When you share it, it multiplies

I think one of the things that I should talk about today is the values, the inner values, the real values, right? Because I believe, I think many of you would agree that today in society and through the system somehow, through the education system also, somehow the values have been a little bit turned upside down. They’ve been completely turned upside down. What do we value in the capitalistic society? What is it? Money, power, land, wealth, influence? All those things, those are the real values. That’s what people fight for and they strive to have that more and more and more, even though they know they can never be satisfied. Deep down inside they know through materialistic means they cannot reach satisfaction. It’s impossible. How? If you don’t search inside, if you don’t find satisfaction inside, you cannot find it outside. If you don’t live the moment by being present with yourself, you cannot be satisfied. It’s impossible. Think about it. Logically, it cannot be.

Even, for example, in America or many other places, many children start their education through a loan. They must fight so hard to get into the best universities, the best colleges, and they must pay so much money. They must take a loan and they’re already in debt halfway through their education. Then, when they finish their degrees, already they must start working even before they finish their degree of the graduation. They’re already working and then they must work how many years—ten, fifteen years—to pay back that loan? They’re already in debt while there. Then, what is the American dream? To have the perfect house, the perfect wife or husband, family, the nice car.

Think about the cars. If it was really about the pleasure of driving, they wouldn’t try to make cars so nice outside. They would maybe have normal outside and then inside luxurious so that you can really enjoy the driving. But, it’s also about creating envy, right? About showing off that you are happy even though maybe you’re miserable. It doesn’t matter. You must give that appearance that you’re happy, you have the nicest car, the shiniest.

If you get a small scratch, “Oh no! It’s the end of the world. I got a scratch. Now what? Now I must repaint the whole car because if I paint just the scratch, it’s going to look super ugly. And, it’s so important to look good, to have the appearance that I have wealth. Because, if I don’t have wealth, people won’t accept me. They won’t maybe respect me.” That’s the type of values society and the system is trying to make us believe are real.

Then what? After you get the house, the family, the car or cars, then what? Then, you must work your whole life to pay for that. Then sometimes the car breaks down or maybe the wife leaves you and you have the children or who knows. In samsara anything can happen, right? So, it can be difficult and especially if you’re living in a city without the wisdom or the information to really know how to cope with that. Because in the education system—not everywhere, there’s many different types of education which are very complete, but—normally, in general, the conventional education system, they teach you how to work, but they don’t teach you how to live. And what’s the point of working if you don’t know how to live?

If you don’t know how to really put it in practice, what you earn, how to spend it, how to really enjoy life, how to live a meaningful life, a satisfactory life, a peaceful life, a harmonious life, if you don’t know, what’s the point? It doesn’t really make sense, even though people live like that and have been living like that for generations. And, do we question it? Maybe we do, but do we do something about it? I don’t know.

At least many people are doing it and we really have to thank those people who are actually dedicating their life and committing themselves energetically, giving their space and the time to really be able to create this, to be available, to educate the heart, inner values, right?

How beautiful do you think it would be if children at a young age already have those values, the real values? What are the real values, the inner values? There was a guy that is a descendant from I think Mayan, Inca or Aztec? I’m not sure. I saw one of his videos on YouTube. He gives talks on the mountain. He dresses up and he talks to the camera, and there’s different subjects. There’s one subject he was talking about which I found interesting. He was talking about gold.

He said there’s two types of gold—there’s an exterior gold, which most people strive for all their life, and there’s an inner gold. He explained that the outside gold, basically people fight for that. In capitalism, if you become rich, it’s because other people got poor. That’s how the balance stays, in a way, so you must fight. Sometimes you really have to just focus on getting and earning that. Because if you focus on how other people may lose, then you can never become rich in a capitalistic society. Unless of course you’re really striving to help people because the motivation is very important, so you have a good motivation maybe. I don’t know.

Either way, that gold, once you’ve achieved that gold, you need more gold to get more gold, right? So, if you want to do big investments to get more income, you need to invest more. You must risk more, and you can lose that anytime. That gold you can lose at any time, so you’re worried about losing it. You don’t want to share it because if you share you will have less. You don’t trust the people who come around you like your friends, or you think, “Oh, maybe they want to be my friends because they want a piece of this gold.” So, you have this, not trusting even the family sometimes. You have all these issues in the family because they all want a piece of that gold. Then you’re worried about whether you can lose it, how to get more and what will happen when you will die. Who’s going to get the gold? What’s going to happen? You can’t take it with you, can you? So, all these issues about the exterior gold.

What about the inner gold? How about that one? That one, the more you have, the more you get. The bigger it is, the more you receive. When you share it, it multiplies, right? You don’t have to be afraid of losing it. Nobody can take it from you. Even if they chop your body into small pieces, they still can’t get it. For example, in the prisons in Tibet, many Tibetans have a really hard time and the Chinese sometimes would try hard to break down their faith and their hope, and they would torture them hard. But many Tibetans would never lose their hope. They would always have their faith and they had that security. Many of them survived thanks to that, because they had that insurance or belief or understanding of life. All they had was compassion for their torturers and through that compassion, they were able to transform the pain. They were able to not turn it into something bad. That’s why, for example, forgiveness is so important.

Forgiveness I think is an important inner value. Of course, some people say, “Oh no, I can’t forgive this person. It’s impossible because what they did is unforgivable.” What are you doing by not forgiving? You’re carrying their weight. Even though it’s not your mistake or your problem or your action, you’re still carrying their problem by not forgiving them. Because you clench to that, you keep it, it’s something so important. Many people do that, they’re, “Oh no, I will never forgive them for that, because blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,” and then they carry it all their life. For what? And, it’s not just about forgiving the other person, but it’s also about forgiving yourself.

If you do something, it’s OK to see that it was wrong, that it was bad, that somehow you hurt someone, you harmed them, you did the wrong decision, but at least don’t torture yourself about it. Try to learn from it and move on and not repeat it. If you repeat it, OK, then it’s a mistake, there’s an issue, something’s wrong. But if you learn from it and you move on and you grow, and you evolve, good. So, forgiveness goes both ways. It’s very important to forgive. You don’t want to carry that weight. You want to forgive them so that they can also move on. That’s what compassion means, also. You must have compassion for the other person. If you don’t have compassion for the other person, then you’re suffering too and you’re not evolving and you’re not helping them evolve either. You’re carrying this.