This segment presents the valuable insights shared by keynote speaker Dr. Alfredo Sfeir-Younis during the Humanity Transformation Conference 2025 (HTC 2025). Drawing from his expertise within the context of the Inner Peace Forum, Dr. Sfeir-Younis addresses key concerns and audience queries on the effective application of spiritual principles to modern, complex social and personal dilemmas. His responses to hostess Joy Vanichkul offer focused and actionable guidance for developing inner peace and promoting compassion. This footage highlights essential takeaways from his original discourse and the subsequent interaction.
00:00And now we're just going to step into the forums and let our team set up a little bit.
00:15And you know, I've seen our three speakers sharing the different topics,
00:21but it's something synchronized synchronicity when they're talking about the power of who we are.
00:29The power that we can have to making the difference, to bring our lighthouse, like Dr. Carter just mentioned about,
00:38and then our inner peace to making the world as a way that we want to see.
00:44So to begin our conversation, I would like to start to ask with this,
00:49what does inner peace mean to you?
00:52And how do you see it as a key to transforming for the fragmentation we see in the world today?
00:59My spiritual teacher, Lama Ganchen Rinpoche, used to say that inner peace is the most solid foundation for world peace.
01:11But I understood it really after studying one of the sutras of the Buddha,
01:18in which he explains the change between distraction, awareness, full awareness, concentration.
01:29And then Rahul asked him, why do you teach so much concentration?
01:34He said, because wisdom surges from concentration.
01:39But he explained about inner peace and said, you know, inner peace is a quality factor of all this change, you know?
01:49If you have really calmness, if you have inner peace, the quality of your mindfulness,
01:55the quality of your wisdom increases.
01:57So this is a very important quality factor.
02:00But I also want to say that inner peace needs to be practiced.
02:07And one of the practices, silence.
02:10So I'm very happy about meditation and Dhammakaya meditation.
02:16Secondly, we need to heal ourself to get to inner peace.
02:21It's very difficult.
02:23I'm speaking for myself.
02:24If I'm not healed, you know, of something, it's very difficult that my mind is refined enough to really self-realize peace.
02:35And finally, it's fundamental for inner peace, a pristine nature.
02:41That's why most of the great masters, we ourselves, go to pristine nature to find inner peace.
02:48The quality of inner peace is the quality of nature.
02:51So please preserve nature.
02:54From your perspective, do you think what is needed to bring more consciousness and compassion into the system that guided the whole nations?
03:08I would like to add one point to these answers.
03:17I appreciate the answers.
03:19It touched me, both of you.
03:20But when you live with many different cultures, you know, there are certain universal elements that make them to absorb and be open.
03:33One of them, I would say to a person, practice contentment.
03:37You know, don't be in a rat race all the time, contentment.
03:43Maybe you need to pay attention more of what you have, who you are, than really what the others are and what the others have.
03:51I think this is one part.
03:53The second thing is, it's important, the two pillars in the path, you know, in spirituality in general, which is self-governance and refinement of the mind.
04:12It's impossible to really get to inner peace, at least for me, very difficult, when I'm not governing my feelings, my emotions, and so on and so forth.
04:22And when my mind is not refined enough to understand the suffering that I am going through.
04:27And last but not least is social suffering.
04:31This is the area where I sort of, inverted comma, specialize, you know, in the social teachings of the Buddha.
04:37But there is no time for that.
04:38But on this, I think even business institutions need, you know, wisdom and compassion, needs love and compassion.
04:48And I can assure you that every person in those institutions that look even most materialistic, they are all hungry to have you there, to have you there.
05:00Just go and knock the door.
05:03I retired in the year 2005.
05:06I was there 30 years, so I'm talking about 2005, the 90s, the 80s, and the 70s.
05:13We had the Spiritual Unfallment Society.
05:15There were, in it, subscribed, 5,000 staff members.
05:22And we meditated, not the 5,000, every Wednesday at 1 o'clock.
05:27We brought many spiritual leaders.
05:30We had two departments for a long time meditating in the morning and meditating before they left.
05:37And they measure, you know, what the impact was.
05:41And last is that they did a study about the cost of health.
05:44And the cost of health of the people who meditated were one-tenth of the cost of health, you know, of the people that didn't meditate.
05:52They didn't do it because of spirituality.
05:55They didn't because of the cost of business, you know, and health insurance.
05:59So we have there a beautiful thing to do.
06:02So just go knock the door, and the door will be open.
06:07If you were mentoring a future world leader, what one inner practice would you recommend, and how could it reshape the world?
06:16Well, with Marco Tavanti, a professor of the University of San Francisco, we wrote a book last year called Conscious Sustainability Leadership.
06:31And I went to Amazon before writing the book, and I asked, how many books have in their title the word leadership?
06:42I remember like 37,000 books.
06:45So I asked myself, what am I going to add to 30,000 books?
06:49So we had a very interesting discussion about leadership.
06:53This is not a slogan.
06:56We need conscious leaders.
