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AP Photo/Richard Vogel
The Dalai Lama was in San Francisco today to honor and thank 49 people, ranging in age from 12 to 77, whose exceptional efforts in their 13 countries earned them the Unsung Heroes of Compassion award for 2009. Among the winners of this prestigious award were:
- Dr. Geoffrey Tabin: co-founder of the Himalayan Cataract Project, which makes possible hundreds of thousands of surgeries to remove cataracts and restore eyesight throughout Asia.
- Olga Sanchez: founder of Albergue Jesus el Buen Pastor Shelter, which offers temporary safety and critical medical care to sick and injured migrants.
- Mohammed Abdul Wohab: founder of the Southern Health Improvement Samity, one of India’s most successful nonprofits to help the poor.
Dick Grace, chair of the event and chair of the hosting organization Wisdom in Action, said:
These individuals have been selected as representatives of the tens of thousands of people worldwide who quietly serve the disenfranchised and work to improve our communities through their personal efforts. We don’t see them or hear about them in the daily news, but they exemplify a humanism and heroism to which we must each aspire.
The Dalai Lama has written extensively and worked tirelessly throughout the world to promote compassion, which is a virtue honored by all cultures and spiritual Teachings. He has taught meditations helping people to see that all people experience pain, hunger, sickness, and death, and all of us are equally worthy of compassion.
The more we meditate about other people and interact with them personally, the more we realize that they are not so different from us. They make mistakes. They have dreams. They laugh. They grieve. Just like us. Opening our heart to all people with compassion allows us to accept all aspects of ourselves, because our judgments of other people reflect much more of ourselves than them. The prophet Mohammed said, “I swear by Him in Whose hand is my soul, a person does not believe until he loves for his brother what he loves for himself.”
I congratulate and appreciate the 49 people who were honored, as well as all the other unsung heroes of compassion who are quietly but passionately working to promote peace and healing in our world.
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