Also published on the Huffington Post and the OB Rag.

His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet began his first official visit to San Diego on Wednesday, by offering two parts of his three-part symposium, “Compassion Without Borders: Science, Peace, Ethics” by taking part in a panel discussion entitled “The Global Impact of Climate Change” at University of California, San Diego and by giving a public talk entitled, “Cultivating Peace and Justice.”

On Thursday, the Dalai Lama completed his San Diego symposium at San Diego State University by giving the public talk entitled, “Upholding Universal Ethics and Compassion in Challenging Times.”

At the University of San Diego, President Mary E. Lyons presented the Dalai Lama with the USD Medal of Peace.

At the USD Jenny Craig Pavilion before a full house, the Dalai Lama spoke about peace, compassion and nonviolence. He asked what is the meaning of peace? Is it the absence of trouble or violence?

Answering his own question, the Dalai Lama said, “Going deeper into peace … genuine peace must come through inner peace, not through fear.” “Any action that is harmful to others or is in the long run harmful is unjust,” he shared. He explained that “the key thing” is a “warm heart of concern for others’ well being.”

He explained that scientists are beginning to learn about the value of creating an internal balance and a calm mind in helping people recover from illness faster. A calm mind, he said, is the remedy for the loss of hope and a destroyer of fear, distrust and hate.

Stating that the energy to restore our happiness is within ourselves, the Dalai Lama urged further study of the relationship of the mind with the emotions to learn about the destroyers of inner peace.

“You must develop compassion” not pity, he said. Genuine respect is a very noble form of compassion. With compassion, distrust reduces. He advised that we could have a sense of concern for other people because they are human beings just like ourselves. Further, we can respect other people even if they have taken negative actions toward us.

He stressed the value of education through which awareness can be developed, so we can get an understanding of our inner world and achieve inner peace after which justice automatically comes.

Speaking about materiality, the Dalai Lama recognized that material things can bring physical comfort, “but not mental comfort.” He gave as an example that some people have plenty of money and “still are not happy.” No matter what you’re surroundings, he said, you can keep peace of mind.

The twentieth century was a century of blood, fear and violence, said the Dalai Lama. However, he feels that the twenty-first century can be a happy century based on inner peace, “we would have a compassionate world.”

A healthy mind brings a healthy body and a healthy family and a healthy world. He asked that we all think more about these things, but “If you don’t do this, no problem, “I’m leaving the day after tomorrow. It’s your problem.”

Overall, the Dali Lama feels that “humanity is becoming more civilized, more mature.” He recommended taking care of our minds, being compassionate and living more holistically. A bad economy, he said, reminds us to invest in new things … it’s a “good lesson.”

When asked how he remains optimistic when there is so much bad in the world, the Dalai Lama responded, “It is far better to remain optimistic.” When we are optimistic, we “look for ways and means to work on. When you loose all hope, there is no ground making effort.”

Also published on The Huffington Post.

Many of us believe that we are compassionate people. But are we really? Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary formally defines “compassion” as the “sympathetic consciousness of others’ distress together with a desire to alleviate it.”

In our daily lives, some people think of compassion as “love in action.” Many religions encourage us to strive to be compassionate people and admonish us to “love our neighbor.”

Summarizing these definitions, it would appear that compassion could be defined as “love in action for our neighbor in distress with a desire to alleviate it.” So, whether we are compassionate people depends upon our own attitudes and desires to help.

Personally, I believe that we are all, with the possible exception of a very few, born with compassion. Thus, for most of us, the quality of compassion is already within ourselves from birth — we need only to find and awaken our compassion. Further, as we live our lives we can choose to nurture and expand this quality, as we are encouraged by many religions, if not all, to do.

But, what about the “neighbors” for whom we have compassion? Do our neighbors have any role in our developing or exercising our compassion? It would appear, at least from the above discussion, that our neighbors do not. However, what our neighbors do, how they appear and what we expect from them may influence how easy it is for us to exercise and develop our compassion.

The easiest example of this is the whole topic of babies. It has been said that babies are born adorable and loveable, at least to their parents, so that their parents will take care of them regardless of how much work is involved. And most of us know and expect that there is a tremendous amount of work involved in caring for a baby.

