http://www.almostbuddhist.com/news/2012/0150.html
“Now we have found that we’re still alive after the end of the world on 21 December 2012,the New Year is just around the corner. I’d therefore like to offer a suggestion for your ‘new year’s resolution’. Why not resolve not to waste your thoughts, time and energy. At the very least, you could try not to be wasteful on a material level, like saving energy by switching off the lights. Or not wasting food. Americans in particular, waste so much food, which is both insane and completely immoral. By comparison, Monica Lewinsky and that cigar barely registers on the scale. America’s waste of food, clothes and gasoline, though, is not only 100% immoral, it also carries with it immediate global consequences for the entire population of world and our environment.
‘Not to waste’ is the key to being rich and successful. Yet the Chinese have started learning the American art of conspicuous waste, imagining it to be a sign of great affluence and wealth. But when someone shits in their pants, it’s not something you should emulate. At this point, I should remind myself, and you, that although I’m using America as an example, this habit of profligate waste is now a global phenomenon, no longer confined to America and the Americans.
I have been told that the English queen uses the backs of old envelopes to write lists and notes on, a habit she picked up in the second World War that she has continued to practise until this day. We should all do such things.
Look around you, how much stuff do you have in your room? How much of it do your really need and how much is just waste? Of course, I’m not suggesting we should practise severe asceticism, I’m just pointing out a smart a way of making it possible for each and every one of us to live more affluently. Being wasteful is certainly not the way to enjoy your wealth.
I think I’m also haunted by something my mother always used to tell me when I was young and didn’t finish my meals. She’d say that if I didn’t eat every last morsel, the wealth god Dzambhala would get angry and punish me for being wasteful by causing me to starve. Such ancient, and these days rather old-fashioned advice actually contains a lot of wisdom.
Every day, you keep so many lights on unnecessarily. Do you really need to leave the shower running when you are shampooing your hair?
At the moment, the world is going through the agonies of dealing with very expensive gasoline, and the knock-on effects that, for example, push up the price of air fares and bus fares and make all the necessities, particularly food, so much more expensive. But water is even more precious than gasoline, and if what’s happening to gasoline now were to happen to water, our sufferings would reach much higher level of agony. Yet the root of the problem is caused by simple things that we could do something about, but don’t.
We also waste so much when we fall victim to products that are created solely to be wasted, then replaced many times over. The only aim behind marketing such products is to make obscene amounts of money, so the companies selling us this stuff actively encourage us to make a habit of being more and more wasteful, so they can sell us more and more useless stuff.
Anyway, this is just my New Year’s blabbering…”
中文大意：
"現在我們發現自己在2012年12月21日的世界末日之後都還活著，而新年也即將來臨。因此我想為你的“新年展望”給點建議。不如立志不再浪費你的念頭、時間和精力?！最起碼，你可以試著不要在物質的層面上浪費，例如關燈節約能源，或者不浪費食物。尤其是美國人，浪費那麼多的食物，這既瘋狂又完全不道德。相較之下，莫妮卡.萊汶斯基和那支雪茄根本是小巫見大巫。美國對食物、衣服和汽油的浪費不僅是百分之百的不道德，它更直接為全世界的人口與環境帶來全球性的連鎖反應。
“杜絕浪費”是致富與成功的關鍵。然而中國人卻開始學習美國令人觸目驚心的浪費藝術，且視之為富裕與財富的象徵。但是當別人穿著褲子拉屎時，不表示你也要效仿。在這裏，我必須提醒我自己和你們，雖然我引美國為例，這種揮霍無度的浪費現今已成為一個全球性的現象，不再局限於美國和美國人。
我曾聽說英國女王用舊信封的背面來記清單和筆記。這是她在二次大戰期間養成的習慣，且一直沿用至今。我們都應該這麼做。
看看你的四周，你的房間裏有多少東西？其中有多少是你真正需要的？有多少只是廢物？當然，我不是建議大家去修嚴格的苦行，我只是指出一個讓每一個人都有可能過得更富裕的聰明點子。浪費絕對不是享受財富的方式。
我想我也受我小時候沒吃完飯時我媽媽總是對我說的話的影響。她說如果我不把最後一粒米飯都吃乾淨，財神就會生氣，並會因為我的浪費而罰我餓肚子。如此古老，而且如今看來相當老套的建議實際上飽含智慧。
你每天開那麼多盞不需要開的燈。你真的需要在塗抹洗髮液時讓淋浴花灑的水繼續流嗎？
此刻，全球都在承受高油價的痛苦，以及其連鎖效應，例如調漲的機票與車費，以及愈來愈貴的生活必需品，尤其是食物。但水其實比汽油更珍貴。如果現在發生在汽油的現象發生在水資源上，我們的痛苦將為之更甚。然而這個問題的根源在於一些我們可以做卻沒有去做的小事上。
當我們臣服於一些專門設計來被浪費、且須不斷替換的產品時，我們變得格外浪費。推廣這些產品背後唯一的目的就是牟取暴利。所以銷售這些產品的公司積極地鼓勵我們養成越來越浪費的習慣，這樣他們就可以賣給我們越來越多沒用的東西。
總而言之，這只是我的新年閒扯。"
--- 宗薩欽哲仁波切 2012年12月28日
