The Dalai Lama Center for Ethics and Transformative ValuesAbout the Lecture
His Holiness the Dalai Lama spoke at an inaugural event for a new institute in his name, the Dalai Lama Center for Ethics and Transformative Values. He tempered his provocative ideas about promoting ethics in a secular society with a stream of lively banter. He recalled that he had visited a homeless shelter in San Francisco the other day and told a man he met that he, too, had suffered the same fate after he went into exile in 1959. "I said, 'me too. Homeless'."
Turning to global issues, he framed the two largest issues facing the world as the economy and ecology. These must be solved with compassion toward those we don’t agree with, and by acknowledging their root causes. He rejects the notion that the economic meltdown was caused by "market forces" and instead names the causes as human behaviors--greed and hypocrisy.
He called upon the community to not think in terms of "we and them" and encouraged all of humanity to come forward to solve the world's problems. The only condition that should allow for a "we and them" mindset, he declares, would be if aliens from another planet were to visit the earth. "Inner disarmament can be achieved, external disarmament is difficult.”
The Dalai Lama Center for Ethics and Transformative Values at MIT is dedicated to inquiry, to dialogue, and to the creation of programs that affect the ethical and humane dimensions of life. This nonpartisan center is a collaborative think tank focused on the development of interdisciplinary research and programs in various fields of knowledge from science and technology, to education and international relations.
The Center is founded to honor the vision of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama and his call for a holistic education that includes the development of human and global ethics. It will emphasize responsibility as well as examine meaningfulness and moral purpose between individuals, organizations, and societies.
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