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20110408GRPHCompassion

Transcriber: Hartmut

Thank you so much everybody for coming here tonight. To me it is beautiful Philly weather. It is raining, of course, but within that you can see the beauty of Philadelphia. Spring is coming up. You actually beat us. I am from Michigan and you are a little bit ahead of us. It is all growing here, in Michigan not yet. Maybe tomorrow it will come there.

I am very happy to be back here, with our friends, Vicky and her friends and people in Jewel Heart, old ones that we know and also Venerable Losang Samten. I just saw him there. He is a beautiful, wonderful person, an old friend. We have studied together with a great many teachers in Dharamsala particularly, His Holiness the Dalai Lama of course and his two great masters, followed by Kyabje Lati Rinpoche, who also is no longer with us. So we have been dharma colleagues for a number of years. Lobsang Samten has studied in His Holiness’ personal monastery Namgyal Dratsang. All the monks from that monastery are entitled to carry the name Kushok. We were talking earlier and he said a Gomang Kushok was coming. I asked him where that title was coming from. The title of Kushok is actually for Namgyal monastery monks, because it is His Holiness’ personal monastery. Nowadays people begin to call every monk “Kushok”. That is different. It is the changing of the culture. We old people know that kushok refers to the Namgyal Dratsang Kushoks. But Ven Lobsang Samten is not just a Namgyal Dratsang Kushok, but a brilliant person, a great master of not only ritual and dharma, but also art. For me, if I have to draw a line, I can’t draw straight. I will draw it crooked or zig zag – worse than a 10 year old. But he really produces beautiful mandalas – as you know. You know him better than I do. He is a Philly person and I am Michigandan.

I would also like to thank you for the beautiful music you prepared. Particularly I am happy to hear you sing “AH”. The manjushri nama sangit – Buddha’s Wisdom Tantra - says that AH is the essence of all:

ah ne yin du kun je chog

dön chen yi ge tham pa jin

ko ne jung wai kye wa me

tsig du je ba pang pa di

jö pa kun je ku yi chog

AH as far as I know is the life strength of all sounds. Sounds are mantra. Mantra is sound. The source of all mantras is AH. So I am so glad you brought AH in there.

Where do we go from AH? With our physical body we are here. We have provided the verbal sound of AH, so what’s left is the mind. Body, speech and mind are the main components of our life. Our physical body is very well disciplined, wonderful, beautiful-looking. Plus being a human being has tremendous qualities. We have opportunities, but since it is not our subject tonight I won’t go into detail. But life is not just an opportunity, but from Buddha’s spiritual point of view, especially from the vajrayana – or tantrayana point of view this particular body is capable of delivering buddhahood within you. And not only over a period of eons, but even within this life itself. That is the body we have. I am not saying you are beautiful. Whatever you are, that’s fine. But you have that quality, which is wonderful. Therefore, according to the Buddha, we got this life by sheer luck, actually.

0:07

Let me tell you a little bit. What happens when the human being dies? The consciousness is separated from it’s identity. Our physical body is our identity, like it or not. In Michigan the Secretary of State issues driver’s licences. I don’t know how it works in Philadelphia. Anyway, the government issues a photo ID. It must be the state government. Whether the state government agrees or not, this body of ours is our identity. For the government to issue an ID for us, the base is our physical appearance. We take photographs, right? Driver’s licenses have photos. The photo is provided on the base of the body. If you don’t have a body, what photograph are you going to put on it? What driver’s license are you going to have? So the body is the basis of our identity. If we separate from our identity and entity – that’s called death. What happens then? We move, according to the Buddha. Don’t take it for granted. I haven’t been there and come back, although I carry the name of “incarnate lama”. I don’t know anything of my previous life. Somebody says, “You are an incarnate lama” and I said, “Ok, thank you.” That’s all I did.

That entity is searching for identity and then you get an identity and it happens to be a human identity. We were lucky. Sometimes it won’t be. You could be a nice, little yak, somewhere in Tibet in the high mountains, just enjoying beautiful grass, air and water. That’s also still lucky. You can also become a pig in the slums of Calcutta. You never know. So the entity changes identity. It is not something that is rotating, but depending on luck. It is called “karma”. Because of karma you get certain things. We are all very lucky and fortunate to have a wonderful life. We can think, communicate, understand. This is very important – honestly. We don’t have to look very far to see other lives. Look at your very intelligent cat or dog. But no matter how intelligent they might be that can’t compare with your own intelligence. I normally say, “If you are think that your cat is that intelligent, give him your car key and send him grocery shopping.”

