Where's the Dalai Lama today?

The Dalai Lama is on campus giving four different talks over the next two days. The first one is a morning meditation across the street from my office, but I am not significant enough to rate tickets to any of the events. Too bad. He is a world leader I respect and admire (though I don’t agree with everything he says) and I would love the opportunity to see him and hear his words. Most of my coworkers also do not rate tickets, which means practically speaking his visit is little more than a parking inconvenience.

Anyway, I was promising myself that I would get back to some notes on the Scott Hunt book, the Future of Peace. I’ll be jumping out of turn a couple chapters, but here are some thoughts, comments or highlights from his interview with the Dalai Lama. But keep I mind, my notes in the margin really don’t do this study justice. I would highly recommend actually reading the book if anyone wants to know about our world leaders and the struggle for peace. If I had to pull out a theme from this interview, the Dalai Lama believes compassion is the key. It could solve all religious strife and many other world problems.

Peace is not just the absence of violence. Peace involves satisfaction, happiness, and tranquility. Peace is, I believe, an expression of compassion, a sense of caring.

The very physical components of humans seem to go well with peace of mind, not with anger or hatred.

Seeing something growing makes us feel happy; feeling something decaying, dying, makes us feel unhappy. So war means destruction. Peace means growth.

We are not accepting the occupation and all the tortures and deaths. Instead, we are taking countermeasures. But we do so without losing our compassions. Hatred for the act, but not the person who commits the act.