Church guide

Trinity: Part 2 Only Emptiness Is Prepared for Fullness Sunday, May 12, 2019 In your minds you must be the same as Christ Jesus: His state was divine, yet he did not cling to his equality with God but emptied himself. —Philippians 2:5-7 Could this first stanza from one of the earliest hymns of the church be applied not only to Jesus, but also to the entire Trinity? I believe so. The Three all live as an eternal and generous self-emptying, the Greek word being kenosis. The Franciscan philosopher/theologian Bonaventure (1221–1274) described the Trinity as a fountain fullness of Love. Picture three buckets on a moving waterwheel. Each bucket fills and empties out, then swings back to be filled again. The Father empties into the Son, nothing held back. The Son empties into the Spirit, nothing held back. The Spirit empties into the Father, nothing held back. The reason they can empty themselves out is they know they will be filled again. They know that the center of the universe is infinite love. But if you don’t believe that infinite love is the center of the universe, you live in a scarcity model where there’s never enough—food, money, security, health care, mercy—to go around. You can’t risk letting go because you’re not sure you’ll be refilled. If you’re protecting yourself, if you’re securing your own image and identity, then you’re still holding on. Your ego remains full of itself, which is the opposite of kenosis. This is the nature of almost all human institutions and systems created by the egoic mind. Interestingly, the names, roles, and energies of each member of the Trinity are interchangeable. It’s not that important to typecast the Father as the only infinite one, the Son as the only immanent one, or the Spirit as the only intimate one. All is absolutely given to the other and let go of; but for the sake of human understanding, it’s helpful to identify three persons with different functions and gifts. When all three of those divine qualities start drawing you, and when you’re at home with Infinity, Immanence, and Intimacy—all Three—you’re living inside Trinitarian spirituality. I have often noticed these divine qualities in people who are marginalized, oppressed, called “poor,” or “mentally disabled” more than in many others. They have to trust love. They need communion. They know that only the vulnerable people understand them. They want to be in mutual relationship. They find little ways to serve others. They know that only a suffering God can save them. You can take such a pattern as a sign that one lives in God. People filled with the flow will always move away from any need to protect their own power and will be drawn to solidarity with the powerless, the edge, the bottom, the plain, and the simple. They have all the power they need—and it always overflows, and like water seeks the lowest crevices to fill. No wonder Christians begin their spiritual journey by being dipped into water. Gateway to Presence: If you want to go deeper with today’s meditation, take note of what word or phrase stands out to you. Come back to that word or phrase throughout the day, being present to its impact and invitation. Adapted from Richard Rohr, Trinity: The Soul of Creation (Center for Action and Contemplation: 2017), MP4 download; and Richard Rohr with Mike Morrell, The Divine Dance: The Trinity and Your Transformation (Whitaker House: 2016), 90-91. Image credit: Haystacks at Giverny (detail), Claude Monet, 1884. Private collection.

