"No anger, no hate" - The Dalai Lama at Possibilities 2011 social forum.

ANDREW MCKEOWN, Editor and Political reporter.
ON WEDNESDAY, April 13th, 2,000 people gathered in Dublin’s Citywest Hotel for the sold-out Possibilities social forum, organised by three charities: Afri, Children in Crossfire and Spunout.
The 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet, Tenzin Gyatso, addressed the Possibilities 2011 social forum. He was invited by his friend Richard Moore, founder of Children in Crossfire who was blinded by a British soldier in Northern Ireland at the age of ten but met with the soldier years later to tell him that he forgave him and they subsequently became friends.
We asked the Dalai Lama “what is the best way for young people to implement change in the world?” He said that young people are very important and powerful. “I am from the 20^th Century but you all belong to the 21^st Century. This century depends on you. You should think about the future seriously and with vision.” He said that we should be open in our international affairs. “There is no we and they. All of humanity is one human family. Every part of the big world is a big ‘we’.”
He said that we should be kind to others “your interest is dependent on them. Destruction of your neighbour, destruction of your enemy is the destruction of yourself. I am a refugee- stateless. I have no country. But I find friends everywhere I go.”
When asked about his views on the recession he said that he had no knowledge of “money matters”, but said that his friends told him that the global recession was caused by too much greed. People who rely on money for happiness, he said, suffer most, and he said that the sources for inner peace can be found within ourselves. “The ultimate source of happiness, peace of mind, cannot be produced by money,” he said. “Billionaires, they are, I notice, very unhappy people. Very powerful, but deep inside, too much anxiety, too much stress.”
The Dalai Lama said people should be able to criticise, but not allow their judgement to be clouded by the red haze of rage.“Once anger comes into your mind - biased,” he said. “So your criticism will not be genuine. No anger, no hate”
He said with “self confidence, hard work and determination”, Ireland’s economy would prosper again. “Ireland was once very poor but you made the best of opportunities”.
More than 1,200 tickets for the event sold out within five days of going on sale. The remaining 800 tickets were sold cheaply or given away to youth and community groups throughout the country.
The Dalai Lama urged people to be warm-hearted and compassionate, which he said, coupled with study and meditation, was the way to inner peace. He spoke of the importance of the media “You must be truthful and you should have a nose to smell out corruption.” He then said, with a cheeky giggle that “You must have a very long nose, like an elephant, to smell behind as that’s where you’ll find it.”
Former Irish president and ex-United Nations Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson also spoke at the social forum, reminding everyone of their duty in making the world a better place and emphasizing and ingeminating the threat that Global warming poses to the poorest in our world. She too spoke of the importance of the media “People protested in the squares [of Libya and Egypt] because they felt that they weren’t alone because of media.”