Nothing earth-shattering.  Just wanted to share something.

Although I'm not a Buddhist,  I appreciate the thoughts and writings of HH The Dalai Lama...as I'm sure many of you are familiar with his teachings or have read his books.   Many of these teachings are universal, not bound to one belief or another, and cross cultural boundaries.

Jeff and I had a Tibetan Buddhist monk stay with us for a week several years ago,  while Jeff was recording a score for a documentary on Tibet.  Nawang was funny, laughed heartily, helped me prepare dinner and wash the dishes, played games with our son,  and shared his thoughts about compassion as we walked in our neighborhood.   As a student and friend of HH the Dalai Lama, he and his family had been chased out of Tibet.  He had lived his adult life in exile in India, yet he exuded love and laughter.  I remember thinking, why isn't he more angry?  Why is he so happy?  Nawang loved to quote his teacher on compassion. That was the source of joy, he told us.

Here is some of the music Nawang and Jeff created in our home for the film, Tibet: Cry of the Snow Lion.  It features Nawang's flute, voices of the monks recorded in exile, and Jeff's trumpet and compositions.

link to music

While you listen, here are some wonderful quotes from HH the Dalai Lama.  

Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them humanity cannot survive.

True compassion is not just an emotional response but a firm commitment founded on reason.

Only the development of compassion and understanding for others can bring us the tranquillity and happiness we all seek.

I have found that the greatest degree of inner tranquility comes from the development of love and compassion. The more we care for the happiness of others, the greater is our own sense of well-being. Cultivating a close, warm-hearted feeling for others automatically puts the mind at ease. It is the ultimate source of success in life.

We must recognise that the suffering of one person or one nation is the suffering of humanity. That the happiness of one person or nation is the happiness of humanity.

Under the bright sun, many of us are gathered together with different languages, different styles of dress, even different faiths. However, all of us are the same in being humans, and we all uniquely have the thought of "I," and we´re all the same in wanting happiness and in wanting to avoid suffering.

True compassion is universal in scope. It is accompanied by a feeling of responsibility.

When we are young and again when we are old, we depend heavily on the affection of others. Between these stages we usually feel that we can do everything without help from others and that other people´s affection is simply not important. But at this stage I think it is very important to keep deep human affection.

It is not enough to be compassionate. You must act. There are two aspects to action. One is to overcome the distortions and afflictions of your own mind, that is, in terms of calming and eventually dispelling anger. This is action out of compassion. The other is more social, more public. When something needs to be done in the world to rectify the wrongs, if one is really concerned with benefitting others, one needs to be engaged, involved.

Right from the moment of our birth, we are under the care and kindness of our parents, and then later on in our life when we are oppressed by sickness and become old, we are again dependent on the kindness of others. Since at the beginning and end of our lives we are so dependent on other´s kindness, how can it be in the middle that we would neglect kindness towards others?

Whether someone believes something or not, believer or non-believer, as long as you are a member of the human family, you need warm human feeling, warmhearted feeling. The question of world peace, the question of family peace, the question of peace between wife and husband, or peace between parents and children, everything is dependent on that feeling of love and warmheartedness.

A truly compassionate attitude toward others does not change even if they behave negatively or hurt you.

and finally, on science and medicine at a crossroads....

I personally like to imagine all human activities, including science, as individual fingers of a palm. So long as each of these fingers is connected with the palm of basic human empathy and altruism, they will continue to serve the well-being of humanity. We are living in truly one world. Modern economy, electronic media, international tourism, as well as the environmental problems, all remind us on a daily basis how deeply interconnected the world has become today. Scientific communities play a vitally important role in this interconnected world. For whatever historical reasons, today the scientists enjoy great respect and trust within society, much more so than my own discipline of philosophy and religion. I appeal to scientists to bring into their professional work the dictates of the fundamental ethical principles we all share as human beings.

http://www.dalailama.com/messages/buddhism/science-at-the-crossroads