But two days ago I saw a TV commercial in which a dog is driving a car, chasing a cat who is driving another car. So maybe they do know how to drive (laughs). Anyway, the difference is the mind. I have been too long in the west, so I already lift my finger up to my head when talking about the mind. Where I come from I should put the finger on my chest as the seat of the mind.

0:12

But whether it is at the heart or the head, we all know how to think and manage. So the most important question is that why wonderful people like you are in the spiritual field? If you are not interested path you wouldn’t be here tonight. Why should you? It is raining and not easy to come here. The streets are filled with water. There is tremendous traffic. So why do you take a chunk of time out of busy life to come here? Because you want to have something better for you and others. That’s the reason why many of us are interested in spiritual things. We want to improve ourselves. You want to be useful to yourself and to others. If you have any other reasons, raise your hands. We all look for something that makes this life worthwhile. Buddha calls this a “precious human life.” The great Jamgön Tsongkhapa, the founder of the Gelug or yellow head sect of Tibetan Buddhism says that this life is more important than a wish-fulfilling jewel.

A wish-fulfilling jewel is like a magic lamp. If that is genuine how valuable that is! Likewise, this life really can do better than the magic lamp. The magic lamp can give you more money, fulfill more of your materials needs, but it cannot fulfill the needs of the mind. It cannot meet your spiritual needs.

In other words, the magic lamp cannot fill the hunger of the mind. But your life can. You can. It is because of the identity called human life. You have a human mind. There is no limit what the human mind can do. Look in our history at the scientific development. Look in the medical field. Look anywhere. The scientific development means it is the human mind that did it. God didn’t come down and make our tomahawk missiles and supersonic jets. It is made by human beings like you and me who thought and thought and then built and built. That is what we achieved. Einstein was a human being. I don’t think he was the Son of God who came down. So that is the human capacity. Today we can see that it is cold and raining outside and we can have it nice and warm inside. A hundred years ago we didn’t have that. When it is very hot out there we can make it cool inside. These are human achievements. The mind can that much in the material level because we put efforts in. We did not put any efforts into our inner development – none for whatsoever, for all these years, except in the spiritual traditions, whether it is the Judeo-Christian tradition or the Hindu-Buddhist tradition or whatever the tradition maybe. Nobody put any minute of worthwhile efforts into internal development. That’s why a place like the United States, people like you, are very much hungry for spiritual development. People like us who had a little opportunity because of our earlier masters, tried to feed you with what you are hungry about. But neither can I get inside you, nor him or her. We can show you and talk to you, we can do all kinds of things and even do a lion dance. I am sure you people have seen it. But even then you can’t do anything beyond.

Buddha himself said, “Spiritual development is not transferable. You have to do it.” We can simply relate to you what we have heard – if we have any experience. We can say, “I tried this and it works” or doesn’t work. That’s all we can do. We talked about the body and the sound and now it is the mind. I am not going to go into detail to find out what is mind and what are the mental faculties. But the mind functions because of the mental faculties, such as understanding. There are lots of mental faculties. They are sometimes emotions. There are positive and negative emotions. Those emotions influence the mind itself. Mind doesn’t have physical shape or color. It is not tangible. It has no form. However, to understand this I am going to give you a little example. Mind is almost like a crystal, clean, clear lampshade. That lampshade doesn’t have color. But if you put a red light bulb in there, then if you look it seems to be red lamp shade. That’s what appears to us, we see it and accept it. If you put in a green light bulb, then like that, exactly, our emotions such as hatred affect us. When the hatred light bulb is up the whole mind looks red, dangerous. Or attachment - or let’s say compassion, which could look nice, green and cool. That is how the mental appearances will change.

0:24

It is mind over matter, for sure. Our thoughts influence our actions. When we are angry we act accordingly. When we are happy and compassionate and loving we act accordingly. Right or wrong? When we are jealous we don’t want to show it, however we will not know how to hide it. Everybody else will know. That is how our mind is influenced by these emotions. Who is controlling the emotions? That is a big question. Probably we say “no one, I can’t control it, it has gone beyond me.” Many of us do. When we are angry we do. There are some people who get so angry they don’t know what they have done. They commit murder under that influence. It happens. We know that. Even in the court of law insanity is used as an excuse (laughs). We see that in movies all the time. People say, “I don’t remember, I don’t know, I don’t know what happened”. Then the lawyers will come and say, “Well, he was insane at that moment, blab la bla”. You may get away with murder, but it depends on the lawyer anyway. Sometimes the emotions are so strong. You don’t know what you have done. Then it is true, it has gone beyond. However, it is in our control. This is one thing.

