This was sent to me by Ridme2, it is his notes on His Holiness the Dalai Lama's internet address. Thank you very much Ridme for these wonderful notes. Many could not hear H.H. address, and by allowing this to be put in the Buddhist Library many will be able to read them! _Oo_
from Sarnath, India, has heard on the Internet, 12:15 AM Eastern Time 1/1/2000
This is just a quick idea of the things HHDL talked about (as scribbled by me):
When asked whether or not he had high hopes for the new millenium, HHDL said that it was iimportant for us to understand that time really has no independent reality. Human beings have a tendency to try to measure unimaginable thingsàà The calendar is really culturally based (and he gave several instances of other calendars from various cultures in India). He said we are right now three millennia into the present era. He, himself, has no problem with accepting a worldwide adoption of a specific calendar, and because the Christian calendar is based upon the birth of a person who devoted his life to helping mankind, he thought that was good. Because of this Christian cultural domination, he sees that we are coming closer to a hegemony or uniform calendar. Time, after all, cannot really influence the human mind. We only think it can.
Then he talked about history and our tendency to think of times past in an idealistic sense. We have evaluated past cultures by their luminaries, their famous people and tend to fantasize about those times-when, in actuality, people were extremely barbaric in all the cultures. He said that the ancient Greeks, who had such men as Pythagorus and so forth, threw handicapped children to the lions. We must not continue to evaluate times in history in such a manner; we must face reality. Never, ever, has there been a time when humans have behaved in a civilized manner! So why should this new century be different? People are still killing in the name of religion; in India, which is supposed to be the most spiritual place in the world, there is still slaughter going on in Sri Lanka. Religion's legacy has been hatred, war, ethnocentricity, bigotry, etc. Despite this, we can be optomistic, however, because there is more opportunity now for us to communicate, to dialogue in order to solve our problems.
Nothing will be unusual about the new century. Nobody can stop the movement of time; nobody can influence it. So we should not be concerned with it. Our concern should be whether or not we use time constructively or destructively. Whether Y2K is happy or miserable is really up to us. So we must work hard to bring about a better century if that is what we want. It is not enough to just pray-we must take action. Only through action will things change. We have to make that effort-especially the younger generation, who have the main responsibility to shape the 21st century. This younger generation should have proper education, maintain self-confidence, and a constructive attitude.
We have lived through a century of great destructive events. It is vital that we learn from our experience, then. Some of the most important tasks we must concentrate upon are:
1) We have spent a great deal of time attending to our outer beings-accumulating wealth,
working on our physical bodies, and so on; but this century, we must start to pay equal attention to our inner beings.
2) Along with education, we must develop a genuine sense of caring for others. This can be done, if need be, without religion-through secular ethics (kindness, compassion, etc.)
3) There has been a great increase in spending for war. In order to bring about nonviolence, we
must start by alleviating our own internal violence firstàby ridding ourselves of hate, etc. We must work for total disarmament, but it must be done gradually. Then we must stop the arms trade, as it is so very lucrative. Then we will see a decrease in expenditure for arms. The concept of war is based upon "we" and "they"-which is the delusion of separation. Reality is not that! We are all interdependent, so the destruction of our enemy is the destruction of ourselves.
4) We need to address the issue of the huge gap between the rich and the poor. It is morally wrong! For those of us who have plenty, he thinks for the first week of this century we should go on a partial fast and take just one meal a day. There are millions of people who don't have even that.
5) Another important issue is that of freedom. If there is not freedom for all, there is no real peace or freedom for the rest of the world. Also, we need to take care of our environment. So much damage is gradual, and we don't notice it until it is too late. The population explosion is very important because our natural resources will soon be inadequate for the number of people.
To conclude, His Holiness says that we should realize that there will always be problems in this world and not to delude ourselves that the world will ever be without problems. But it is extremely important that we not lose our determination and optimism so we can work out what problems we can. Otherwise, even the smaller things will get us down. We must try to keep a compassionate heart-from there, the warmth extends to our families and then to our communities.
This transcription is dedicated to all sentient beings so that they may find happiness and a release from suffering.
