A Message from the Dalai Lama
written by Neal Donald Walsh
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
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