Tenzin Gyatso, His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama
- an excerpt -
It is important
first of all to understand what we mean by love. Love is the
desire to see happiness in those who have been deprived of it. We
feel compassion toward those who suffer; this is the desire to see them
released from their suffering. We habitually feel affection and
love for those closest to us and for our friends, but we feel nothing
for strangers and even less for those who seek to harm us. This
shows that the love for those closest to us is heavily tinged with
attachment and desire and that it is partial. Genuine love is not
limited to those close to us but extends to all beings, for it is
founded on the knowledge that everyone, like us, wishes to find
happiness and avoid suffering. Moreover, this extends to all
people the right to find happiness and be free of pain As such,
genuine love is impartial and includes everyone without distinction,
including our enemies.
As for
compassion, we must not confuse it with commiserating pity, for that is
tainted with a certain scorn and gives the impression that we consider
ourselves superior to those who suffer. True compassion implies
the wish to put an end to others' suffering and a sense of
responsibility for those who suffer. This sense of responsibility
means that we are committed to finding ways to comfort them in
their trouble. True love for our neighbor will be translated into
courage and strength As courage grows, fear abates; this is why
kindness and brotherly love are a source of inner strength. The
more we develop love for others, the more confidence we will have in
ourselves; the more courage we have, the more relaxed and serene we
will be.
The opposite of
love is malice, the root of all faults. On this basis, how can we
define an enemy? Generally, we say an enemy is someone who seeks
to harm our person or those who are dear to us, or our possessions;
someone, therefore, who opposes or threatens the causes of our
contentment and our happiness. When an enemy strikes against our
belongings, our friends, or our loved ones, he is striking against our
most likely sources of happiness. It would be difficult, however,
to affirm that our friends and possessions are the true sources of
happiness, because in the end the governing factor is inner peace; it
is peace of mind that makes us relaxed and happy, and we become unhappy
if we lose it.
It is no an
external enemy who has the ability to destroy our happiness. In
fact, anger, hatred, and malice, if we feel them, are quite apt to
destroy our inner peace and in so doing reduce our happiness to
nothing, These are our true enemies. Those who know great
inner peace remain relaxed and serene even when confronted with the
most difficult situations, where everything seems to go against their
happiness. But the person whose mind is ravaged by the
destructive fires of malice, hatred, and jealousy will know nothing but
unhappiness even under the best circumstances imaginable.
Thus, upon
consideration, we find that the true enemy of happiness is to be found
within; we cannot designate an actual external enemy. The key to
genuine happiness is in our hands. To think about it in this way
is to discover the essential values of kindness brotherly love, and
altruism. The more clearly we see the benefits of these values,
the more we will seek to reject anything which opposes them; in this
way we will be able to bring about inner transformation.
--
Tenzin Gyatso, His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama
from Beyond
Dogma: Dialogues & Discourses
Beyond Dogma:
Dialogues & Discourses
by His Holiness the Dalai Lama
edited by Marianne Dresser; translated by Alison Anderson
A collection of public conferences given in France in the autumn of
1993.
Noth Atlantic Books; softcover; 230 pages
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availability
current as of 15 June 2006