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Dear fellow peace-loving people, organizers of this wonderful peace forum, distinguished fellow speakers, Your Excellency Rajendra, Swāmījī, Mr. Chairman, and all participants. I have changed the sequence of my address to emphasize that there is no difference between us as speakers and you as participants. The greatest peace initiative is to bring together people from all walks of life to share human values and the positive things in life, which we have witnessed throughout this day. As Mr. Einfeld noted, I was indeed once a young boy. I did not run over the mountains, but I was loaded on the side of a yak coming down from those mountains to eventually reach this place, what you call 'down under'. Today, I stand amidst many people from many walks of life. The place I come from is a faraway land; it is almost a dream I did not get to inhabit long enough, let alone see and be part of as a reality. There has been too much conflict and killing of innocent people in a country like Tibet, and today we see this happening in many parts of the world. Peace is not merely the absence of conflict. It is the active search for and implementation of ways to resolve conflict through dialogue and mutual respect. Peace is not inaction; it is creative understanding and effective communication from within. By your presence here today, that inner and outer effective communication is taking place. In Buddhist teaching, peace is best cultivated by allowing the mind to be free from all adventitious afflictions. Peace is about restoring our human decency and our capacity to create the causes of happiness rather than destroying them. It is the renunciation of aggression and violence. Peace is fearing what conflict may bring in the future and taking the initiative to find ways to stop it. It is discovering that greed and hatred are the causes of the weapons of mass destruction and replacing them with the inner gems of love, compassion, and forgiveness. Peace and happiness reside in the instinct of every citizen and are cherished by everyone. Peace is not about trying to control others, but is a proactive way to calm one's own aggression. It is showing compassion to the aggressor without highlighting his wrongs. Peace is focusing on the positive things one can do instead of laying blame on others. It is forgiving and empathizing with the anguish of others. Being at peace with oneself will minimize harm and maximize benefit. Ladies and gentlemen, let us not mistake war for peace. Destroying an enemy and then promising to rebuild their nation is not the right approach to peace. It is a willing coalition of stupidity, fear, and arrogance. The Earth is the unconditional giver of all that we have and all that we are. It is empowering to notice that the physical world is always peaceful and giving. She is constant support for all living beings, and she is never warlike. If we human beings were to live in harmony and learn to respect each other, peace would be our daily experience. We all have a genuine desire to do good and cause no harm to anyone. If everyone would actualize this basic wish with mindfulness and concerted effort, we would have neither time to create conflict nor reason to fear it. The intrinsic nature of all living beings is kindness, peace, and goodness. But when we are unable to sustain this awareness, our mind becomes effortlessly afflicted by excessive greed to control external things; it is very easy to get confused. Unawareness of this breeds an ever-growing tension that develops into self-righteous anger. When ignorance, greed, and hatred are eliminated from our mind, peace is found wherever we go. How the world manifests to us is determined by how we allow our attitude to be and what attitude we choose to have. As we only experience our own thoughts and emotions on the screen of other people and situations, we should see the importance of changing our attitudes without waiting for others to do it. If we change our perceptions and thoughts about other people and situations, it does not take long for us to see changes outside us. With these optimistic words on peace, let us pause for the sake of world peace and rejuvenate our inner elements by emulating the five qualities of our outer elements. As previous speakers have said, peace is about rightly relating oneself with our thoughts, emotions, people, and environment. To save time, I will not read the five-verse poem I have written, as you have it in your program—so that I do not get punished by this very tall judge. But you must take some time tonight to read it at home and learn to connect with the five very powerful, pertinent elemental qualities. We are constantly in touch with them. We sit or stand on the Earth. We drink Water. Our body temperature is maintained by the Fire element. We are breathing constantly; you are breathing the ambience of this conference. Each time you inhale, you take in something good, thinking about the ideas and principles that have been shared. That is the prāṇa, the breath, that is the Air. And then there is the depth of space, the Kuṇḍalinī energy, is it? Thank you very much. Recording location: Australia, Sydney, World Peace Forum 2003