Hello. Tashi delek.
I would like to share with you about
how to deal with fear and anxiety for our times.
"For our times" means nowadays we have a lot of war,
terrorism, shootings, and natural disasters.
Many people have asked me how to deal with this.
The first thing that's important is that you have to help yourself.
This is very important. Normally I say,
"You help the world by helping yourself."
You are a part of this world.
If your mind becomes calmer,
and if you develop a non-violent attitude within yourself,
and compassion, then you can express this to others,
and you can influence others.
We are all like parts of a ripple.
If you have a lake, and small and tiny stones,
when you throw the stones into the lake, they create ripples.
At first, they are small. Then they become bigger, bigger, and bigger.
So, you can influence others. You can influence two people.
These two people may influence four other people,
then eight people, 20 people, 100 people, and 1000 people!
So, don't think, "I cannot do anything.
"I cannot help this world with a big plan
"that will influence thousands of people within five minutes,"
or something like that. "If I cannot do that,
"it means that it's useless even to make a small effort."
Don't think like that.
You can help yourself.
If you can help yourself, you can help others.
Now, how to help yourself?
There's a famous Zen story:
There's a master and a student, and they try to cross a river.
There's also a girl there who tries to cross the river.
She's having difficulties crossing the river
and they want to help her but, traditionally,
if you're a monk, you cannot really touch girls.
If you're a nun, you cannot touch men.
There are some rules there.
So, the young monk didn't know what to do,
but the old monk carried the girl across the river,
and then she went on.
The young monk followed the old monk
after they had helped the girl cross the river,
and they were walking back to the temple.
At the end the young monk asked the old monk,
"How come? How could you do that?
"I mean, you grabbed the girl and crossed the river,
"you're not supposed to that! Why?
"How could you do that? How come?"
And the old monk said, "I just carried that lady once.
"But you have carried her until now.
"You have carried her all the way to the monastery."
Do you know the meaning of my story? The meaning is:
The young monk was thinking and thinking,
"Why did the old monk touch that girl?"
And he was having this thought until they came to the monastery.
So, we all have this kind of habit.
The habit of worrying too much.
Our monkey mind always worries and exaggerates.
If you're working,
and there are some problems at your workplace,
then even when you have finished your job,
you bring this problem to your home. So it becomes a double problem.
One at the workplace, and then you bring it to your home,
and now you have a problem at home also.
So, if you make problems within your mind,
and especially if you exaggerate small problems
and make them into big problems, then you cannot see things clearly.
You won't become calm and peaceful.
If your mind is not calm, then your actions,
which are disturbed by the monkey mind, will not be good.
They may cause harm to others.
So, the first important thing is to make your mind calm,
and also to promote love, compassion, and nonviolence.
This is very important.
If there are some problems and fighting,
and you fight back, and the other fights back,
then it becomes endless.
You cannot solve the problem by fighting.
So, we try our best.
We are all humans.
We all want to be happy. None of us wants to suffer.
Everyone in this universe is the same.
Each breath, each movement, each eye blink,
is also a way of looking for happiness.
So, try to understand that everyone is like that.
We should try to connect with everyone.
They all want to be happy and don't want to suffer.
So basically, we're all the same.
So, understand that basic feeling,
and try to develop empathy and sympathy.
Even if you want to communicate, if you want to deal with the problem,
if you want to challenge the problem,
you should do it out of compassion, out of kindness.
Then, whatever actions you do will be pure and strong.
It will have a lot of positive effects.
In the end, we can have world peace.
Of course!
We are part of this world, and we can influence others.
So, in the end, we can make world peace.
So, you're helping the world by helping yourself.
If you help yourself, it means you're helping the world, too.
Thank you!