My mother was illiterate, uneducated, a farmer’s wife. We were not so poor. Perhaps a family’s economic conditions do make a difference. The main source of happiness for the poor is just human love. I remember being at a conference in India with an old friend who came from an Indian royal family. I teased him that although his was a royal background, I may have received greater love and affection because my mother kept me with her. As she went about her work she carried me on her shoulders and I would steer her this way and that by pulling her ears. In his case, he was mostly in the care of a nanny. My childhood was full of joy. “When it came to my education, our monastic system stressed the use of reason. The Buddha encouraged his followers to examine what he had taught in the light of reason, to investigate and experiment. I only developed a real interest in study when I was about 11 or 12, but I had an abiding curiosity. I always wanted to know how things worked. I dismantled and reassembled my toys. I worked with a Chinese monk to repair and maintain a movie projector that had belonged to the 13th Dalai Lama. This is how I learned the principles of electricity.” His Holiness spoke of witnessing technology in factories and power plants in China in 1954, developing an interest that continued when he escaped to India in 1959. Twenty years later he initiated a dialogue with scientists focusing on cosmology, neurobiology, physics and psychology, which led to the establishment of the Mind & Life Institute. He suggested there needs to be a balance between understanding the external world and the inner world or consciousness. He also stressed the need for the application of scientific discoveries to be guided by moral principles. Looking out at the audience, he said: “I may be nearly 80 years old, but I still consider myself to be a student like these young people. dalailama/news/post/1176-the-art-and-science-of-education-of-the-heart
Posted on: Thu, 23 Oct 2014 15:44:24 +0000
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