Aug 21 2008
‘The Dalai Lama’s Observation On Hate’
Recently I was made aware of a quote by the Dalai Lama which I thought was quite interesting. It follows:
“We humans have existed in our present form for about a hundred thousand years. I believe that if during this time the human mind had been primarily controlled by anger and hatred, our overall population would have decreased. But today, despite all our wars, we find that the human population is greater than ever. This clearly indicates to me that love and compassion predominate in the world. And this is why unpleasant events are “news”; compassionate activities are so much a part of daily life that they are taken for granted and, therefore, largely ignored.”
Found in Everyday Mind, edited by Jean Smith, a Tricycle book
This is a very insightful view and perhaps one of the reasons I value the Dalai Lama so much. He does make an interesting point, however at the same time we really wonder if its 100% true. There has always been a majority of hate, however it was aimed at other peoples be it American vs Russia, China vs Japan, Japan vs Korea, etc etc. Many of the reasons these peoples didn’t manage to kill each other was because of the impracticality of the travel due to the distance between the nations, or even the sheer impracticality of the whole enterprise.
In my own opinion I think there is much more love and compassion, its just the hates alot louder.
So which is it: is this the case, or do we breed in order to destroy others?
What do you think?
5 Responses to “‘The Dalai Lama’s Observation On Hate’”
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interesting quote…and I see many topics that I’m interested in under your Recent Posts.
Suppose I shall have to bookmark this
I think the reason people haven’t been wiped out is because even if one group hates another, it wouldn’t be able to act on it without serious losses of their own. What’s the point of wiping someone out when you can’t enjoy it afterwards? Basically it all comes down to consequences, as usual - if people thought they could get away with it, we’d probably have a mess of religious wars on our hands, with maybe some good old racial cleansing thrown in the mix. There’s probably more hate in the world than you give it credit for, it’s just that no one has the ability to act on it effectively. Of course, you also hear about it more than “good deeds”, but that’s probably just part sensationalism and part visceral interest.
I beleive that the reason hatred has been sj=hown so much now is because people want to be accepted for who they are and not what they were expected to be. There are only a small amount of the population I beleive that are haters, but they do cause a scene which speaks louder than goodness.
Hate has a need to be loud and verbose while love can be silent, only showing itself through actions. I am reminded of the quote by St Francis that said “Go into the world and teach; when necessary, use words.”
Michael Nolan
Frugal Living Today
Yes I agree with you HappyColor that the Dalai Lama is an absolutely exceptional person. Although I do think that he emphasizes love and compassion so much that his view points may be a bit tainted, he may see love and compassion where it doesn’t necessarily exist. Now this is not a criticism of the Dalai Lama I don’t think he would be the Dalai Lama unless he saw love and compassion everywhere.
Anyway I think the Dalai Lama is forgetting to involve human instinct into his theory for example what about the drive for humans to survive, and what about our need to competition. This two are fundamental reasons for human survival over the last 100,000 years, I think.
A brilliant episode on South park very much shows the human minds conditions. Eric Cartman goes into the future, where all religion has been abolished, so everyone is atheist. They thought this would stop war but all the atheist groups segmented and went to war with each other. Ethnicity, religion, territory, these are all just excuses for going to war, but the reason for going to war lies in the human psyche.
Sorry Dalai Lama I have to disagree with you this time.