Lama Zopa Rinpoche

oat out into the ocean to look for and study the whales. There is also somebody who has
been studying spiders, maybe in fireplaces, for years. There are probably organizations that
pay people to study things like that.
Scientific knowledge is good, but education is not just learning new things. The essence of
education is developing compassion for living beings—compassion not only for our family
and friends but for all living beings. That especially includes our enemy, the one who dislikes
us, who gets angry with us, who harms us. If we can generate compassion for that person,
it’s an unbelievable thing. If we can bring peace to that person, then it is easy to bring peace
to anybody. This is how we learn to bring peace to the world. Starting with one or two
people, we can slowly bring peace to the world.
That’s an unbelievable accomplishment, more incredible that climbing Mount Everest a
hundred times or…what else? Going to the moon or the sun a hundred times, or a billion
times. It’s a much greater accomplishment than any of that. It is really so special if we can
generate patience and compassion toward our enemy, not to mention generating compassion
toward the numberless other beings.
From time to time in the world it happens that there is a person who doesn’t practice
patience or compassion toward others. If that person has power and influence he can kill
many millions of people. There are different stories about this kind of thing happening,
where millions of people, including children, have been killed, burned or gassed by this one
powerful person.
That person had power and influence but he didn’t have the education that taught him how
to practice patience and compassion. Without those qualities, patience and compassion, what
happened? It’s like Bin Laden. He was able to think big, but in a negative way, to harm
others. He knew how to harm and cheat others in such an unbelievably vast way.
Patience and compassion are the two very fundamental qualities of our inner education.
Without them, powerful people have brought so much harm to the world, killing millions of
people and gaining the worst reputation because of it. If they had practiced patience and
compassion, none of that harm—killing and torturing those millions and millions of
people—would have happened. Incredible happiness would have come to those millions of
people from that harm being stopped. This is the influence that one powerful person can
have on the world.
There are great holy beings in all the different religions, like Saint Francis or the Buddha in
his past lives as a bodhisattva, who have brought many millions of people happiness and
peace. Through practicing patience and compassion, the most fundamental, important
education, even one person has the power to bring great happiness to the people of the
world.
Even if we are not able to become like that now, despite the fact that our body will not
continue, there is the continuation of our consciousness, constantly moving from life to life.
For that reason, the most important practice, the most important education, is developing
patience and compassion so that we can become like those holy beings in future lives. Then,
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