My mind is only known to me. I know it well. So do you with yours. If you know your mind you have to deal with this. Whether you like to let your mind function as being addicted to negative emotions such as hatred, obsession, jealousy, etc, or whether you try to change [it’s up to you]. We all would like to change. There will be no one here who would not like to change. I can tell you. Is there anyone here who doesn’t want to change their mind? Then you are in the wrong place. So it is definitely with our total knowledge and you can control that. The question is how. It is not a question whether we should or can. You can, for sure. If you cannot there would not have been any Buddha at all. But there are thousands of buddhas who have come. There are millions of good, kind human beings, including yourself. You saw your own mind. You know.

But if you try to fight the symptoms you get into trouble. You don’t want to fight the symptoms. You deal with your mind when your mind is neutral. The people who teach you how to meditate tell you “watch your mind and if it is influenced by hatred or anger change your thoughts, count your breaths in and out, in and out.” Or they tell you, “Watch your abdomen, up, down, one, two, three, four.” Why do they do that? They try to draw your attention away from the powerful emotions like hatred and obsession. They try to make you a little relaxed. You can’t cut through the symptoms of someone when they are angry. They will feel, “I am so angry I am going to bite that person’s head off.” If you go there you will get into a fight. So you have to avoid your thoughts for a little while. That’s why you don’t try to fight the symptoms, but try to influence the mind.

0:31

Everybody knows how to get angry. We don’t have to teach anybody to do this. Actually it is true. We don’t go to school, learning how to get angry, do we? Maybe you can get a PhD in how to get angry? No, you don’t. The anger is already there. We have a naturally-born knowledge of how to get angry or how to obsess. But what we don’t have it such a knowledge about how to develop compassion or love. Why? Because we are addicted to hatred and obsession. We have these right and left extremes of those two. It is either “I hate you” or “I must get you, no matter what it takes, you are mine.” We don’t go in between. We are either addicted to this extreme or that extreme. They take over, turn by turn.

Sometimes it is very funny, when you watch people – or yourself. Love and hatred even come together. That’s the reason why. It is the addiction. But there is some gray. It is not always black and white. So get in the gray area. When you get there you begin to realize that hatred is not that good, because it brings hatred. That brings violence and that hurts other people. Whoever entertains hatred they get hurt – including George Bush. That is the reality. You have to realize that hatred brings hatred and that brings violence and that hurts us, you, me, everybody. We don’t have to tell ourselves. We know how much violence hurts. Violence not only hurts two people fighting each other, but also the families. Killing, losing life, war, how much it hurts. Look at the families. Some politicians talk a lot about how we have to take care of the families of the soldiers, blab la bla. In reality they don’t even want to give them their pay now. Are they going to shut down the government today or what? Who knows. If the government shuts down tonight, they are not going to get paid. And who is doing that? War not only hurts the people who are fighting and losing their lives, but also their families. If they lose a person in the war, the families suffer. They have wives, babies and everybody. The wife becomes a single mother, the children become fatherless. Right or wrong? And not only the direct shooting and killing, but indirectly, how much it hurts.

These are the consequences of violence. Violence is not good. It’s really bad. That’s why non-violence is important. Gandhi-ji, Mahatma Gandhi picked up the notion of non-violence coming from Buddha and even the earlier western philosophers. He picked those up and established them in India, challenging the British empire. Many of you are young compared with me. You don’t know. But earlier, in the early 1900s, they would say, “The sun never sets on the crown of England.” They occupied the whole world, South-East Asia, half of China, India, through the middle east and Europe and even the United States. So the sun may go up or down in some areas, but the British crown is always in the sun shine. Such a huge nation was challenged by one little, dusty Indian wearing a dhoti or sarong and sandals, walking through the sand with a little goat, leaning on a stick. He challenged the British empire and established India’s independence. Pakistan too established independence. The huge British empire was soon reduced to England itself. That happened through acts of non-violence.

0:40

Gandhi didn’t have tomahawk missiles. Gandhi didn’t have B 2 bombers. Nor did he want them. He wanted non-violence. He went into the sea and collected salt. If you watch the movie “Gandhi”, the snobbish British general said, “Where did he go? He is collecting salt from the sea? For what? Let him collect.” At the end they realized that they were not getting their tax. They collected salt from the sea and started to distribute that among themselves. The biggest tax the British empire got in India was the salt tax and they were not getting that anymore. They only realized that when their income began to go down. They learnt that because Gandhi had people collect salt from sea they weren’t selling any salt and didn’t collect any tax. That is non-violence. Because that man had compassion and love he cared.

