You need to hear what Lady Gaga and the Dalai Lama have to say about kindness
Talk about a double whammy: this weekend, His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Lady Gaga shared the stage together at the U.S Conference of Mayors for a plenary session on kindness.
Journalist Ann Curry moderated the discussion, “The Global Significance of Building Compassionate Cities: Kindness Makes It Happen,” where Gaga — who recently gave an impassioned speech at a vigil for the Orlando shooting victims — and the 14th Dalai Lama both urged leaders of America’s cities to exemplify kindness and discouraged them from making America more divisive.
“What you can do is help calm the fears, calm the anger,” Gaga shared. “Young people are very confused right now because they are living in a state of horror. The media, when we watch the news, you don’t see all the great things that are happening in the world, you just see the bad things right up close.”
She continued, “Kindness is in the heart of children. When we’re born, we don’t yet have that conditioning that happens later when we become jaded and love becomes tough. When you’re a child, all you want to do is give love and receive it.”
Lady Gaga urged America’s mayors to empower children in their communities, such as creating youth councils. She also criticized social media for exposing young people to too much negativity: “You have to get the darkness into the light. You have to get the bad apples out.” She compared American cities to the human body with too much toxicity in it, saying we need to purify the system with kindness.
“It’s really not rocket science.I sometimes think young people are so afraid because they think there is no solution, but there is. The solution is that we need to build a kinder and braver world,” Gaga said. “In times of chaos and crisis, what we all tend to do is start pointing fingers at where we think the bad guys are, where the evil is. Everybody has different opinions about that. Please do not forget that hatred or evil, whatever you want to call it, it’s intelligent. It’s smart and it’s invisible. It doesn’t have a color, it doesn’t have a race, it doesn’t have a religion, it has no politics. It’s an invisible snake.”
She continued, “While [evil] is planning to make its attack, it is thinking to itself I am going to divide my enemy into smaller, less strong groups and then I’m going to make them hate each other, so that it’s easier to take them down. And as we’re all yelling at each other trying to figure out which group it is, evil is winning all around us,” she said.
Deep stuff. You can watch His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Lady Gaga in the full video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=
