TRS Foundation

Hope, honesty and integrity are critical qualities as we make our lives, neighborhoods and the global community sustainable in the face of challenges such as climate change, peak oil, pandemic disease, economic downturns, war, natural disasters, etc… our stories need to reflect neither the decadence and degeneracy of nihilism nor the dogma of fundamentalism but the hope and creative energy of activism.

Remaining hopeful, encouraging others and building our capacity to move forward are the critical qualities we can cultivate on an individual and societal level. Taking action can alleviate our feelings of hopelessness, building our capacity to do more and inspire others to do likewise. Taking action with other similarly minded people adds a layer of faith in others also doing the right thing, further building hope.

Honestly assessing your ecological footprint, understanding your need for “stuff” and evaluating your progress will clarify the challenges ahead of you. Creativity is where we spice up and take ownership of our lifestyles and create routines and rituals that are expressions of who we now are.

Compassion can be cultivated by ways of formal meditation, attention and insight.

We need to acknowledge for ourselves our blind and habitual rejection of fear, because it’s fear we’re really afraid of, not the pain of the world. We already know that pain is part of life. What we’re actually afraid of, and what we’re turning away from, is our sense of a lack of capacity to receive it, to bear with pain in a sane way. Pain, JUST IS, and pleasure, JUST IS. not right or wrong. While we don’t usually have a problem with pleasure, except that sometimes we forget ourselves with it, we do have a big problem with pain. It motivates us to do all sorts of things that become additions or other avoidance strategies, which are very wasteful of energy, both inwardly and outwardly.

Compassion can be cultivated. It isn’t helpful to approach compassion or any of these heart matters with the idea of having or not-having it; compassion is a potential in all of us. But it needs to be cultivated. One of the best encouragements for cultivating compassion is to intentionally witness compassionate beings.

Each moment of life is precious. In many given moment, we can allow life to pass us by or we can be mindful of what’s most essential, living with genuine purpose, energy, and joy. Too often we find ourselves hurrying to grab our coffee, commute to work, and get to a meeting, rarely pausing to take a deep breath and seriously consider how we spend the limited number of precious moments that we have. When we are aware and awake in a given moment, we have the capacity to make that moment extraordinary.

I Look at my life and other people’s lives as an anthropologist  might look at the ritual of a tribe in some remote forest, with a mind always open and fresh, wondering what the purpose of these actions might be. Often, I think about what is the purpose of the late night talk shows – making fun of people. We spend too much of our time doing things automatically that is important to access whether our habits bring us real joy. whenever we think that how we spend a given day or even a given hour is unimportant, and whenever we think we need to rush through what we’re doing so later we can get to something more relaxing, meaningful,or important, we are cheating ourselves. In fact, we never know for certain that we’ll be around for the future that we imagine. What is certain is that any of us can pause in this moment to consider what’s most essential and to live this moment in a deliberate, meaningful, purposeful, and beautiful way.

Although each of us has only a limited number of evenings, thoughts, and breaths left in our lives, we rarely take the time to consider how they are spent. Such questions usually come up strongly during adolescence and early adulthood. When we challenge the values of our parents and our society and try to decide what in the world to do with our lives. These issues also may come up when we are faced with significant losses or transitions; a divorce, getting laid off, the death of loved one, or the onset of an illness often cause people to reflect more deeply.

“What is the most essential to live a happy and meaningful life?” is one single most important question in modern society. We become so busy and so engrossed in the small task of our lives that we find it difficult to step back and ask ourselves what matters most. If we haven’t thought much about such issues and don’t have a clear, definitive answer, we probably lack an overall sense of direction in life. It then becomes difficult to tell if we are making progress or going in circles. If we want to have a genuinely happy life, it’s important to contemplate this question of what brings us joy and meaning throughout our lives. The more we consider what is most essential, the better our experience can help us discover deeper answers.

Take a step towards sustainable society: Experiencing sustainable life – quality, efficiency and time

Our current lifestyles are not sustainable. Creating a sustainable life and society, requires we recognize and embrace those qualities that give our life meaning and are prepared to shed old habits that are unsustainable. From there we can craft a lifestyle that is more hopeful and joyous, without depriving future generations of their share of nature’s bounty.

By reducing our material consumption we create time in our lives. With this time we can deepen the quality of our experience of ourselves and of others. From here compassion emerges and we start to take responsibility for the challenges of the world.

Our generation has arrived at the threshold of a new era in human history. Communications, trade + International relations as well as the security and environmental dilemmas we all face make us increasingly interdependent. No one can live in isolation. Thus whether we like it or not, our vast and diverse human family must finally learn to live together. Individually and collectively we must assume a greater sense of universal responsibility.