There is not only Gandhi, but also Mother Theresa. You have heard about her. She was a Caucasian woman. I don’t know whether she was made a saint or not, but I hope so. Then was Dr. Martin Luther King and there is Nelson Mandela. And of course there is His Holiness the Dalai Lama. They all engaged in non-violence. It is not easy. There is definitely a lot of inconvenient truths in non-violence – more than in Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth of environmental issues. However, it turns out to be the best way. Sometimes you don’t the result quickly, like in our case. His Holiness is totally engaged in non-violence, because this man cannot bear the people’s suffering, people losing their lives. What more precious thing do people have than their life? When they lose that they lose everything – as far as the individual themselves is concerned. As far as their family is concerned it is a huge loss. He doesn’t want that. So even if the result doesn’t come for 50 years he is willing to wait. He will wait for another 50 years or 100 years, rather than killing people. Ultimately, truth remains truth. It will prevail. That is true, genuine non-violence. What do we do? We talk about non-violence, but next day we bomb them. I am sorry to say. I am very much for Obama and so on. But I don’t like all these wars continuing in Iraq, in Pakistan, in Afghanistan and now in Libya. That is violence.

0:45

Compassion and violence don’t go together. Even in our everyday life, if we want to achieve something and the other person refuses to listen to us we would like to put a lot of pressure on them and squeeze them, trying to force them to accept our viewpoint. That may not be violence, but it is not good non-violence at all. It is better to give choices to the people. Let them choose. Dictators put on pressure and if that doesn’t get them what they want they give a little physical punishment or economic punishment and then they become dictators, right? Recognize that. With every action we are taking we have to think, “Are we going to hurt other people?” “Is that action going to hurt me or others?” You have every right to defend your rights. There is no need to hurt yourself at all. You have to protect yourself. If you don’t, who is? You have to protect yourself. I always make a joke. I am not sure if Losang Samten-la has heard it before. I am 73 years old. For all those years every prayer that I ever saw starts with dag dang drowa nam khai tha dang nyam pai…. – I and all mother sentient beings ……take refuge or whatever. So I am included. Nowhere does it say “all mother sentient beings except me” do this and that. Sometimes people think that compassion is only looking outward and not looking in. But you must look in first. The subject of compassion is first and foremost yourself. Then your family. Then your neighbors. Then people who are connected with you. Then your county, state, city, and then the United States and then the whole world. That is how compassion should work. Don’t forget the good old American saying: Charity begins at home. Just like that compassion begins at home. If you have great compassion for all sentient beings somewhere but you don’t care about yourself and your family that’s not right. Your compassion then becomes lip service. Remember, George Bush Senior said, “Read my lips.” That’s not compassion.

0:50

It is easier to develop compassion for yourself, because you are the one who is experiencing the pain. You realize how the pain is bothering you. The pain that was earlier not known so well in the west and in the United States today we do. People are losing jobs. People are losing their houses. That’s not very far. If you yourself are not one, but your neighbors and friends are, for sure. You don’t have to go to Third World nations to see how pain is taking over. We see it here. We see and feel it. That’s the place where you develop compassion and love. Compassion with love will not be useful. Compassion without love will get burnt out. Compassion without love cannot continue – honestly. You don’t feel it, so you don’t have that much involvement. You may have some involvement but it will be very limited.

I will give you an example. We are sitting here and suddenly we hear a car in the street down there producing a huge noise. The car is running over something. We all get worried. Somebody will go out there and look. They come back and tell us, “The car ran over a dog.” We will say, “Oh.” We are worried about the dog and a lot of people will say, “Poor thing”, but that’s it. Then somebody else will come and tell us, “It’s not a dog, it is human being.” Watch your feeling now. Then somebody else says, “It is not just a human being. It is our neighbor.” Watch the feeling. Then somebody else says, “You know that person. It’s your family member.” Then we get a big shock. Then if somebody tells you, “It is your spouse” we will go almost crazy. So why the difference? The difference is because there is love. Love makes the compassion strong and makes it work. If you don’t have love and don’t care; if you just simply have compassion it is better than lip service, but it could be a “pity” feeling or anything. Then people will say, “Thank you, but no thank you.” So compassion must carry care and love. Then it is genuine. As His Holiness says, “Genuine compassion comes from the warm heart”.

