| Lopsang Sherpa |
Posted
on 02-Oct-01 06:50 PM
A message from the Dalai Lama
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 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, 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 at 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 dispells 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...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 another
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
|
