Messages from the Dalai Lama

On 15 June 2007 I was part of a crowd in Sydney Australia who was fortunate to hear the 14th Dalai Lama speak. Although it was pouring rain and there were so many umbrellas it was hard to see the stage, it was an event not to be missed.

The first thing that I noticed when the Dalai Lama came on stage, was that he always appeared to be smiling. His ‘smiling’ cheeks are so well developed that even when he is speaking on serious issues, he appears to be smiling.
He must be a very happy soul.

After a few easy jokes, the Dalai Lama started talking about peace. And his message was simple –

Peace in the world comes from having inner peace.

He expounded on this for quite some time, and was adamant that if we (ie. any one person) want peace in the world, first we must obtain inner peace. If we are not at peace within ourselves, then we will not be able to promote or obtain peace with others.

He then stated his one great goal and wish – a demilitarized world. The Dalai Lama was adamant that globalization means that there is no longer an ‘us’ and ‘them’. Perhaps there never was, but we have drawn those lines in the sand. Regardless, the Dalai Lama explained that with the creation of the ‘European Union’ and other interconnected groups of countries, we simply cannot look at other countries as separate from our own. As such, other people/cultures/religions are not separate from each of us, either. And by hurting, killing and/or fighting with others, we are in fact hurting, killing and/or fighting with ourselves.

So how to achieve this great goal of a demilitarized world? The Dalai Lama suggested that we look to the great leaders of the world (he mentioned Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu) and follow their example. He is fiercely opposed to arms of any kind and presented a very clear message that we must ‘lay down our arms, and open a dialogue’.

Expanding on that, he said that he was a human being first, a Buddha second, and a Tibetan third. That is how he approaches difficult conversations. And he said while difficult conversations are, well, difficult, we need to have them. We must be open to dialogue. To start those difficult conversations, we have to approach people as humans, first, with kindness and understanding regardless of religion, colour, race or country. The message was the same as that in Steven Covey’s book ‘The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People’: seek first to understand, then to be understood and always go for a win-win solution.

I could easily ramble on for quite some time about the messages from the Dalai Lama on that wet afternoon in Sydney. But the biggest message for me was his first one.

Peace in the world comes from having inner peace.

I wish you inner peace. Tania

Timeless Words from Mother Teresa

People are often unreasonable, illogical, and self-centered; Forgive them anyway.

If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives; Be kind anyway.

If you are successful, you will win some false friends and some true enemies; Succeed anyway.

If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you;
Be honest and frank anyway.

What you spend years building, someone could destroy overnight;
Build anyway.

If you find serenity and happiness, they may be jealous;
Be happy anyway.

The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow;
Do good anyway.

Give the world the best you have, and it may never be enough;
Give the world the best you've got anyway.

You see, in the final analysis, it is between you and God;
It never was between you and them anyway.

PLAYING THE MASTER GAME.... of life

I just came across this very powerful passage from The Master Game, a book written in the 1950’s by Robert S. de Ropp. To really embrace this extraodinarily powerful message, read it out loud !!

Seek, above all, for a game worth playing. Such is the advice of the oracle to modern man. Having found the game, play it with intensity - play as if your life and sanity depend on it. (They do depend on it.) Follow the example of the French existentialists and flourish a banner bearing the word “engagement”.

Though nothing means anything and all roads are marked “no exit”, yet move as if your movements had some purpose. If life does not seem to offer a game worth playing, then invent one. For it must be clear, even to the most clouded intelligence, that any game is better than no game.

But although it is safe to play the Master Game, this has not served to make it popular. It still remains the most demanding and difficult of games and in our society, there are few who play. Contemporary man, hypnotized by the glitter of his own gadgets, has little contact with his inner world, concerns himself with outer, not inner space. But the Master Game is played entirely in the inner world, a vast and complex territory about which men know very little. The aim of the game is true awakening, full development of the powers latent in man.

The game can be played only by people whose observations of themselves and others have led them to a certain conclusion, namely, that man’s ordinary state of consciousness, his so-called waking state, is not the highest level of consciousness of which he is capable. In fact, this state is so far from real awakening that it could appropriately be called a form of somnambulism, a condition of “waking sleep”.

Once a person has reached this conclusion, he is no longer able to sleep comfortably. A new appetite develops within him, the hunger for real awakening, for full consciousness. He realized that he sees, hears, and knows only a tiny fraction of what he could see, hear and know, that he lives in the poorest, shabbiest of rooms in his inner dwelling, and that he could enter other rooms, beautiful and filled with treasures, the windows of which look out on eternity and infinity.

The solitary player lives today in a culture that is more or less totally opposed to the aims he has set himself, that does not recognize the existence of the Master Game, and regards players of this game as queer or slightly mad. The player thus confronts great oppositions from the culture in which he lives and must strive with forces, which tend to bring his game to a halt before it has even started. Only by finding a teacher and becoming part of the group of pupils that that teacher has collected about him can the player find encouragement and support. Otherwise he simply forgets his aim, or wanders off down some side road and loses himself.

Here it is sufficient to say that the Master Game can never be made easy to play. It demands all that a man has, all his feelings, all his thoughts, all his resources—physical and spiritual. If he tries to play it in a half-hearted way or tries to get results by unlawful means, he runs the risk of destroying his own potential. For this reason it is better not to embark on the game at all than to play it half-heartedly.