[This was emailed to me by a friend]

This is what The Dalai Lama has to say on the millennium...

INSTRUCTIONS FOR LIFE
1.Take into account that great love and great achievements involve great risk.
2. When you lose, don't lose the lesson.
3. Follow the three Rs:
    - Respect for self
    - Respect for others and
    - Responsibility for all your actions
4. Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck.
5. Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
6. Don't let a little dispute injure a great friendship.
7. When you realise you've made a mistake, take immediate steps to correct it.
8. Spend some time alone every day.
9. Open your arms to change, but don't let go of your values.
10. Remember that silence is sometimes the best answer.
11. Live a good, honourable life. Then when you get older and think back, you'll be able to enjoy it a second time.
12. A loving atmosphere in your home is the foundation for your life.
13. In disagreements with loved ones, deal only with the current situation. Don't bring up the past.
14. Share your knowledge. It's a way to achieve immortality.
15. Be gentle with the earth.
16. Once a year, go someplace you've never been before.
17. Remember that the best relationship is one in which your love for each other exceeds your need for each other.
18. Judge your success by what you had to give up in order to get it.
19. Approach love and cooking with reckless abandon.

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Subj: Message from the Dalai Lama [emailed by J.E.S.] - September 2001 - after World Trade Center tragedies

From the Dalai Lama

Dear friends around the world: The events of this day cause every
thinking person to stop their daily  lives, whatever is going on in them,
and to ponder deeply the larger questions of life. We search again for
not only the meaning of life, but the purpose of our individual and
collective experience as we have created it--and we look earnestly for
ways in which we might recreate ourselves as a  human species, so that we
will never treat each other this way again.  The hour has come for us to
demonstrate at the highest level our most extraordinary thought about Who
We Really Are. There are two possible responses to what has occurred
today. The first comes from love, the second from fear.
If we come from fear we may panic and do things--as individuals and as
nations--that could only cause further damage. If we come from love we
will find refuge and strength, even as we provide it to others.This is
the moment of your ministry. This is the time of teaching. What you teach
at this time, through your every word and action right now, will remain
as indelible lessons in the hearts and minds of those whose lives you
touch, both now, and for years to come.  We will set the course for
tomorrow, today. At this hour. In this moment.  Let us seek not to
pinpoint blame, but to pinpoint cause. Unless we take  this time to look
at the cause of our experience, we will never remove ourselves from the
experiences it creates. Instead, we will forever live in fear of
retribution from those within the human family who feel aggrieved,  and,
likewise, seek retribution from them.  To us [Buddhist thinkers] the
reasons are clear. We have not  learned the  most basic human lessons. We
have not remembered the most basic human truths. We have not understood
the most basic spiritual wisdom. In short, we have not been listening to
God, and because we have not, we watch ourselves do ungodly things. The
message we hear from all sources of truth is clear: We are all one. That
is a message the human race has largely ignored. Forgetting this truth is
the only cause
of hatred and war, and the  way to remember is simple: Love, [in] this
and every moment.
If we could love even those who have attacked us, and seek to understand
why they have done so, what then would be our response? Yet if we meet
negativity with negativity, rage with rage, attack with attack, what then
will be the outcome?
These are the questions that are placed before the human race today. They
are questions that we have failed to answer for thousands of years.
Failure to answer them now could eliminate the need to answer them at
all. If we want the beauty of the world that we have co-created to be
experienced by our children and our children's children, we will have to
become spiritual activists right here, right now, and cause that to
happen. We must choose to be a cause in the matter. So, talk with God
today. Ask God for help, for counsel and
advice, for insight and for strength and for inner peace and for deep
wisdom.
Ask God on this day to show us how to show up in the world in a way that
will cause the world itself to change. And join all those people around
the world who are praying right now, adding your Light to the Light that
dispels all fear. That is the challenge that is placed before every
thinking person today. Today the human soul asks the question:  What can
I do to preserve the beauty and the wonder of our world and to eliminate
the anger and hatred--and the disparity that inevitably causes it--in
that part of the world which I touch?
Please seek to answer that question today, with all the magnificence that
is You. What can you do TODAY...[at] this very moment? A central teaching
in most spiritual traditions is: What you wish to experience, provide for
another.
Look to see, now, what it is you wish to experience--in your own life,
and in the world. Then see if there is another for whom you may be the
source of that. If you wish to experience peace, provide peace for
another. If you wish to know that you are safe, cause [others] to know
that they are safe.
If you wish to better understand seemingly
incomprehensible things, help another to better understand. If you wish
to heal your own sadness or anger, seek to heal the sadness or anger of
another.Those others are waiting for you now. They are looking to you for
guidance, for help, for courage, for strength, for understanding, and for
assurance at this hour. Most of all, they are looking to you for love.
My religion is very simple. My religion is kindness.
 Dalai Lama ********************