The Power of Compassion

Saturday, June 16, a day like no other.

Well, the first unusual thing this morning was that I got up at about 8 a.m. - on a Saturday ;-)

But then, after getting up early I made my way to The Domain. While getting closer to my destination more and more people joined me and when I finally arrived there were already hundreds of people - more than 30 minutes before the actual event took place.

And then, after Brett Kirk made a short anouncement, His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama entered the stage.
And, believe it or not, it was really the way all people who have seen him before keep telling. As soon as you see him, you start smiling, feeling better....pretty strange in some way. But he is such a friendly, warm and funny person. Really unbelievable that he is indeed the spiritual leader of Tibet and the Buddhists.

At the beginning of his speach, he received a Sydney Swans jersey as a kind of present (Brett Kirk is a player for the Swans) and thank you for coming to Sydney. And during the complete 90 minutes he carried it over his shoulder...looked pretty cool ;-)

When starting talking about Compassion and everything that is related to this topic, he always drifted a little away since he always could remember some experiences which have been related to the comparison he was talking about. But he never lost the focus on the topic and always made his points of view very clear and very easy to understand. And he always kept telling that, in order to achieve some changes in the world, everyone hast to start with himself (well, nothing new, but he just told it in a simple and easy way to understand). I think my blog is not the right place to discuss everything he said today - everyone should read, listen or watch him if possible to make up his own mind.

But the cool thing for me was, while he was talking about how one should handle things in life (in his oppinion of course) I was thinking 'hey...that's the way I do it' - sounds kind of arrogant, I know, but was pretty cool to listen. Since a lot of people kept telling me that they don't understand why I am happy or at least smiling most of the time...and he said, even if something bad happens...you can be sad for a moment or two. But then you should be happy again. Or at least not that sad anymore. Firstly because there are too many good things happening to one (or there were to many good things happening with other people one knew) and secondly, compared to others who really suffer from great pain, the tragedy one has to cope with by oneself isn't that tragic anymore...and everyone should get up in the morning and expect something good to happen. Simply looking forward to every day one gets up...and yeah, he's damn right! :)

Actually, right now, I'm too much excited when thinking about this morning - so I won't write anymore right now - maybe I'll continue during the next days. But right now I'm just happy that I've been there today :)