Compassion and Warmheartedness

Today a bunch of us went to Princes Park in Melbourne to see the Dalai Lama give a free talk on “Global Responsibility.” He was awesome! He was funny and very ‘real,' and seemed like the happiest, jolliest man. He began his speech by saying that he is human and “the same as you.” I’ll share a few of his main points that I wrote down.

- There are two main challenges to humanity: overpopulation and global warming.
- We all have global responsibilities. Things in other parts of the world have repercussions where we live. “We have to think of the rest of the world as part of ourselves.”
- Fear, hatred, anger, and jealousy are obstacles to global unity.
- It is necessary to have warmheartedness, to think seriously about others’ welfare
- Everyone’s main goal in life is to find happiness, but people are their own roadblocks to happiness. “Ignorance creates wrong perceptions. Wrong perceptions create an unrealistic approach,” which is why many people don’t find happiness.
- 90% of negativity is your own mental perception
- “real compassion is unbiased”
- True compassion is placed upon enemies. It is based not on how they feel about you but on your recognition of their right to happiness.
- If you show true compassion, it brings you inner strength and self confidence
- “Without religion, you can be a happy person. Without compassion, you cannot be a happy person.”
- We’ve created the problems of this world, so it’s up to us to fix them.
- “Destruction of our neighbor is destruction of ourselves. That’s why war is out of date.”
- We can’t have a truly peaceful world until world is de-militarized. We shouldn’t use force to solve disputes, instead we should use dialogue.

Then at the end of his talk he answered a few questions that people had sent in. He was very honest. When someone asked “How would you solve the problems in the Middle East?” he said, “I don’t know.” An 11-year-old had written in “What is the meaning of life?” and he said, “you have a bright future ahead of you, and you have plenty of time to investigate for yourself.” But the best line of the day was when someone asked, “If two people that you love are fighting, what do you do?” He said, “Beat both of them.” That got a huge round of applause. Even the Dalai Lama has a sense of humor.