Please share this page!
An inspiring collection of original mandalas and articles about the peace, beauty and self-discovery found in the mandala.
|
World Peace Through Inner Peace:
An Evening with the Dalai Lama |
Tenzin Gyatso, His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama, is the religious and political leader of all Tibet, as well as the leader of the Tibetan independence movement. He spoke at a seminar I attended recently, entitled “World Peace Through Inner Peace.” The Dalai Lama is an impressively charming and intelligent man, and the crowd of about 13,000 was immediately enchanted by his stories– at times funny, recounting tales of childhood events, at others quite sad, such as the ongoing suffering of Tibet at the hands of the Chinese government. The Dalai Lama began by expressing that the people who came to hear him with pre-conceived expectations in their minds would undoubtedly leave disapointed. He would offer no secrets, no ultimate truths. He was just there, he said, to share his thoughts and to spread his message. That message is, very simply, that the key to peace in the world lies no further than in our own hearts and minds.
The two qualities that define us as human beings are our intelligence and warm-heartedness. Both are important to us in our day-to-day living, but it is the second that will lead us eventually toward peace. We must practice warm-heartedness as a general philosophy of life, and apply its compassion to everyone we encounter. Usually we learn this loving kindness in the home, with our parents, we feel the warmth and security they give us and we learn to love. Unfortunately, most of us are are slow to dispense these emotions outside of the home, but in reality this is what we should try the hardest to achieve. We must cultivate our warm-heartedness so that we are free and easy with it, until we are as kind to the man behind the register at the supermarket as we would be to our own brother, until we show as much respect and compassion for the woman waiting for the bus as we would for our own sister. Because in reality that is what they really are, our very own brothers and sisters in the world. Only with such an all-encompassing, warm-hearted view of life will we successfully achieve peace in the world.
We must strive to remove aggression from our thoughts. It is a natural part of the human psychology, and as such we must understand that it is a difficult quality to overcome. Many times each day we will react aggressively to unfavorable events in our lives. We may yell at someone at work, honk angrily at the car in front of us, or make a nasty comment to someone we love. We must be understanding with ourselves in these instances, not overly condemning. Such reactions are built in, so they are instinctive and natural, but they are not right. We must strive to overcome them and so help all of humanity progress toward a more peaceful, harmonious existence. The pacification of our aggression can only be achieved by a slow and steady progress. When you feel anger toward someone, mentally wear it away. Dissolve the emotion like melting wax until it is gone. If you practice this consistently, with time you will find that you are less quick to anger and in better control of your emotions. The Dalai Lama assures us, with a sweet, mischevious smile, that at times even he still snaps at his assistants. If he, who has devoted his long, illustrious life to the attainment of the highest Buddhist ideals of peace and compassion can still lose control on occasion, then we should be very patient with our own struggle to tame the inner beast. But continue the struggle we must, for our own sake as well as that of the entire world.
The nations of the world are so interconnected these days that war is illogical and obsolete. In ages past, when nations were more truly independent, self-reliant for food and resources, there may have been justification in the minds of rulers for commiting acts of war upon their neighbors. But today the situation is very different. The entire world is interdependent, every country reliant to a large degree on many other countries. In such a world, to attack your neighbor is to attack yourself. Such behavior is illogical and self-defeatist. If you inflict damage on any one nation in this vast web of interconnected peoples, you inflict damage on many others as well. It is an obsolete viewpoint to see the world as “us” and “them.” We must see ourselves as a family with many issues to resolve. If one member of our family behaves in a manner we view as counter-productive to the well-being of the whole, then we should sit, as humans rather than as members of individual nations, to resolve the problem. If we interact as Americans or Britons or Arabs or Isrealis, then we are already beginning at one very difficult layer of disconnection. We bring our prejudices, our grudges, our cultural issues to the table and, if human history is any indicator, these issues are nearly impossible to overcome. We must cast aside our cultural and geographic differences and meet as brothers and sisters with the best interest of the world at heart. This is not easily achieved, as we are all quite eager to maintain and nurture our national heritage, without thinking that it is this very concept that is at the core of most human suffering and injustice. We may be proud of our country, our heritage, our ethnicity, but if we could see that these qualities are at the heart of the eternal divisiveness of the human condition, then would we not be better off to push them a bit into the background? I am not recommending that we discard these elements of our lives, only that we should not allow them to become the primary definition of our identity. Rather than an American or a Briton, whether Christian, Hindu, Muslim or Jew, we must be first and foremost human beings. In this way we will better realize the equality between the people of the world, and we will more readily respect and honor the concerns and needs of others. This is most crucial in today’s modern world, when we are advancing toward a globalized culture. It is in no one’s interest to start a war, instead we must strive to resolve conflicts and differences like the brothers and sisters that we truly are.
An important step toward the calming of international aggressions, the Dalai Lama believes, should be the destruction of all nuclear stockpiles. They are dangerous to the point of lunacy, and a simple accident could result in unthinkable catastrophe. This goal, he admits, is a politically difficult one to achieve, but with hope and effort perhaps in time it will come to pass. Equally as important as this external disarmament, he says, we must practise “internal disarmament.” With this phrase the Dalai Lama is reinforcing his earlier message that we should strive to calm our inner aggressions and cultivate compassion for others. Ultimately it will be our success in this inner arena that will truly ensure our success in the struggle for world peace and harmony. External efforts are important simply so that we don’t kill ourselves along the way.
This vision of a civilized community of equal and compassionate adults is in high contrast to the history of the past century. The Dalai Lama sadly and accurately describes the twentieth century as the century of war and bloodshed. It was a time when nations were eager to fight and kill for their own social or political reasons, when the blood of young soldiers seemed to flow without end. We should look back on this horrible period and see that the future must be different if we are to survive. The twenty-first century, he says, should be the century of dialogue. We must dedicate ourselves to the resolution of differences instead of the sort of reflexive lashing out that has characterized international relations in the past. This resolution can best be achieved by discussion of the relevant issues in a wise and civilized manner. Talks devolve into wars when one party or other takes offense, and flies the banner of indignation above the front lines of a righteous and murderous army. We must rise above the defensive posturing of more primitive times. It is this inner aggression we must overcome, and if we do so, we will find that we can be more understanding, calm and compassionate. In this state of kindness and passivity, we may indeed be able to achieve world peace through dialogue rather than death.
Strive to dissolve your inner aggressions. Develop warm-heartedness toward everyone you encounter. Learn compassion for those you feel are least deserving. Love your enemy, they say, for to love only your friend is no great feat. Treat the world as your own family and perhaps, in time, that family will learn to live together in peace and harmony, and all of our brothers and sisters across the land will be happy and peaceful and free. What a truly beautiful vision this is, what a marvelous and glorious goal for our world.
September 20, 2004 by Peter Patrick Barreda. Material copyright 2011, all rights reserved.
|