Lee Thorn - Jhai - headsup from Vientiane

Dear friends and board,

I hope this finds you and your families well. This is a headsup.

I will be working with colleagues here in Laos and in Hanoi, Viet Nam over next two weeks in these ways:

1. We are documenting our work in Laos with extensive video. These will be used for free distant learning tools on our practices and for marketing. In Laos we are giving a video camera to a villager for daily updates of changing situations in one village over the course of a year after hands-on training by a very experienced video camera person, Eric Seldin. These will be edited by Jim Wigler who is also well-experienced.

2. I will reveal exact details of our work after we do it via Lee Thorn Facebook page, leethorn.jhai Twitter, and this list quite often. Believe me: it is our view that this work will be ground-breaking in terms of
development practice,
micro-business processes,
open commons practice in terms of method promulgation and
low cost, low power, appropriate technology tools

all in combination.

All components of this system are well-tested by us, some for over a decade, and they work. What we are proving now is how they can work in combination.

I was pleased to see that Bill Gates and Warren Buffett are urging the very rich to contribute half their wealth to various methods of poverty alleviation. Helping poor people through system changing, very well focused gifts is, I think, THE most critical task of my generation and of all of us. Without a congruence of charity and good business practices, I see no way out of our multiple crises. The widening of the gap between the rich and poor is even more destabilizing than climate change and environmental disasters in my view.

On the other hand, all ancient wisdom that I have studied says the movement towards compassion, charity and tolerance by the rich - and that means all of us on this list pretty much in world terms - is a vitally important and critical aspect of the beginning of a new Way, a way that is sustainable in all the most radical, to the root, senses.

Have you seen this from my favorite wild and wise warrior, Tesshu?

"Buddhism fosters Mind-essence and actualizes it in the world. It is the birthright every individual possesses from the beginning, belonging to no one else. Each person contains a boundless treasure within him- or herself. Yet of all the billions of people on earth, how many are aware of their innate wealth? It is a great pity that people mistakenly value gold, silver, and diamonds rather than their own true riches. One who regains his birthright will be master of three thousand worlds." (tr. Stevens)

Please remember Jhai with your thoughts, prayers and gifts.

yours, in Peace,

Lee Thorn
lee@jhai.org
skype: lee.thorn
facebook: Lee Thorn
linkedin: Lee Thorn
twitter: leethorn_jhai
website: http://www.jhai.org
ground addresses:
1. Jhai Foundation, 350 Townsend St., Ste. 309, San Francisco, CA 94112 USA. Phone: +1 415 420 2870
2. Jhai Foundation, PO Box 6269, Vientiane Lao PDR

please see what is amusing about my son, Jesse Thorn, at http://www.soundofyoungamerica.org

please check out Stan Osborne, our chief technology advisor, for consulting at his linkedin site: http://tinyurl.com/3y3h6h5

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