Dhammapada and the Dalai Lama

I came across this photo today, with the caption: “The devil China knows,” at the economist.com. It is wonderfully heartening to see that even in the face of such amazing atrocities on the part of the Chinese leadership in Tibet, H.H. the Dalai Lama still finds humor where humor is due.

The Chinese have called him “a ‘devil’ with a human face and the heart of a beast” and no doubt in many of their minds he is just that. To others he is something of a curiosity, a Nobel Peace Prize winning God-king crisscrossing the globe in support of his people as well as peace and justice everywhere. To some of us, His Holiness the Dalai Lama is an incarnation of compassion itself, a living embodiment of the highest nature within each of us. He is a god only as much as any of us are, and his compassion and humor are within all of us.

3. “He abused me, he struck me, he overpowered me, he robbed me.” Those who harbor such thoughts do not still their hatred.

4. “He abused me, he struck me, he overpowered me, he robbed me.” Those who do not harbor such thoughts still their hatred.

5. Hatred is never appeased by hatred in this world. By non-hatred alone is hatred appeased. This is a law eternal.