Trinity: Part 1 Aliveness Friday, May 10, 2019 Greatly ought we to rejoice that God dwells in our soul; and more greatly ought we to rejoice that our soul dwells in God. Our soul is created to be God’s dwelling place, and the dwelling of our soul is God. . . . And I saw no difference between God and our substance, but, as it were, all God; and still my understanding accepted that our substance is in God. —Julian of Norwich [1] I find the “fidget spinner” toy a helpful illustration to understand the Trinity. [2] When still, a fidget spinner clearly has three different lobes; however, when it spins we lose sight of the distinct wings and simply see unbroken movement or flow. Even more significant than the qualities of the individual members of the Trinity is the flow between them. At the Trinitarian level, God is a verb more than a noun, God is a flow more than a substance, God is an experience more than a deity sitting on a throne. And we live naturally inside that flow of love—if we do not resist it. Infinite love is planted within humans and all of creation. Everything is attracted to everything: life is attracted to life; love is attracted to love; God in you is attracted to God in everyone and everything else. This is what it means for everything to be created in the image of God (Genesis 1:26-27). God placed this alluring attraction of life toward life in everything that God created. Thus, we might say the Trinity is the soul of creation. Once we allow the entire universe to become alive for us, we are living in an enchanted world. Nothing is meaningless; nothing can be dismissed. It's all whirling with the same beauty, the same radiance. In fact, if I could name the Big Bang in my own language, I’d call it the Great Radiance. The inner radiance of God started radiating at least 13.8 billion years ago. We must realize that we are the continuation of that radiance in our small segment of time on Earth. We can either allow it and let the Trinitarian Flow flow through us or we can deny it, which is to deny the divine image. This is nothing I can prove to you. This is nothing I can make logical or rational. It can only be known experientially in the mystery of love when you surrender yourself to it, when you grant subjectivity or a blessed I-Thou relationship to every other thing—a plant, an animal, a single tree, the big blue sky, “Brother Sun, Sister Moon,” as my Father Francis of Assisi put it. The contemplative mind refuses to objectify things. It sees similarity, likeness, symbolism, communion, connection, and meaning everywhere. It becomes a fully symbolic universe. Use whatever words you want, but with this vision you will live in a fully alive and congenial universe where you can never be lonely again. Gateway to Presence: If you want to go deeper with today’s meditation, take note of what word or phrase stands out to you. Come back to that word or phrase throughout the day, being present to its impact and invitation. [1] Julian of Norwich, Showings, Chapter 54 (Long text), trans. Edmund Colledge and James Walsh (Paulist Press: 1978), 285. [2] You can see and play with a digital fidget spinner here https://www.google.com/search?q=spinner. Adapted from Richard Rohr: Trinity: The Soul of Creation (Center for Action and Contemplation: 2017), MP4 download. Image credit: Rublev Troitsa (detail), Andrei Rublev, c. 1400–1410, Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, Russia.

Trinity: Part 1 From Disconnection to Connection Tuesday, May 7, 2019 I’m convinced that beneath the ugly manifestations of our present evils—political corruption, ecological devastation, warring against one another, hating each other based on race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, or nationality—the greatest dis-ease facing humanity right now is our profound and painful sense of disconnection. We feel disconnected from God, certainly, but also from ourselves (especially our bodies), from each other, and from our world. Our sense of this fourfold isolation is plunging our species into increasingly destructive behavior and much mental illness. Yet many are discovering that the Infinite Flow of the Trinity—and our practical, felt experience of this gift—offers the utterly grounded reconnection with God, with self, with others, and with our world that all spirituality, and arguably, even politics, is aiming for, but which conventional religion and politics fail to access. Trinity overcomes the foundational philosophical problem of “the One and the Many.” Serious seekers invariably wonder how things can be both deeply connected and yet clearly distinct. In the paradigm of Trinity, we have three autonomous “Persons,” as we call them, who are nevertheless in perfect communion, given and surrendered to each other with an Infinite Love. With the endless diversity in creation, it is clear that God is not at all committed to uniformity but instead desires unity—which is the great work of the Spirit—or diversity overcome by love. Uniformity is mere conformity and obedience to law and custom; whereas spiritual unity is that very diversity embraced and protected by an infinitely generous love. This is the problem that our politics and most superficial religion are still unable to resolve. Trinity is all about relationship and connection. We know the Trinity through experiencing the flow itself, which dissolves our sense of disconnection. The principle of one is lonely; the principle of two is oppositional and moves us toward preference and exclusion; the principle of three is inherently moving, dynamic, and generative. Trinity was made to order to undercut all dualistic thinking. Yet Christianity shelved it for all practical purposes because our dualistic theologies could not process it. [1] God is not a being among other beings, but rather the Ground of Being itself which then flows through all beings. As Paul says to the intellectuals in Athens, this God “is not far from us, but is the one in whom we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:27-28). The God whom Jesus reveals is presented as unhindered dialogue, a positive and inclusive flow, and a waterwheel of outpouring love that never stops! St. Bonaventure (c. 1221–1274) called God a “fountain fullness” of love. [2] Our sense of disconnection is only an illusion. Nothing can stop the flow of divine love; we cannot undo the eternal pattern even by our worst sin. God is always winning, and God’s love will finally win in the end. Nothing humans can do can stop the relentless outpouring force that is the divine dance. Love does not lose, nor does God lose. That’s what it means to be God! Gateway to Presence: If you want to go deeper with today’s meditation, take note of what word or phrase stands out to you. Come back to that word or phrase throughout the day, being present to its impact and invitation. [1] See Cynthia Bourgeault, The Holy Trinity and the Law of Three: Discovering the Radical Truth at the Heart of Christianity (Shambhala: 2013); and The Shape of God: Deepening the Mystery of Trinity (CAC: 2004), CD, DVD, MP3 download. [2] Bonaventure, Commentary on the First Book of Sentences, dist. 27, p. 1, a. un., q. 2. Cited in Introduction to Bonaventure: The Soul’s Journey into God; The Tree of Life; The Life of St. Francis, trans. Ewert Cousins (Paulist Press: 1978), 25. Adapted from Richard Rohr, The Divine Dance: Exploring the Mystery of Trinity, discs 2 and 3 (Center for Action and Contemplation: 2004), CD, MP3 download; and Richard Rohr with Mike Morrell, The Divine Dance: The Trinity and Your Transformation (Whitaker House: 2016), 39-40, 42, 43, 61, 75. Image credit: Rublev Troitsa (detail), Andrei Rublev, c. 1400–1410, Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, Russia.

