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 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
Dharamshala, Himachal Pradesh
INDIA
