Theos-Talk Archives (October 2001 Message tt00048)

>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 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, 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