WELCOME TO THE DISCOVER COMMUNITY

This is the home page for the Discover online community, sponsored by the Dalai Lama Foundation as an integral part of one of our long-term program focus on Education for Ethics and Peace.

We hope Discover will take root, and become a thriving network of people all over the world who are sincerely interested in making our world a better place, who recognize that we are each an indispensable part of that process, and who are committed to becoming the change they wish to see.

Discover is...

—a place to find resources for learning and teaching about ethics and peace. We hope it will be useful to teachers, parents, students, and anyone committed to lifelong learning. Browse our list of selected Books & Videos, or our wonderful compilation of the best children’s literature for grades K-6.

—a place to learn about the many, many individuals and groups around the world who are pioneering the path to a more humane and sustainable future. Explore the more than 2,000 links that have already been entered into our community-generated Ethics & Peace Knowledgebase.

—a place where it’s OK to ask the hard questions. Questions like "What place does ethics really have in my life?" "Is ethics a barrier to getting what I want—or the basis for my own happiness?" "How is ethics related to peace?" "What is the extent of my responsibility to others?"

To really make this inquiry come alive, get together with your friends and start a study circle. As a model and guide, we have posted a Study Guide to Ethics for The New Millennium developed by a study circle in Los Altos, California, over the past year.

A Call to Action...

The launch of the Discover community, in conjunction with the visit of the Dalai Lama to U.C. Irvine on April 16, 2004, marks the beginning of our long-term initiative to promote curricula for ethics and peace. We are developing a Curriculum Advisory Board of prominent educators to guide this project.

There is nothing more important for our future than fostering a consciousness of ethics and peace. In that work we are blessed to have the inspiration and guidance of one of the world’s great living teachers of peace, the Dalai Lama, who has given us his advice on the crucial role of education.

As well, we all have access to the teachings and living lineages of the great peacemakers from Mahatma Gandhi through Martin Luther King. And we have with us many living teachers, thinkers, and humanitarians.

Most importantly we have our own hearts and minds, which we can develop without limit.

You Are Invited...

As the saying goes, “no one of us is as smart as all of us.” Each of us has something unique and powerful to contribute. Check out Community Picks to see what resources other Discover participants have found useful in their journeys. Maybe something there will inspire you to share a resource that has proven useful to you—From the Heart.

We hope this will become a place to both find and share new maps for your own discovery of the vast under-explored territory connecting ethics and peace.

After all—we are all in this together.

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Advice from His Holiness to the Foundation

In September, 2003, a group from the Foundation met with the Dalai Lama in San Francisco to seek his advice on how the Foundation’s activities should proceed.

Here is some of what he had to say...

Education is very important. For basic human values. Understanding that no one exists as an isolated individual. We are all interdependent. Problems far away will eventually affect us. This is not religion, but reality. Understanding the reality of our situation, and developing the basic human values of warmth, affection, kindness and compassion. So this idea of curricula for peace and ethics is very important.

Second, the area of peace, of finding ways to actively work to prevent conflicts is also very important.

So, both these directions are very good, and in line with my thinking.

—Rather than creating a separate effort and big organization, this organization should work to connect and assist the efforts of the many groups and individuals working in these areas.

Q: Your Holiness, can you give us any advice on how to take action?

A: One way of working is to see an immediate human need, someone in distress, and immediately take concrete action to help that person. That is very good.

But you are only one person. It is also very important to work in a broader way, through education, so you create many people taking that kind of altruistic action.

Education is the key. Understanding leads to conviction, which leads to enthusiasm, which sustains action. Through this kind of education you can create many individuals taking concrete action.

So, I think these two areas, education and peace, are very important, and you should concentrate on these.

And this work is not only important, but urgent.

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