Trinity: Part 1 The Power of Giving and Receiving Wednesday, May 8, 2019 Christians will continually misinterpret and misuse Jesus if we don’t understand the circle dance of mutuality and communion that he participated in from all eternity (which we call “Christ”). Instead, we made Jesus into a monarchical “Christ the King,” a title he rejected in his lifetime (John 18:37), and we operate as if God’s interest in creation or humanity only began 2,000 years ago. Both Western and Eastern Christianity made the one who described himself as “meek and humble of heart” (Matthew 11:29) into an imperial God. The Greek Zeus became the Latin Deus. What if we actually surrendered to the inner Trinitarian flow and let it be our primary teacher? Our notion of society, politics, and authority—which is still top down and outside in—would utterly change. But circles are much more threatening than pyramids are, at least to empires, the wealthy, and the patriarchal system. Yet “the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit” (2 Corinthians 13:13) was supposed to be our circular and all-inclusive ecology. This relational reality existed from the very beginning as revealed in the very first lines of the Bible. There we already have God (Creator), Christ (God made manifest as “light”), and Holy Spirit “hovering over the chaos” (see Genesis 1:1-3) to awaken it—which is still happening. Trinitarian theology says that spiritual power is more circular or spiral, not so much hierarchical. It’s here; it’s within us. It’s shared and shareable; it’s already entirely for us and grounded within us. What hope this gives! “And hope does not disappoint because the love of God has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us” (Romans 5:5). God’s Spirit is planted within us and operating as us! Don’t keep looking to the top of the pyramid. Stop idolizing the so-called “1 percent.” There’s nothing worthwhile up there that is not also down here. Worst of all, it has given 99 percent of the world an unnecessary and tragic inferiority complex. Trinity shows that God’s power is not any kind of domination, threat, or coercion. If the Father does not dominate the Son, and the Son does not dominate the Holy Spirit, and the Spirit does not dominate the Father or the Son, then there’s no domination in God. All divine power is shared power and the letting go of autonomous power. This God is not seeking control, as we do, but handing on the power to the Other. There’s no seeking of power over in the Trinity, but only power with—a giving away, a sharing, a letting go, and thus an infinity of trust and mutuality. This should have changed all Christian relationships: in marriage, in culture, in church, and across borders. The prophet Isaiah tried to teach such servanthood to Israel in the classic four “servant songs.” [1] He was trying to train them in being “light to all nations” (Isaiah 42:6; 49:6), but Hebrew history predicted what Christianity then repeated: human nature prefers kings, domination, wars, and empires instead of suffering servanthood or leveling love. We all already have all the power (dynamis) we need both within us and between us—in fact, Jesus assures us that we are already “clothed” in it “from on high” (see Luke 24:49)! The Holy Spirit redefines power from the inside out and from the bottom up—just the opposite of most human cultures. This is why the Gospel is so seldom understood or lived. Gateway to Presence: If you want to go deeper with today’s meditation, take note of what word or phrase stands out to you. Come back to that word or phrase throughout the day, being present to its impact and invitation. [1] See Isaiah 42:1-9; 49:1-13; 50:4-9; 52:13-53:12. Adapted from Richard Rohr, The Shape of God: Deepening the Mystery of the Trinity, disc 5 (Center for Action and Contemplation: 2004), CD, DVD, MP3 download; and Richard Rohr with Mike Morrell, The Divine Dance: The Trinity and Your Transformation (Whitaker House: 2016), 95-96. Image credit: Rublev Troitsa (detail), Andrei Rublev, c. 1400–1410, Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, Russia.

