Alt Franz - Dalai Lama: an appeal to the world: the way to peace in a time of division

William Collins

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.williamcollinsbooks.com

This eBook first published in Great Britain by William Collins in 2017

First published in the United States by William Morrow in 2017

AN APPEAL TO THE WORLD. Copyright 2017 by Benevento Publishing a brand of Red Bull Media House. All rights reserved.

Originally published in a slightly different form as Der Appell des Dalai Lama an die Welt in Germany in 2015 by Benevento Publishing.

Cover

Danny Martindale/Getty Images

Designed by Fritz Metsch

Photograph, , by Bigi Alt

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008278427

Ebook Edition November 2017 ISBN: 9780008278434

Version: 2017-10-16

Contents

HIS HOLINESS THE DALAI LAMA and Dr. Franz Alt will be donating all royalties from this little book to German Aid to Tibetans.

I DONT HAVE any enemies, only people I havent met yet, the Dalai Lama told me over 20 years ago. He also said, We have the most to learn from our enemies. In a way, they are our best teachers. So wise and yet so realistic are the words of the most prominent refugee in the world and also one of the oldest after 58 years of exile in India. Even though he has been forced to live outside his Chinese-occupied homeland since 1959, he does not harbor any hatred of Chinese people or their leadership. On the contrary, he sometimes calls himself a Communist Buddhist or a Buddhist Communist and says he even prays for the Communist leaders in Beijing, adding with a laugh, In Europe I would vote for the Green party, because the problem of the environment is a question of our survival.

Over the course of 35 years, we have met over 30 times and had 15 television interviews. Rarely have I encountered such an empathetic interview subject or one so full of humor. None of them has laughed more than he has. It is no coincidence that he has been voted the nicest person in the world in surveys. Over the last few years, the Dalai Lama has come to consider ethics across religious divisions to be more and more important. And today he goes a step further, making a statement unparalleled for a religious leader: Ethics are more important than religion. We are not members of a particular religion at birth. But ethics are innate. In the talks he gives worldwide, he refers to secular ethics beyond all religions with growing frequency. Albert Schweitzer had another term for the same concept: reverence for life.

The Dalai Lamas secular ethics transcend national, religious, and cultural boundaries and define values that are innate in all people and apply to everyone alike. Rather than superficial, material values, these are inner values such as mindfulness, compassion, training the mind, and the pursuit of happiness. If we want to be happy ourselves, we should practice compassion, and if we want other people to be happy, we should likewise practice compassion. All of us would rather see smiling faces than frowning ones, he says.

His Holiness and coauthor Franz Alt.

One of the Dalai Lamas central beliefs is this: all people are united in our pursuit of happiness and our desire to avoid suffering. This is the source of humanitys greatest achievements. For that reason, we should begin to think and act on the basis of an identity rooted in the words we humans.

The Dalai Lama believes that without secular ethics, we cannot solve all the problems we face: wars in the Middle East, Ukraine, Somalia, and North Africa, 20 million global refugees, civil wars in Nigeria and Afghanistan, climate change and the environmental crisis, the global financial crisis, and world hunger. He explains and elaborates his revolutionary assertions in the conversation to follow. What the Dalai Lama suggests is a revolution of empathy and compassion a revolution combining all previous revolutions. Without empathy and compassion, evolution would not have happened in the first place.

In January 2015, appalled at the Islamist terrorist attack at the editorial offices of the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo and a Jewish supermarket in Paris, the Dalai Lama said, On some days I think it would be better if there were no religions. All religions and all scriptures harbor potential for violence. That is why we need secular ethics beyond all religions. It is more important for schools to have classes on ethics than religion. Why? Because its more important for humanitys survival to be aware of our commonalities than to constantly emphasize what divides us. This insight was the spark for the book that follows.

Here is a new message that can change the world.

Franz Alt

Baden-Baden, Germany

FOR THOUSANDS OF years, violence has been committed and justified in the name of religion. Religions have often been intolerant and still are in many cases. Religion is often abused or exploited even by religious leaders in order to further political or economic interests. For that reason I say that in the twenty-first century, we need a new form of ethics beyond religion. I am speaking of a secular ethics that can be helpful and useful for over a billion atheists and an increasing number of agnostics. More integral than religion is our fundamental human spirituality. That is the affinity we humans have for love, benevolence, and affection no matter what religion we belong to.

I believe that humans can get by without religion, but not without inner values, not without ethics. The difference between ethics and religion is like the difference between water and tea. Religion-based ethics and inner values are more like water. The tea that we drink is made mostly of water, but it contains other ingredients as well tea leaves, spices, perhaps a little sugar, and, at least in Tibet, a pinch of salt and that makes it more substantial, more lasting, something we want to drink every day. Yet no matter how tea is prepared, its main ingredient is always water. We can live without tea, but not without water. Likewise, we are born without religion, but not without the basic need for compassion and not without the fundamental need for water.

I see with ever greater clarity that our spiritual well-being depends not on religion, but on our innate human nature, our natural affinity for goodness, compassion, and caring for others. Regardless of whether or not we belong to a religion, we all have a fundamental and profoundly human wellspring of ethics within ourselves. We need to nurture that shared ethical basis. Ethics, as opposed to religion, are grounded in human nature. And that is how we can work on preserving creation. That is religion and ethics put into practice. Empathy is the basis of human coexistence. It is my belief that human development relies on cooperation and not competition. That is scientifically proven.