Dalai Lama’s Simple and Powerful Formula to Solve Your Personal and Global Problems

The Dalai Lama is a person who was forced to live away from his country and sometimes faces the risk of assassination. I am deeply impressed by his simple and powerful suggestions on how to solve personal and global problems, which I’d like to share with you here.

 

Dalai Lama: “If there is real compassion in our heart, our children will be wisely educated, we will protect the world, and the poor will be provided for.”

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Our problems may feel insurmountable to us. They’ve been with us so long that we find it hard to imagine a life free from them. We often believe the sources of our troubles are our obligations, or the pursuit of safety, or outside circumstances, or another person, and feel hopeless and helpless.

A group of people met with Dalai Lama to discuss his ideas about the foremost problems of the century and asked him the following questions:

1) How can we reduce the increasing gap between the rich and the poor?
2) How can we protect our world?
3) How can we educate our children?
4) How can we help oppressed countries such as Tibet and their people?
5) How can we help people care for one another?

The Dalai Lama answered that the answer to all of these questions can be summed up with the answer to the last one: “If there is real compassion in our heart, our children will be wisely educated, we will protect the world, and the poor will be provided for.” The group then asked:

6) Is love on earth increasing or remaining the same?

To which he answered, “I would say from my experience that it is INCREASING.”

Dalai Lama mentioned a simple exercise to help increase love and compassion on earth and asked everyone in the group to share it with as many people as they could when they returned home. The exercise consists of 4 parts:

1) As we start the day, let’s remember for 5 minutes that we are all connected and want the same things (to be happy and to be loved).
2) For 5 minutes, let’s fill our heart with good feelings for ourselves while we inhale and feel the same feelings for others while we exhale. Let’s think of the people about whom we find it hard to feel positively and let our good feelings enclose them, too.
3) Let’s keep the same attitude for everyone we meet during the day. Let’s approach every person we encounter, all the people that we like or dislike, from the ones performing the simplest jobs to the ones that “matter” the most in our lives, with good feelings.
4) Let’s keep it up no matter what happens in our lives, no matter what they do to us.

The Power of Meditation

I’d like to mention here some social and scientific studies that affected me deeply and which I think you will also find surprising. They show the effect of the advice above in solving the personal and global problems.

Throughout the months of June and July 1993, 4,000 people from 100 countries gathered in Washington to meditate together to decrease crime rate, as part of a research study. They were going to calm their minds and fill themselves with positive feelings; first for themselves and then for everybody and everything. The idea was at first ridiculed by the police, who nevertheless agreed to cooperate in the study, and a result was obtained that supported the results of 48 different research studies conducted previously (1994, Hagelin JS et al.) (http://www.hagelin.org/). As long as the meditation lasted, the crime rate dropped by 25 % and it started to rise again after the project had disbanded.

In the ‘90s, a tremendous improvement was seen in the prisons of India where many social problems were encountered, thanks to a progressive inspector called Kiran Bedi. Bedi was assigned to Tihar Jail in 1993, a prison with a population of 10,000 inmates 9,000 of which waited to get a trial, where she decided to improve the conditions. She managed to overcome all bureaucratic and dangerous obstacles to establish a system where inmates and staff were taught to meditate.

Personal Benefits of Meditation

Studies show that the people who engage in meditation experience the following changes:

  • Brain functions are recovered and sleep patterns are improved.
  • It facilitates learning and makes you a happier person in general.
  • It has a positive effect on heart disease and other physical disorders.
  • It diminishes the symptoms and slows down the progression of chronic diseases.
  • It develops creative and methodic thinking.
  • It reduces stress and helps overcome the effects of stressful situations quickly.
  • It improves the skill to focus on details without getting distracted by outside factors.

On the other hand, the most interesting fact that the studies reveal is that our brains can affect others’ without any physical connection whatsoever involving the five senses.

How, you ask? I’m telling you now, if you’re ready to hear it: When as few as 1% of the people in a community meditate daily, it creates immediate, measurable and significant results on the community. The results of these studies can help us better grasp why the Dalai Lama’s advice seems to work. In short, love and compassion can be transmitted from one person to another without contact. I invite you all to join in this contagious epidemic of goodness J 

Please share your thoughts, experiences, questions and feedback in the comments section below. I read them all and reply.

Hagelin JS1; Orme-Johnson DW; Rainforth M1; Cavanaugh K1; Alexander CN1; Shatkin SF1; Davies JL2; Hughs AO3; Ross E4“Effects of Group Practice of the Transcendental Meditation Program on Preventing Violent Crime in Washington, D.C.: Results of the National Demonstration Project, June–July 1993″, D.C.Institute of Science, Technology and Public Policy Technical Report 94:1, 1994. Social Indicators Research (vol 47 issue 2: 153-­201, 1999)

Irem Bray

İrem Bray is a graduate of Bosphorus University Department of Psychology and London University Institute Of Psychiatry. She sees life as a journey of reciprocal discovery and opportunity to share gifts. She develops projects which, starting from the uniqueness of the individual, transform the society in a circular way. She works with her team, using the latest technologies, to train family therapists, and conduct sessions with people throughout the world, especially with Turks and those associated with Turks, to improve systems such as individuals, couples, families and companies. You can now contact İrem and her team at [email protected] or 0090 538 912 33 36, 0044 738 7763244 Contact her at http://irembray.com

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