“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.” ― Rumi “The minute I heard my first love story, I started looking for you, not knowing how blind that was. Lovers don't finally meet somewhere. They're in each other all along.” ― Mawlana Jalal-al-Din Rumi, The Illuminated Rumi “Don’t grieve. Anything you lose comes round in another form.” ― Rumi

Trinity: Part 1 Take Your Place at the Table Monday, May 6, 2019 In Genesis, we see the divine dance in an early enigmatic story (18:1-8). “The Lord” appears to Abraham as “three men” or “three angels,” and Abraham and Sarah seem to see the Holy One in the presence of these three; they bow before them and call them “lord” (18:2-3, Jerusalem Bible). Abraham and Sarah’s first instinct is one of invitation and hospitality—to create a space of food and drink for the guests. Here we have humanity feeding God; it will take a long time to turn that around in the human imagination, to believe that we, too, could be invited to the divine table. This story inspired a piece of devotional religious art by iconographer Andrei Rublev (c. 1360–c. 1430): The Hospitality of Abraham, or simply The Trinity. As icons do, this painting attempts to point beyond itself, inviting a sense of both the beyond and the communion that exists in our midst. There are three significant colors in Rublev’s icon, each illustrating a facet of the Holy One: Gold: “the Father”—perfection, fullness, wholeness, the ultimate Source Blue: “the Incarnate Christ”—both sea and sky mirroring one another (In the icon, Christ wears blue and holds up two fingers, telling us he has put spirit and matter, divinity and humanity, together within himself. The blue of creation is undergirded with the red of suffering.) Green: “the Spirit”—the divine photosynthesis that grows everything from within by transforming light into itself (Hildegard of Bingen [1098–1179] called this viriditas, or the greening of all things.) The icon shows the Holy One in the form of Three, eating and drinking, in infinite hospitality and utter enjoyment between themselves. If we take the depiction of God in The Trinity seriously, we have to say, “In the beginning was the Relationship.” The gaze between the Three shows the deep respect between them as they all share from a common bowl. Notice the Spirit’s hand points toward the open and fourth place at the table! Is the Holy Spirit inviting, offering, and clearing space? I think so! And if so, for what, and for whom? At the front of the table there appears to be a little rectangular hole. Most people just pass right over it, but some art historians believe the residue of possible glue on the original icon indicates that there was perhaps once a mirror glued to the front of the table. It’s stunning when you think about it: There was room at this table for a fourth—the one in the mirror. The observer. You! Yes, you—and all of creation—are invited to sit at the divine table, to participate in the divine dance of mutual friendship and love. The mirror seems to have been lost over the centuries, both in the icon and in our on-the-ground understanding of who God is—and therefore who we are, too! Gateway to Presence: If you want to go deeper with today’s meditation, take note of what word or phrase stands out to you. Come back to that word or phrase throughout the day, being present to its impact and invitation. Adapted from Richard Rohr with Mike Morrell, The Divine Dance: The Trinity and Your Transformation (Whitaker House: 2016), 28-31. Image credit: Rublev Troitsa (detail), Andrei Rublev, c. 1400–1410, Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, Russia.

