibrium with nature, if each individual of this world contribute to save the limited resources we have and take initiative to recycle the resources we have already used.

Kind regards,

Sincerely yours,
Wangdue
Assistant
Office of His Holiness the Dalai Lama



Too cool! You gotta love the Internet. You can chat with important figures across the world, and learn so much.

Wednesday, February 4, 2009

Go green for Valentine's Day!

I'm not a huge fan of celebrating Valentine's Day -- due to a mix of my being single, plus the fact that, along with Christmas, people feel pressured to do things they could do on any other day -- but I am a huge fan of green ideas. Especially when said ideas just take a little thought and no money.

And so, I present: TreeHugger.com's Green Valentine Gift Guide. Granted, some of these ideas require buying a gift (i.e. the organic, fair-trade coffee beans; the chocolate gift box set; the bath & beauty oils; etc.), but some simply require a little bit of thought (the idea of a romantic bath; the picnic outdoors; the make-shift recycled-scrap card; etc.).

So take your pick and decide for yourself. It's not a bad mix, really, and some of these things I wouldn't mind supporting monetarily (who doesn't want to donate to an animal shelter? seriously!).

While you're there, be sure to check out the rest of the site. It's run by The Discovery Network, so it's as reliable a site as any.