Thank you His Holiness for being here. Even we are surrounded by sorrow and greed. Here you are a small sparkling light come to heal us. I have two questions for you. Firstly what can we learn from an episode like this and how can we go further on?
Secondly, this inner science of meditation has become very popular and the neuro- science of meditation is growing and definitely it is penetrating in this so-called materially richer part of world. For example in U S more than 7% of the population is meditating today according to recent statistics. Other regions are peaceful so it will penetrate slowly I believe. My question to you is that what I am worried for is that in the gap between the rich and the poor is quickly growing in so-called developing parts of the world. How we can bring wisdom to the institutions in these countries?
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar: Yes, it’s a big question! How can we bring wisdom when there is rich and poor gap? You know there is not one solution, there could be many. So, we need to keep this question alive. From time to time we will get different ideas and we need to implement them, which we feel is best.
First of all those who have should come up with this mind or attitude to serve, to share. I would expect everyone to give at least 3% of their earning for social projects or for social causes; we must share.
Then for the poor people they should learn how to be entrepreneurs, they should stand on their feet, not expecting others to take care of them all the time but rather become innovative, hard working and try to stand on their own feet.
Third is in these situations, these moments what is needed is inner strength, inner peace. So as many people as possible should learn to meditate; don’t you think so? How many of you agree with me raise your hands? This is the time we will have to teach everyone, otherwise anger can come up, frustration can come up, fear can come up. All these negative emotions come up within us when we see an unpleasant event. So to combat this unpleasantness we have to equip our self and the equipment is meditation and breathing techniques. So I have sent all my teachers here to go out and do trauma relief and meditation workshops throughout Norway. Whenever people would like to come and sit for a couple of hours for 2 to 3 days, teach them some breathing techniques, some meditation and then help them gets back on track. This is exactly what we did in New York after 9/11 and so thousands of people learnt to meditate. So we would like to do the same thing here.