The Book of Joy

yourself completely to a crisis mentality? How can we help the world
heal and still find joy in our own life?’”
“My younger brother, here, go first,” the Archbishop said.
“I think you know better.”
The Archbishop laughed. “This is the first time, please note, that he
said I know better.”
“Is the question about Africa?” the Dalai Lama inquired.
“No, this is about the world.”
“Okay,” the Dalai Lama said, preparing to answer. “Now, I am always
sharing with people that the problems we are facing today are very
difficult to solve. An entire generation has been brought up with a certain
mentality, with a certain way of life. So when we think about the future,
how to build healthy humanity, we really have to think about how we
create a new generation of citizens with a different kind of mind-set. Here
education really is the key. Christianity has wonderful teachings, so does
Buddhism, but these teachings and approaches are not sufficient.
“Now secular education is universal. So now we must include in
formal education of our youth some teaching of compassion and basic
ethics, not on the basis of religious belief but on the basis of scientific
findings and our common sense and our universal experience. Just
complaining about the present situation is not much help. It is very
difficult to deal with our current world crises because of our basic
mentality. As you mentioned, your father was usually a very good man,
but when he was drunk he behaved badly. Today I think many human
beings are drunk. They have too many negative emotions like greed, fear,
and anger dominating their minds. So they act like drunk people.
“The only way out of this drunken stupor is to educate children about
the value of compassion and the value of applying our mind. We need a
long-term approach rooted in a vision to address our collective global
challenges. This would require a fundamental shift in human
consciousness, something only education is best suited to achieve. Time
never waits. So I think it is very important that we start now. Then maybe
the new generation will be in a position to solve these global problems in
their lifetime. We, the elder generation, have created a lot of problems in