The Dalai Lama’s main commitments are giving attention and education to the heart not just mind as well as letting everyone know that ultimately we are all the same no matter where we are born, where we come from or where we go. The biggest line that stuck out to me was, ” After all, every one of us is born the same way and dies the same way.” This statement speaks volumes because it’s fully and completely true because the one thing that is certain in life is death. No matter if you’re in rags or full of riches we are made of the exact same flesh and blood. The same way a homeless person bleeds a rich person will bleed.

I think one of the bigger commitments he has is to demonstrate that we are all the same and the thing we all need to learn more is to have more compassion to everyone else around us. I think that is something that lacks throughout school. It’s maybe loosely taught at the primary grades and kindergarten level from there on out there isn’t much in the way of teaching being nice to others. It doesn’t necessarily mean that there should be a specific course that has to be laid out to teach it but at least throughout the years that kids are going along learning they still need to be reminded that being nice is very important. I think a lot of that is lost though especially in middle school and dwindles down more and more the further you go in the educational system.

Starting in middle school you’re almost told to differentiate yourself from others. Make yourself be different and apart from others. Now, there is nothing wrong with being unique but putting others down in your journey to set your self apart from everyone else isn’t right. Leaving high school and going off into college is the biggest downfall. You have to set yourself above alot of other people in order to get into your college of your choosing. This happens and once they reach the campus they find people with the same abilities or interest and that’s when problems arise. They are no longer nice and put themselves above other social groups, be it a different race, sexual orientation, or any other type of affiliation.

As for the countries and global predicament of not helping a fellow nation or putting others down is a tough subject. There will always be a sense of nationalism of the denizens of a respective country but it begs the question that’s been asked for a while, “How much nationalism is TOO much nationalism?” Everyone always looks for some kind of difference between them and the next person and that is what get’s a lot of people in trouble. At the end of the day we are all the same. We need the same water, the same food, the same sleep, we’re all humans. There is no one race or nationality that is better than others.

That is something that you would have a global epidemic would be able to show people but still at the end of it all it comes down compassion and the lack of it. At first the whole world was watching China and ready to give aid but the second it started spreading the blame did as well. No longer was it about how many the disease is affecting but how much of a disaster a single country has caused. Without noticing it the whole world turned into a “better you than me” situation. Nations started closing their boarders, yes to help stop the spread and help their people but also a lot of the help stopped going out and more blame started going around. It seemed at first that the world at first was starting to come together because of a global catastrophe but now we are possibly even more divided than we were before it all started.