As a great human being such as yourself, educated and intelligent, that type of compassion should be the guiding force of your life. If you somehow manage that you will not be engaging in violence, unless you are forced into it. You will not be entertaining hatred, unless you are driven by fear. This is what happened after 9-11. The whole country shook, remember? This was an interesting experience for me. After 9-11 all the radio and tv shows and all the newspapers were talking about violence, violence, violence. The moment I woke up, NPR radio would say that we lost 40 people today or 50 people today. Not even the names were given, just the numbers, especially of the Iraquis, as though they were not human beings. That whole year it went like that.

At the end of February 2002 I went to India. One of our friends, Samdong Rinpoche, the Prime Minister of His Holiness asked me to come. I arrived in India early in the morning, like 3 or 4 am. By 8 am my phone in the hotel rang. Half asleep I picked it up. It was Samdong Rinpoche. He said, “I heard you have come here today. We have a conference; do you want to come over?” I said, “Okay, let me wash my face and I will come.” So I went. The conference was done under instructions from His Holiness. The title said, “Compassion as antidote to terrorism.” At first I thought, “What? What are you talking about?” I had been influenced for a whole year, day and night, by TV and radio saying that we have to catch them before they catch us and that we have to do pre-emptive strikes and so on. Remember? So anyway, I went into the conference and there were those Indians, including former Indian presidents who had been associates of Mahatma Gandhi. There was Gandhi’s personal secretary and all of those people, one after another, saying how important compassion and care is. You cannot enter physically in the body of a terrorist and switch off their thoughts. The only thing you can do is talk to them, bring some sense and negotiate and treat them like human beings with human mind. So they were comparing what should be done today with what Gandhi-ji did in his time. And it was really WOW. A friend from Washington, DC was there and I told her, “Isn’t that very different?” She said, “yeah, it is.”

1:00

Compassion is such that it will work in society. It works with nations and with everything everywhere. But before it works with society it has to work with us individually. We, the individuals, will make the difference to society. Some people think, “I am nobody. How can I make a difference to society?” But we do, because society is nothing but the collection of individuals such as ourselves. That’s how we cultivate compassion as a guiding principle in our daily lives. Functioning accordingly, we influence our spouses, our children, our families, our neighborhood, our fellow city – and county residents and so on. That’s how we bring about enlightened society. And we can, because society is nothing but the collection of people like ourselves. That’s it. I am finished talking. Nothing more, exhausted. Everything finished.

If you have questions I will be happy to say a few words. Don’t think I have answers. We can all think and talk and if not, you have come in the rain and what are you going to take home tonight?

We don’t have to worry about matter that much. We have to worry about mind. Mind over matter is the truth, as far as I am concerned. The Chinese didn’t agree with me. Even when I was a kid of 10 years and they came to Tibet they said, “Matter is more important than mind.” But honestly, they are wrong. They may be right up to a certain level, because they could build their nation so strong. That’s why they wanted scientist to run the country. That’s fine. They built their nation strong. But it is not going to last, believe me, because they are wrong. Mind is more important. The individual is more important than the collective. A collection is when all individuals get together. For the Chinese the Communist Party is more important than the individuals. The Communist Party believes in the importance of the material over the mind. The individual believes that mind is more important than the material. And mind is more important. Without mind we don’t function.

1:05

Whether you want to do good or bad, we think and with that influence we act. We may not spend a lot of time, it goes zoom, but still, action is following thought. That’s why mind is more important. Since your mind is more important who has control over your mind? You or some other supernatural power? You are not a ghost. If you are a ghost your mind maybe controlled by something supernatural. If you are robot you may be controlled by machines or electronics. But you are not. You are a human being. You control your own mind. Here you have two choices: to be good or to be bad. Good and bad, of course that’s debatable. But here we are looking at the point where we want to be kind, caring and compassionate. Do you want to go into that level or to the monster level? Do you want to hurt everybody or eat everybody and make them afraid of you?

They don’t last. Hitler did that. He didn’t last. Mussolini did that, he didn’t last. Saddam Hussein did and didn’t last. George Bush did it half way through (laughs). He didn’t do it totally, because we are the United States, honestly. There is a term limit! (laughs). Similarly, that’s the choice we have. On the other hand you have Dr. Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, the Dalai Lama who have chosen the other line. So you have a choice. Historically, from the big picture point of view you have two lines. Stalin, Khrushchev, Chairman Mao, Saddam and Gaddhafi, etc, are in one line. In the other line we have Dr. Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, the Dalai Lama and so forth. You have these two different examples very clearly in front of you. Which side do you want to be on? You want to choose the right side of love, compassion and care. Once you make that choice, how to move comes through every action you engage in. Always bring awareness: am I going to hurt other people? If you are really in love with someone, you really want to make sure that every action you take won’t hurt that person. If you are half and half you would like to play half and half. We do that all the time. Don’t we? So choose right. Be aware. Every action you take, make sure no one is hurt.

