I had the pleasure of covering last Fridays “Nurturing Compassion” dialogue between selected BC teenagers and the Dalai Lama. The students that participated were chosen from hundreds who had written about times they or others they know had done something they felt would qualify as a “compassionate act”.

The students I talked to all agreed that it was a powerfully motivating experience, if not a life changing one.

It was an exciting event for me as well. As I wrote to a friend after I arrived home that evening, “It’s amazing how closely the Dalai Lama’s message reflects our Hidden Heroes concepts.” Then on second thought I wrote with the hint of a smile on my face, “Perhaps it would be somewhat more accurate to say that the Hidden Heroes concept reflects his philosophy. I think he got there first!”

Our Hidden Heroes Education Project encourages students to question whether it’s the one in a million heroes that make the biggest difference in this world or the millions of ordinary people doing small positive things for themselves and each other. They find their answers by studying role models around them and by observing the affect they can have, and do have, on the people around them in their classrooms, their families and communities.

The bottom line is we want students to realize that they too can be “Hidden Heroes” that they can make a difference one small step at a time, and that sometimes those “small steps” can continue one after another and make a huge difference.

The Dalai Lama would call this compassionate action, doing small positive things to improve either their own lives or the lives of people around them. We call it taking small positive steps that make a difference – Same thing.

Seventeen year old Kit Sauder was selected to meet the Dalai Lama because of what he wrote about an experience he had. One evening he was walking home from the beach after sitting quietly watching the sunset, when he noticed a woman sitting alone on a hillside crying. He walked some distance past her, thought more about this woman crying all alone, turned and went back to sit with her. They talked for a while, cried for a while, laughed for a while and then he left without ever even learning her name.

Irene Hong’s story was about her cousin who lives in China. From an early age she frequently baby sat her younger sister to help the family and then, when she was just a little older, she sold ice cream on the street corner to help out. After slowly saving $70 US to buy a sun umbrella for her ice cream stand and school books for her sister, she heard about an older woman in the village who needed life-saving surgery and, without a second thought, gave all the money to her.

All of the students’ stories were equally powerful and thought provoking and the Dalai Lama’s response to their questions was even more so.

Two things impressed me about the man. First after a long in-depth answer to a question, he paused and said, “I may be wrong but this is my view.” I really liked that.

The second was when he said, and I’m paraphrasing, religion does not make a big difference in this world, prayer does not make a big difference in this world, meditation does not make a big difference it this world, compassionate action is what makes the difference.

Many will disagree with the first part of that statement but I’m sure most of us would agree that if we all focused on doing more small positive things for ourselves and each other, acts of compassion, the world would be a better place … a much better place.