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> Special Message from: His Holiness the Dalai Lama
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> Dear friends around the world:
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> The events of 11 September 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.
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> 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.
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> 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.
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> 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
doungodly 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?
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> 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.
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> 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.
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> 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?
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> 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.
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> 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.
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> My religion is very simple. My religion is kindness.
> Dalai Lama
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