If you pick up that choice you are choosing compassion and love as principle of your life. Through the result, particularly the karmic result, you are bound to be the winner.

1:10

This is because positive karma never gives negative results. Negative karma, no matter whatever it is can never give you positive results. If I want happiness for me, if I want to be a good person I will choose that path. Be aware that your actions are not going to hurt anybody. That is the most important. If you can do that it was worthwhile for you to come here in the rain. That’s what you take home. That’s something for you to chew and nourish yourself and build up on. You will be a happy person.

Any questions?

Audience: Should I focus more on the gray areas and not so much on the other sides?

Rimpoche: This is a very important question to me. A lot of people think that compassion is passive. They think to be compassionate means relaxed and loose end. People give you the example, “He is compassionate, so he is not so much excited and shaking. He is relaxed.” You may think that compassion is some kind of soft play dough that you can shape in any way. But no. Compassion is very active, extremely active. If you have compassion, you care, you act. You become an active, not a passive person. Thinking that compassion makes you passive is a total misunderstanding. The act of compassion is extremely diligent and rigorous and very active. The mind of compassion combined with wisdom is penetrating and critical and very, very active. A lot of people particularly in this country think that the meditators of compassion behave in the Indian aya ram jia ram – Ram has come and Ram has gone - fashion. But that is very wrong. Compassion is extremely active, rigorous, very effective and very forceful. When you don’t have that you don’t have powerful compassion.

Some people think that anger is helpful in solving some social problem. But no. Anger makes you burn out. Compassion makes you solve social problems much more than anger. Remember, compassion is very active, not passive. So if you take refuge in the gray areas that could make you passive. Make sure you don’t become passive, but active. The purpose of the gray is cut out from the extremes. Use that and move, but don’t stay in the gray area. When I first came to the United States in the late 80s, a number of people told me, “You don’t have any gray areas, only black and white.” Maybe that’s what happened to me. So the gray area gives you shelter for a few minutes, but then you must move.

I wish I remember, there was poem by William Blake, which Allen Ginsberg used to tell. Something that flies and you kiss it and let it go. I forgot. Anyway, utilize the gray and then let it go. Don’t get stuck. He who cannot let it go gets stuck. Getting stuck is not good. Anyway, that is a very good question.

1:18

Audience: What is different between love and attachment?

Rimpoche: Love and attachment are two different things to me. Human beings have attachment, which has a very specific narrowly zoomed view. But love has an open view. Love should bring compassion. Compassion without love is not strong. I did not say that there is no compassion without love. I am saying that love should bring compassion. Then compassion is strong and powerful. Love and attachment are different things. Think about it. You will probably notice that within 20 minutes of thinking.

Audience: How can one have compassion for evil people?

Rimpoche: When His Holiness went to Jerusalem, standing at that whole praying, some journalist asked His Holiness, “Do you think Hitler had Buddha nature?” And he said “yes” – in Jerusalem! Can you imagine? That answers tremendously. Every human being, including Hitler, Saddam and ourselves, we all have the seed of compassion and hatred. Which one we are going to nurture, which one we are going to cultivate more that changes the quality of the person as a human being. Unfortunately Hitler and so on nurtured and grew and utilized hatred. In order to gain his power he had to hate the Jews. He tried to unite the Germans on something. For that he created an enemy and the faults of that enemy. Then he forced the people to destroy them. And some people were excited to do it. He misused hatred and tried to unite people through hatred. That’s why Hitler collapsed and so did Stalin. That’s why Mussolini collapsed. That’s why Idi Amin is no more with us. That’s why Saddam Hussein is no more with us. Everyone has everything within them. It depends on what you want to cultivate. That’s why I said that you have to make your choice and I gave you all the examples of Mother Theresa, His Holiness, Gandhi and so on one side, and Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, Chairman Mao on the other side. So we have historical examples and you can decide what you want to follow. We have both sides within us. Don’t think there is no evil within us. We do have it. The fear can cultivate hatred. I told you that happened in 9-11. You young ones choose the right side, build yourself up and make yourself a Buddha. Then you have achieved the purpose of your life.

Thank you so much - 1:24