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Greetings to everybody. I greet the God in all of you. I feel quite humbled to stand here, supposedly to give you all inspiration. But I think that you are all the inspiration. So I’ll do my part, and everyone will do theirs. I have been living in India for quite a long time, and when one looks at the Earth Charter and looks at the ancient wisdom in all cultures, there is just such a strong similarity there. I thought I’d share a few snippets with you of ancient Indian wisdom to act as inspiration. In the ancient scriptures, the Upaniṣads, the main Upaniṣad writes as its first line: īśāvāsyam idaṁ sarvaṁ yat kiñca jagatyāṁ jagat. What it says is: this whole world, everyone in it, every being, every creature, every drop of water, every grain of sand is imbibed by God. And when you can realize that, how will you be jealous? How can you be jealous that somebody else has more than you? Because their happiness is your happiness, and their suffering is your suffering. Their pain is also my pain. We are all one. In another line they say: ayaṁ nijaḥ paro veti gaṇanā laghucetasām udāracaritānāṁ tu vasudhaiva kuṭumbakam. "This is mine, that is his"—such is the thinking of the narrow-minded. For the magnanimous, however, the whole world is one family. Actually, they don’t say the world; the whole universe, as much as you can think, as far as you can think, it is all one family. And here we are, and our family is suffering. Our family is the earth on which we are living, and we have to do something about it. That is where the Earth Charter comes in. We try, where I am staying, to teach the principles of the Earth Charter. Our children are not so literate, but through play, through dance, and through songs, hopefully we can get the message across. As the theme of this year’s conference is celebration, it starts with one. We have a saying in rural India: jaisā saṅgat vaisā raṅgat—as is your company, so is your colour. You know, if someone put their white cloth in the same washing machine as my cloth, I am sorry to say they will not have white cloth afterwards, especially on a hot wash. But you know what? We do affect others. We have to start. There is a joy and a love within every person that is so beautiful and so worth finding. When we can find it in ourselves, then we can start to affect others with it. When we start to do these actions—when we start not just to do what is written in the Earth Charter, but to be that which is written in the Earth Charter—then it starts to rub off on the person next to us, and the people living around us, and the people in our community, and then the people in our bigger community. That is what we have to do. Here is one item of inspiration from Rajasthan, just to prove what is possible. I do not know how it actually happened or whether it was as sudden as it seemed, but last month in Rajasthan, suddenly out of nowhere, they just banned plastic bags. Not "please don’t use plastic bags"—they were banned. It became a crime for a shopkeeper to give someone a plastic bag. Seemingly to us, in the area where I was, it just happened overnight. What do people do in that situation? Suddenly, everyone started making bags out of old newspapers and out of very thin cloth, and they started using them again and again. And after three days, nobody batted an eyelid. They just got on with it. The bags were not there anymore. You are not allowed to possess a plastic bag with a handle on it; it is illegal now. Now, if you can imagine, in a state like Rajasthan, which is not particularly well off economically—it is a developing area, not a first-world country, as you would say (if that’s politically correct; I do not know the terminology anymore, sorry)—if they can do it, then why can’t we? I guess that is an inspiration; it is something quite amazing. Everything is possible, and it is up to us to make it happen. If we do not believe that it can happen, if we do not truly believe in our hearts that we can do something about it, then it will not happen. But when it is inside us, ringing and singing from inside us, it will happen. It will surely happen. So, thank you for letting me be here. Thank you for the opportunity to speak. I really feel quite humbled to be around such special people and such dignitaries. I would especially like to say thanks to the beautiful voices that were in the choir this morning, because that was incredible. That harmony which was there is the harmony we have to develop in the world: between us, between cultures, between religions, between societies, and within our family. All the best. Śrī Dignāṁ Bhagavānaṁ Kijam. Oṁ Śānti, Śānti, Śānti. Peace, peace, peace.