Then we have the examples of children and adults with special needs who cannot take care of themselves and must rely on the compassionate treatment from others. Their caretakers know and expect that their jobs will be challenging and yet, ultimately rewarding.

There are also those people among us who have suffered a personal or family loss. These losses can be traumatic events affecting people’s physical, mental and emotional well-being. Included within the losses that people can suffer is the loss of everything people once possessed. For most people becoming homeless can be a traumatic event.

For whatever the cause, homeless people have suffered the loss of what most of us consider our human basic needs — they have lost their personal shelter, their expectation of having food on a regular basis and most of their clothing.

Whether homeless people are sheltered or unsheltered, they have, for whatever length of time, lost their personal experiences of having their own homes. When people lose their experiences of having their own homes, they may also lose their hope for having their own homes again.

Even their feelings of self-worth may be negatively affected by the trauma they experience as a result of their homelessness. For example, a homeless friend of mine recently said, “No matter what you say or how you treat me, I know that I’m at the bottom of the food chain.”

As with any of our responses to traumatic events, the hopefulness experienced by homeless people by virtue of becoming homeless may be expressed physically, mentally and/or emotionally. The results of the traumatic event of becoming homeless may also be expressed by some homeless people through the misuse of substances, including cigarettes.

In addition, because we as a society have provided few public bathrooms, showers and even fewer public laundries, many homeless people may not have access to facilities where they can perform acts of basic hygiene. The results are obvious — homeless people often appear disheveled.

Finally, we housed people often expect homeless people to “pick themselves up by their own bootstraps” and become housed again. Please see my article, Homelessness Myth #15: “Just Pull Yourself Up By Your Own Bootstraps,” in this regard.

Because many homeless people are and remain unhoused, our expectations of them to become housed, among other things, are not met.

It is basic human nature that when people do not meet our expectations of them, we may become disappointed and/or resentful. Without greater understanding of ourselves and others, we are unlikely to extend compassion to those whom we feel have failed to live up to our own expectations, who have disappointed us or to whom we feel resentful. Hence, we housed people with unreasonable expectations for homeless people may feel disappointed or resentful of them because they have failed to live up to our unreasonable expectations.

It is because of what homeless people do, how they appear and what we expect from them, that we may find it challenging to have compassion for them.

However, “our neighbors” includes everyone. Therefore, I believe that the test of true compassion is whether we can care for all of our neighbors, including our homeless neighbors whom we may find the most challenging to help.

Also published on The Huffington Post.

At 4 a.m. on Friday morning, January 27th, hundreds of volunteers left deployment centers throughout San Diego County to count homeless people. Called, “We All Count,” this annual enumeration of homeless people in the county is run by the San Diego Regional Task Force on the Homeless.

Beginning in 2005, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has mandated that, agencies receiving HUD funding needed to count the homeless people in their cities on a bi-annual basis. One of the goals of this point in time count is to provide a snap shot of homelessness during the last week of January every two years.  The results of this count are used to justify the funds being sent to the recipient agencies to help homeless people within their cities.

A homeless friend and I were two of these enumerators. We drove up and down designated streets and alleys of Ocean Beach, San Diego, counting homeless individuals and vehicles potentially housing individuals. The third category we could have counted were “hand-built structures,” but we did not see any during our drive.

During our over two-hour drive in Ocean Beach, we counted over 60 homeless individuals and 100 vehicles which were potentially housing individuals.

Although the count may sound very dry to some of us, I was touched by a number of things we saw. For example, in one alley, we saw a carport where four homeless individuals were sleeping a person-apart from each other. They were sleeping on the cement with apparently no ground cover and no blankets.

Currently, volunteers, including myself and my homeless friend, are conducting surveys of homeless people on behalf of the Regional Task Force on the Homeless. These surveys are intended to ask those people who were homeless on the same morning as the count specific questions eliciting personal information about them, questions about what are their sources of support and questions about why they are homeless. In return for answering the over 100 questions presented to them, the homeless person receives a $10 gift card to Subway. All surveys are intended to be completed with days of the count.

Homelessness is a reality that is challenging for me to fathom, especially seeing homelessness close-up, here in America, the land of plenty.