Trinity: Part 1 Trinity: MIA Sunday, May 5, 2019 Jesuit theologian Karl Rahner (1904–1984) suggested that “Christians are, in their practical life, almost mere ‘monotheists.’ We must be willing to admit that, should the doctrine of the Trinity have to be dropped as false, the major part of religious literature could well remain virtually unchanged.” [1] Until quite recently, I would admit Rahner was largely correct. Now science affirms the Trinitarian intuition that the foundational nature of reality is relational; everything is in relationship with everything! Interest and appreciation for the Trinity are growing. [2] For the first time since fourth-century Cappadocia, the Trinity has actually become a topic of conversation for lay people, not only theologians. I am so glad, as the Trinity has the potential to change our relationships, our culture, and our politics for the better! The mystery of Trinity is embedded as the code in everything that exists. If there is only one God and if there is one pattern to this God, then we can expect to find this same pattern everywhere else. Why was Trinity missing in action for so many centuries? Could this absence help us understand how we might still be in the infancy stage of Christianity? Could it help explain the ineffectiveness and lack of transformation we witness in so much of Christendom? The “Blessed Trinity” is supposed to be the central Christian doctrine. And yet many of us were told—as I was as a young boy in Kansas—that we shouldn’t try to understand it because it’s a “mystery.” I see mystery not as something you cannot understand; rather, it is something that you can endlessly understand! There is no point at which you can say, “I’ve got it.” Always and forever, mystery gets you! In the same way, you don’t hold God in your pocket; rather, God holds you and knows your deepest identity. When we describe God, we can only use similes, analogies, and metaphors. All theological language is an approximation, offered tentatively in holy awe. We can say, “It’s like . . .” or “It’s similar to . . .”; but we can never say with absolute certainty, “It is . . .” because we are in the realm of beyond, of transcendence, of mystery. We absolutely must maintain humility before the Great Mystery; otherwise, religion worships itself and its formulations instead of God. The very mystical Cappadocian Fathers (Gregory of Nyssa, Gregory Nazianzen, and Basil of Caesarea) of fourth-century eastern Turkey eventually developed some highly sophisticated thinking on what the Christian church soon called the Trinity. It took three centuries of reflection on the Gospels to have the courage to say it and offer the best metaphor they could find. The Greek word they daringly used was perichoresis or circle dance. Whatever is going on in God is a flow, a radical relatedness, a perfect communion between Three—a circle dance of love. God is Absolute Friendship. God is not just a dancer; God is the dance itself. This pattern mirrors the perpetual orbit of electron, proton, and neutron that creates every atom, which is the substratum of the entire physical universe. Everything is indeed like “the image and likeness of God” (Genesis 1:26-27). Gateway to Presence: If you want to go deeper with today’s meditation, take note of what word or phrase stands out to you. Come back to that word or phrase throughout the day, being present to its impact and invitation. [1] Karl Rahner, The Trinity (Crossroad Publishing Company: 1999), 10-11. [2] For example, see Cynthia Bourgeault, The Holy Trinity and the Law of Three (Shambhala: 2013); and William Paul Young, The Shack (Windblown Media: 2007). Adapted from Richard Rohr, The Shape of God: Deepening the Mystery of the Trinity, disc 1 (Center for Action and Contemplation: 2004), CD, DVD, MP3 download; and Richard Rohr with Mike Morrell, The Divine Dance: The Trinity and Your Transformation (Whitaker House: 2016), 26-27. Image credit: Rublev Troitsa (detail), Andrei Rublev, c. 1400–1410, Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, Russia.

“THE GREATEST GIFT One of the greatest gifts we can offer people is to embody nonattachment and nonfear. This is a true teaching, more precious than money or material resources. Many of us are very afraid, and this fear distorts our lives and makes us unhappy. We cling to objects and to people like a drowning person clings to a floating log. Practicing to realize nondiscrimination, to see the interconnectedness and impermanence of all things, and to share this wisdom with others, we are giving the gift of nonfear. Everything is impermanent. This moment passes. That person walks away. Happiness is still possible.” ― Thích Nhất Hạnh, How to Love

