“There is such an ocean of suffering in the world. I mean, there's also pleasure and beauty and fun and play. But there is an ocean of suffering. There is suffering of every conceivable kind. The ocean of suffering is so vast, and the media bring it so immediately to you—the faces of the people around you, and the stories about other cultures.
It's so intense that what often happens is you feel powerless before this ocean, this wave, this tidal wave of suffering. Edmund Burke's line is: The worst mistake is to do nothing, because you can only do a little. Which is the same line as Gandhi’s: What you do may seem insignificant, but it is very important that you do it. Since everything is interrelated, if you do an act to relieve suffering—if you help somebody across the street, pick up somebody's groceries, read to somebody who's blind, or just be kind and tender to somebody who has AIDS—whatever you do, even reading a story to your child, the way in which it’s done out of tender caring...
It's like our hearts are all connected in the universe, and it’s just like dropping pebbles into water—it keeps spreading and spreading. It’s very hard to understand, when it seems like such a trivial act, how it is connected to the entire universe in that way.
And I feel that it is important not only for the relief of suffering, that you do what you can for other people. It's important for your own heart that you do something.”
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