message from the Dalai Llama

[Schlobin at aol.com]

An Open Letter to the World from the Dalai Lama September 2001


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 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...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 Lam