Heaven Now The Gate of Heaven Thursday, May 2, 2019 James Finley, one of the Center for Action and Contemplation’s core faculty members, was a spiritual directee of Thomas Merton (1915–1968) at the Abbey of Gethsemani. Drawing from this experience and his own insights as a student of the mystics and a clinical psychologist, Finley helps us get a glimpse of heaven. When Merton told me that “one thing for sure about heaven is that there is not going to be much of you there,” he was, I think, referring to the mystery that even now we are in God’s kingdom. And that even now we can begin to realize it if we but die to egocentric self-seeking and seek God’s will with a pure heart. Because God is everywhere God is likewise no-where, meaning there is no “where” in which we can see God “out there.” Closer to us than we are to ourselves, God is too close to see. God is the heart of our heart, the hope of our hopes, the love of our love, the ground of our being. Where must we go to see God? Nowhere! What can we do to have God? Nothing! All we can do, at least for a moment (an eternal moment) is to abandon all doing and be who we are in God and open ourselves to God’s life within us. It is then that we will at once see God and ourselves in a unity of divine love. In fidelity to silent prayer there is unveiled the possibility of infinite growth in union with God. We can be so transformed through this unveiling that we existentially realize within us that “for me to live is Christ” [Philippians 1:21]. We realize obscurely in our being, that our simple, concrete acts are open to a transformation through which they are “not only Godlike, but they become God’s own acts.” [1] There is nowhere to go. There is nothing to do. God is upon and within us. In the midst of our humble duties, our poor, weak selves, our simple being who we are, we can say with Jacob with overwhelming gratitude: “Truly this is the house of God and the gate of heaven and I knew it not” [see Genesis 28:16-17]. [2] Gateway to Presence: If you want to go deeper with today’s meditation, take note of what word or phrase stands out to you. Come back to that word or phrase throughout the day, being present to its impact and invitation. [1] Thomas Merton, What Are These Wounds? The Life of a Cistercian Mystic, Saint Lutgarde of Aywières (Bruce: 1950), 14. [2] James Finley, Merton’s Palace of Nowhere: A Search for God Through Awareness of the True Self (Ave Maria Press:1978, 1983), 112-113. Learn more from James Finley at jamesfinley.org. Image credit: La Sieste (detail), Paul Gauguin, 1892–1894, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York.

“LEARNING LOVE If our parents didn’t love and understand each other, how are we to know what love looks like? There aren’t courses or classes in love. If the grown-ups know how to take care of each other, then the children who grow up in this environment will naturally know how to love, understand, and bring happiness to others. The most precious inheritance that parents can give their children is their own happiness. Our parents may be able to leave us money, houses, and land, but they may not be happy people. If we have happy parents, we have received the richest inheritance of all.” ― Thích Nhất Hạnh, How to Love

Learning How to Listen Posted March 2, 2017 I think all of us are learning how to listen. We’re training ourselves to listen more and more deeply. When you listen more and more deeply you hear the totality of what the situation is. You begin to see what it is that’s clouding your ability to hear clearly and you work on those things, so that you can hear more and more clearly ‘just what is’, and ‘just what is’ includes what your needs are, what your capacities are, and what your uniqueness is. It also includes what the situation is, what the opportunities are, what the culture is, what the expectations are, and what your old models are. It’s not done linearly and analytically, where you say, “I’ll make this list – it’s all this and this.” Instead, there’s a quietness in which you experience the Gestalt of the whole ball game, and your mind is, for the most part, quite empty while this is going on. It’s not like you’re thinking your way through it. The answer is… like when you ask me a question, you’ll notice that I’m silent for a moment. During that time, I’m not thinking up the answer… although most people think I must be thinking up the answer. In fact, what I’m doing is going back into my breath and emptying, because in the emptiness, I can hear more clearly what the total situation is and out of that will come a response that will be more appropriate than if I try to think my way out of it. So there will be awkward situations, where when you experience totality, you will act in a way that will be in opposition to the cultural expectations, and the heavens will fall on you, and there’ll be judgement. But if you are rooted in the deepest truth of your moment, then you are standing on as strong a ground as you have. You are listening as well as you can to the universe, and often you will see that when things start to happen a certain way, your mind will focus in on that because you’re looking for patterns, which we call ‘synchronicity’. Often you will just get caught in your desire to find a pattern that will give you an external validation for what you’re doing. You just end up using the universe again to do it to yourself. So stay with your truth from moment to moment, and get the clues wherever you can. I mean, I’ll open up the Chuang and read something when I have a question, and if it doesn’t feel good, I say, “Well, that was interesting,” and I close it. If it feels like what I wanted to do anyway, I say, “Ohhh, wow, synchronicity!” And I do it, so I’ve learned that I’m a complete phony anyway, so I might as well just honor it and get on with it. -Ram Dass

Well? Are you?

One of the things that distinguishes human beings is their powerful intelligence. But if we don’t bring our destructive emotions under control that intelligence can be harmful. To counter that risk we need to be realistic and warm-hearted. We need vision, determination and the will to succeed. Those qualities depend on our developing self-confidence and that in turn depends on our being honest and truthful. Dalai Lama

How many of us agree with this statement?