We confidently use terms like “facts’, “truth” and “reality”; yet in the end these are mere words, and our experience of any given subject is conditioned by our personal make-up. Nowhere is more evident than in the telling of history. Life is so rich, detailed and multifaceted that we can’t describe the things that occur in just one day of an ordinary individual’s life. Words are simply inadequate. Yet we attempt to speak of thousands of years of human experience as though it were a flat object held in the palm of the hand.

TRS Foundation. Transitioning the modern age into the Karunopia¹ Age.

In The Beginning

The world has changed and so has everyone in it. Mankind has created an environment which changes faster than individuals within it can cope. Very little in our past can prepare one for the daunting challenges ahead. Waves of technical advancement have caught up to the dreams of the future and run ahead. Nations, businesses, cultural leaders, politicians and citizens alike lag in their ability to manage effectively in this period of disruption.

Mission of TRS Foundation

TRS Foundation is a vision and mission for creating a biologically interconnected sustainable society that is governed by compassion and ethics, and implemented through six pillars (commerce, education, energy, food, media and science). Our world today operates in the traditional smokestack model whereby advancements are based on continual internal-focused and linear innovation. The ultimate goal of TRS will be to extract best-in-class innovations, knowledge and ideas, and cross-pollinate them across each pillar – establishing biologically integrated collaboration amongst varying industries. This interconnectivity will drastically advance innovation, comprehension and produce meaningful results.

With the recognition that we must improve and hasten social contract as the major avenue to societal change, TRS stimulates all of us to think deeply about our societal challenges, and to enlist participation in our joint quest for embracing and leading this change.  No one can have all the answers; they will arise from our common learning enterprise. Our goal will be to engineer a new society that provides a decent quality of life while coexisting in a long-term sustainable relationship with the natural environment that nourishes it.

Total Role in Society Platform is the foundation and measure of an organization/innovation’s positive contribution to those within its functioning environment. An organization/innovation’s sole responsibility is no longer limited to maximizing growth value for its constituents but also to monitor and positively affect its impact on people, community, environment and whomever it touches and nourishes.

A New Value Blueprint

TRS provides a template, a philosophy and a measurement system for organizations/entities to view their role on a broader scale. It examines an entity across four dimensions: sustainable, intent-based, vision; economic potential of relationships; productivity of impact loops; and alignment of intent, behaviors and communications.

On a philosophical level TRS enables leaders and innovators to commence the dialogues necessary to re-engineer a sustainable society to meet the demands of a rapidly changing, chaotic world. On a pragmatic level it provides an objective methodology for affecting positive impacts that focus the society on developing mutually beneficial relationships that secure and enhance its future.

In a period where organizations and entities are contemplating and re-evaluating their strategy, capabilities and contributions, TRS can act as a positive lightning rod. It can focus the energy of multiple beliefs, strategies, programs, communications and messages along a single axis – an axis that illuminates the landscape of diverse actions under one powerful, transforming scheme.

Sustainable Model

The foundation will design and create a sustainable structure to serve not only as an example of sustainability, but more importantly, as a destination and an environment for best-in-class minds to explore, engineer, create, and innovate. Its purpose is to inspire and challenge convention while producing a plethora of ideas for solving or improving current or future societal, economic and environmental dilemmas. From these ideas, new organizations, innovations and other entities will be realized – all of which will be optimized through extensive focus with the TRS principles.

The interconnectivity of the foundation will support and develop these entities and their respective endeavors, and will promote sustainability and a radical, yet necessary, manner of daily life. These entities and innovations support and promote the underlying mission of the foundation – leading to greater interest and attention from others. With more of society educated and participatory, the foundation’s overarching goal of building an interconnected sustainable society will be further realized.

TRS Foundation is based on sustainable compassion and ethics and the belief that each clear-minded person or entity is capable and privileged of positive contribution. We foster connections with like-minded organizations and individuals passionate about ushering in a new age – The Karunopia Age. Connect with us to enlighten and empower – to rejuvenate and reincarnate a compassionate society that the civilization demands and deserves.

If this resonates with you, I would be honored to meet with you to explore ideas.

¹Karunopia – The environment and condition of perfect integration between compassion and ethics. The English word compassion is used to translate the Sanskrit “karuna” which is etymologized as “suspending happiness”. To feel compassion, you must turn away slightly from your own focus on superficial happiness to sense the true condition of others. Honestly facing their pains. This is considered the key to expanding awareness from its habitual imprisonment in self-centered state of mind.

Confidential © TRS Foundation, All Rights Reserved, 2010

Thank you for your interest in the TRS Foundation. Together we will achieve our goal of creating a biologically interconnected sustainable society.

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