--| A Letter from His Holiness, XIVth Dalai Lama |----- 

A Letter from His Holiness, XIVth Dalai Lama
12 September 01

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
dispells 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 Lama

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REFERENCES:

- Tibet.com - Speech to European Parlaiment - October 24, 2001