Core Principles of Wellbeing in Shambhala
Creating a mirror of societal wellbeing in Shambhala
The purpose of the Societal Mirror initiative is to create an ongoing reflection of our ‘wellbeing’ in Shambhala. The notion of wellbeing can be taken to mean the realization of what really matters to us in terms of societal health, sustainability and welfare: if we have ‘wellbeing’, we are generally in good shape, and where this is lacking, we have the ability to apply remedies.
We are by no means the first community to do this! In the 1970s, the King of Bhutan challenged the notion that a country’s wellbeing could be measured in economic terms alone, and he decided to measure Gross National Happiness instead. Nowadays, organisations and countries worldwide regularly measure the state of their wellbeing. This is considered essential so that governance and communities alike can get a reflection of how they are doing, plan to address priorities, and direct resources, care and attention to the right places. In countries, such measurement is done across a set of domains, typically from the point of view of economy, society, culture and environment. Individuals can consider their wellbeing from emotional, physical, societal, financial or other perspectives.
To consider how wellbeing could be measured across Shambhala, in mid-2021 the Shambhala Societal Mirror Initiative convened five focus groups and 10 community conversations to explore sangha members’ sense of what wellbeing would look like across five domains of Shambhala society: governance, economy, culture, conduct, and practice and education. Content analysis of the transcripts of these 15 gatherings revealed a set of consistent values or principles which were used to describe wellbeing in each of the five domains. We consider this set to be the core principles of wellbeing in Shambhala:
- Kindness, inclusivity, and mutual respect
- Responsibility and accountability
- Vitality, energy and resources
- Trustworthiness and transparency
The Societal Mirror initiative team then reviewed the transcript again to identify activities or shared views that could serve as indicators to measure. These indicators were framed as research questions. We then constructed research approaches to measure the indicators at the individual, centre and group and societal levels.