文/宗萨钦哲仁波切

　　“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：

　　"现在我们发现自己在2012年12月21日的世界末日之后都还活着，而新年也即将来临。因此我想为你的“新年展望”给点建议。不如立志不再浪费你的念头、时间和精力？！最起码，你可以试着不要在物质的层面上浪费，例如关灯节约能源，或者不浪费食物。尤其是美国人，浪费那么多的食物，这既疯狂又完全不道德。相较之下，莫妮卡。莱汶斯基和那支雪茄根本是小巫见大巫。美国对食物、衣服和汽油的浪费不仅是百分之百的不道德，它更直接为全世界的人口与环境带来全球性的连锁反应。

　　“杜绝浪费”是致富与成功的关键。然而中国人却开始学习美国令人触目惊心的浪费艺术，且视之为富裕与财富的象征。但是当别人穿着裤子拉屎时，不表示你也要效仿。在这里，我必须提醒我自己和你们，虽然我引美国为例，这种挥霍无度的浪费现今已成为一个全球性的现象，不再局限于美国和美国人。

　　我曾听说英国女王用旧信封的背面来记清单和笔记。这是她在二次大战期间养成的习惯，且一直沿用至今。我们都应该这么做。

　　看看你的四周，你的房间里有多少东西？其中有多少是你真正需要的？有多少只是废物？当然，我不是建议大家去修严格的苦行，我只是指出一个让每一个人都有可能过得更富裕的聪明点子。浪费绝对不是享受财富的方式。

　　我想我也受我小时候没吃完饭时我妈妈总是对我说的话的影响。她说如果我不把最后一粒米饭都吃干净，财神就会生气，并会因为我的浪费而罚我饿肚子。如此古老，而且如今看来相当老套的建议实际上饱含智慧。

　　你每天开那么多盏不需要开的灯。你真的需要在涂抹洗发液时让淋浴花洒的水继续流吗？

　　此刻，全球都在承受高油价的痛苦，以及其连锁效应，例如调涨的机票与车费，以及愈来愈贵的生活必需品，尤其是食物。但水其实比汽油更珍贵。如果现在发生在汽油的现象发生在水资源上，我们的痛苦将为之更甚。然而这个问题的根源在于一些我们可以做却没有去做的小事上。

　　当我们臣服于一些专门设计来被浪费、且须不断替换的产品时，我们变得格外浪费。推广这些产品背后唯一的目的就是牟取暴利。所以销售这些产品的公司积极地鼓励我们养成越来越浪费的习惯，这样他们就可以卖给我们越来越多没用的东西。

　　总而言之，这只是我的新年闲扯。"

　                                                       　--- 宗萨钦哲仁波切 2012年12月28日