06:58That is to say, leaders who are aware.
07:02They become aware.
07:03Like Anya Kondanya, you know.
07:05He understood it.
07:07When the Buddha says, you know, you understood it.
07:10This is the first thing.
07:13What is to be a leader?
07:16You need to be compassionate.
07:18You need to be generous.
07:19You need to be really, have all these virtues that are in many, many of the sutras of the Buddha, you know.
07:27But that's not enough.
07:29The question is how to get there.
07:31And I think society plays a very fundamental role.
07:34Society, if you have a society that is sick, it's very difficult to be healthy.
07:42Look at what's happening with drugs and with many, many things all over the world.
07:47So we need to take care of the collective at the same time, you know.
07:53One by one, we're not going to make it.
07:58You know, somebody asked me, well, how do you change the world?
08:01These leaders need to change the world.
08:03But the question is to change the world for what?
08:06What is the right vision?
08:08Do they have the right vision?
08:10I wrote a book on the Tao of leadership, using the Tao Te Ching as philosophy of this.
08:18And it's a very different type of leader, you know.
08:21It's the leader that is unseen.
08:23You don't need to be intervening, you know, have this alpha, macho alpha style to be a leader.
08:29That's not leadership.
08:31That's intervention.
08:32We need to have a spiritual practice that generates a spiritual endorphins.
08:40Sorry for this.
08:42If the spiritual practice does not create endorphins in those practicing it, they will practice one day and then goodbye.
08:49Oh, yeah, I go to this meeting.
08:51We are all in this meeting.
08:52And then I move out.
08:54Nothing of what is said here, you know, nobody's doing anything.
08:57So we need to create forms of meditation, forms of social, you know, service that creates such an endorphin.
09:08It's like the athlete who goes to the gym, cannot get out of the gym.
09:12We need to present spirituality in a way that we create these endorphins and everyone understand that we are spiritual beings.
09:19It's not like we are trying to convince you that you are a spiritual being until something happens, that you are so low in the system, in your mind, in your emotions, that you say, oh, I'll come back to spirituality and see if this Tylenol will help me, you know.
09:34And they take meditation of Tylenol.
09:36And last, we have an image.
09:39And I will not define we, but I'm part of the we, that we want to abandon the world.
09:47You know, that spirituality takes you away from the world.
09:49So when you talk to a leader about spirituality, Alfredo, I do that in the evening.
09:54I remember talking to a big manager of a huge corporation in this country.
09:58And I said, why do you treat your workers this way?
10:01The answer was, because they are my workers.
10:05My family is different.
10:06You know, during the evening, I treat my family differently.
10:10So it's fundamental that we create a new spirituality that is capable not to convince, that provides a space for which managers and leaders is very easy to understand spirituality.
10:23You know, the Buddha never abandoned the world.
10:26He got enlightened.
10:27He could have gone.
10:28Okay, you guys.
10:29No, he stayed many, many years with bankers, with kings, with business people, and so on.
10:38He was not only talking to the sangha.
10:40He was, he, people trust his judgment.
10:42So how a Buddha passes judgment, a spiritual judgment on a business, that is the key of social Buddhism.
10:49So it is possible, and we should be doing it everywhere.
10:53So as we come to and close, is anything else that each of you would like to add to the audience?
11:04Very short.
11:08Everything is possible.
11:11There are no limits.
11:14We are the ones who put the limits.
11:16Number two, the big ethics of spirituality is not spirituality in itself, but the commitment to resolve the problems of humanity.
11:32If spirituality is going to be a club, that we are going to say what we want to be said, we like it, you know, and therefore we join.
11:43This is not spirituality.
11:44Spirituality must be where it is not.
11:49Spirituality must be in the conflict areas.
11:52Spirituality must be in the pain areas.
11:56It must be in the suffering areas.
11:58It must be where it hurts, you know.
12:02That's why the Buddha starts everything with suffering, you know.
12:06He didn't say, okay, here is the blueprint.
12:09Okay, this is the beauty of things you try to find out.
12:12No, he took us from there, you know.
12:14With all this suffering.
12:15And last but not least, we have a responsibility of this world.
12:22We have a responsibility because we created these problems.
12:30Even those who say, that's not, I never said that, I never did that.
12:35But in essence, you know, to be passive observers of how the world collapses, this is not on.
12:44And I would say that until my life ends, physically speaking, my commitment is with the children and grandchildren.
12:56They deserve a better world.
13:00When I was a child, the end of the world was the year 2000.
13:06You know, we all thought that if we arrive at 2000, it will be enough for all of us to, you know.
13:12I was born in 1947.
13:13But I was able to be in the year 2000 and pass the year 2000 because a generation created the possibilities for me to be here.
13:26It's not that I created it.
13:27So, all of us here, we must create the space, you know, so that the new generations have a better world.
13:40And really, we come finally to the 200% society, materially rich and spiritually rich.
13:49Thank you so much.
13:50Let's give a big applause to Dr. Alfredo Sphere Unit.
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