We should feel that violence has been enough--Dalai Lama

Vijyender Sharma

Dharamshala --While addressing the gathering at Hibiya Open-Air Concert Hall near Tokyo, Tibetan Spiritual Leader Dalai Lama deliver a talk titled 'One – We are one family'.

Joining with him in the conversation were Ai Tominaga, fashion model and Kenji Kohashi, event producer and film director.

"The concept of sense of oneness of 7 billion human beings is immensely beneficial to open your hearts. As a result of too much self-centred attitude, one experiences more anxiety, stress and eventually anger. Once we consider entire human beings our brothers and sisters, we can easily communicate and smile.

Pointing to the crowd, Dalai Lama said, "In your Japanese tradition, unless introduced, you remain reserved; useless. As soon as we meet, we recognise that it is another human being and we can easily shake hands, not waiting to be introduced."

"I myself practice these things and find immense benefit. From leaders to beggars, all are same human beings."

His Holiness sharply called out against violence and sounded the message for a peaceful, demilitarised and a compassionate century. "We should feel that violence has been enough. This 21st century should be a nonviolent century, a peaceful century, and ultimately compassionate century based on a sense of oneness of seven billion human beings."

Reminded of his meeting with an old Japanese friend and survivor of the Hiroshima nuclear attack, His Holiness recounted the meeting. "Many years ago, I visited Hiroshima and Nagasaki. When I visited the place, I met an old woman who had experienced suffering because of nuclear radiation. Her watch had stopped at 10 o'clock and the other half of the watch had melted because of the sheer radiation of the bombing."

"Now the time has come. We should not repeat the pain and bloodshed of the past century."

"In order to create a happy family, a happy community, all these basis of happiness first start with an individual. We should utilise our intelligence to strengthen our inner values such as warmheartedness."

He said one could look at the example of a loving mother to understand human's innate need for love and care.

"According to scientists, basic human nature is more compassionate. Obviously, the entire 7 billion human beings came from their mothers and have been nurtured and survived by mother's tremendous loving kindness.

His Holiness found that the current education system with its focus geared towards material development has failed to nurture human's basic compassionate nature.

He said, "The so-called modern education is very much oriented about external values so as a result, the whole generation of people who have received the modern education start living a materialistic life with materialistic attitude.

"Education should be more complete. In our education system, we must have education about warmheartedness and about our inner values in a secular way according to Indian understanding. The Indian understanding of Secular accords respect to all religion and also respect for nonbelievers."

His Holiness argued that grounding moral values in religion is no longer required nor adequate. "Simply use common sense and looking at scientific finding, we can understand that warmheartedness is important for our health."

The talk was followed by a discussion between His Holiness and a group of artists and cultural innovators.

Kenji Kohashi, event producer and film director and Ai Tominaga shared their impressions of meeting His Holiness in the past and particularly of their experiences relating to Tibetan Buddhism.