Posted
26th September 2001
Dalai Lama Message To World
Dear friends around the world:
The
events of this day cause every thinking person to stop their
daily lives, whatever is going on in them, and to ponder deeply
the larger questions of life. We search again for not only the
meaning of life, but the purpose of our individual and collective
experience as we have created it -- and we look earnestly for
ways in which we might recreate ourselves anew as a human species,
so that we will never treat each other this way again.
The
hour has come for us to demonstrate at the highest level our
most extraordinary thought about Who We Really Are. There are
two possible responses to what has occurred today. The first
comes from love, the second from fear. If we come from fear
we may panic and do things--as individuals and as nations--that
could only cause further damage. If we come from love we will
find refuge and strength, even as we provide it to others. This
is the moment of your ministry. This is the time of teaching.
What You teach at this time, through your every word and action
right now, will remain as indelible lessons in the hearts and
minds of those whose lives you touch, both now, and for years
to come.
We
will set the course for tomorrow, today. At this hour. In this
moment. Let us seek not to pinpoint blame, but to pinpoint cause.
Unless we take this time to look at the cause of our experience,
we will never remove ourselves from the experiences it creates.
Instead, we will forever live in fear of retribution from those
within the human family who feel aggrieved, and, likewise, seek
retribution from them.
To
us [Buddhist thinkers] the reasons are clear. We have not learned
the most basic human lessons. We have not remembered the most
basic human truths. We have not understood the most basic spiritual
wisdom. In short, we have not been listening to God, and because
we have not, we watch ourselves do ungodly things. The message
we hear from all sources of truth is clear: We are all one.
That is a message the human race has largely ignored. Forgetting
this truth is the only cause of hatred and war, and the way
to remember is simple: Love, [in] this and every moment. If
we could love even those who have attacked us, and seek to understand
why they have done so, what then would be our response? Yet
if we meet negativity with negativity, rage with rage, attack
with attack, what then will be the outcome?
These
are the questions that are placed before the human race today.
They are questions that we have failed to answer for thousands
of years. Failure to answer them now could eliminate the need
to answer them at all. If we want the beauty of the world that
we have co-created to be Experienced by our children and our
children's children, we will have to become spiritual activists
right here, right now, and cause that to happen. We must choose
to be a cause in the matter. So, talk with God today. Ask God
for help, for counsel and advice, for insight and for strength
and for inner peace and for deep wisdom. Ask God on this day
to show us how to show up in the world in a way that will cause
the world itself to change. And join all those people around
the world who are praying right now, adding your Light to the
Light that dispels all fear.
That is the challenge that is placed before every thinking person
today. Today the human soul asks the question: What can I do
to preserve the Beauty and the wonder of our world and to eliminate
the anger and hatred-and the disparity that inevitably causes
it--in that part of the world which I touch? Please seek to
answer that question today, with all the magnificence that is
You. What can you do TODAY...[at] this very moment?
A central teaching in most spiritual traditions is: What you
wish to experience, provide for another. Look to see, now, what
it is you wish to experience--in your own life, and in the world.
Then see if there is another for whom you may be the source
of that. If you wish to experience peace, provide peace for
another. If you wish to know that you are safe, cause [others]
to know that they are safe.
If
you wish to better understand seemingly incomprehensible things,
help another to better understand. If you wish to heal your
own sadness or anger, seek to heal the sadness or anger of another.
Those others are waiting for you now. They are looking to you
for guidance, for help, for courage, for strength, for understanding,
and for assurance at this hour. Most of all, they are looking
to you for love.My religion is very simple.
My religion is kindness.....
Dalai Lama
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