The Book of Joy

negative. You’ve transmuted it into goodness. Because, again, you have
not said, ‘Well how can I be happy?’ You’ve not said that. You’ve said,
‘How can I help to spread compassion and love?’ And people everywhere
in the world, even when they don’t understand your English, they come
and they fill stadiums. I’m not really jealous. I speak far better English
than you, and I don’t get so many people coming to hear me as they come
to you. And you know what? I don’t think they come to listen. They may
be doing that a bit. What they’ve come for is that you embody something,
which they feel, because some of the things that you say, in a sense, are
obvious. Yet it’s not the words. It’s the spirit behind those words. It is
when you sit and you tell people that suffering, frustration, are not the
determinants of who we are. It is that we can use these things that are
seemingly negative for a positive effect.
“And I hope we can convey to God’s children out there how deeply
they are loved. How deeply, deeply precious they are to this God. Even
the despised refugee whose name no one seems to know. I look frequently
at pictures of people fleeing from violence, and there’s so much of it.
Look at the children. I say that God is crying, because that is not how God
wanted us to live. But you see again even in those circumstances, you
have these people who come from other parts of the world to try to help,
to make things better. And through the tears, God begins to smile. And
when God sees you and hears how you try to help God’s children, God
smiles.” The Archbishop was now beaming, and he whispered the word
smile as if it were the holy name of God.
“He wants to ask another question,” the Archbishop said, seeing that I
was leaning forward. It was extraordinary to hear how deeply they were
engaging with joy and suffering, but at the rate we were going, we
wouldn’t get through one-tenth of the questions we needed to ask.
The Dalai Lama slapped the Archbishop’s hand and said, “We have
several days, so it’s not a problem. If our interview is only thirty minutes
or one hour, then we have to shorten our answers.”
“You must shorten your answers,” the Archbishop said. “I am brief.”
“First let’s have tea, and then I will be brief.”