Be Here by His Holiness the Dalai Lama

Author:His Holiness the Dalai Lama
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781612834528
Publisher: Hampton Roads Publishing

“CIVILIZATION IS THE SYSTEM OF INDIVIDUAL CONSCIOUSNESS AND SOCIETY GOVERNED BY THE INTELLIGENCE IN BOTH ANIMALS AND HUMANS THAT TRANSCENDS THEIR ANIMAL NATURE.”

The hunter-gatherer societies I spoke about were already composed of Cro-Magnon Man, whose livelihood was hunting and gathering.

The age that anthropologists call “precivilization,” in which the animal level dominated, corresponds to the age of Pithecanthropus and the primitive humans who followed them. Certainly in the sense that those societies used fire and tools, they were already set apart from wild animals, but human beings were still very animal-like.

After that stage, however, human consciousness evolved rapidly. The brain developed, and brain capacity reached that of human beings today, which led to the awakening of the intellect.

For example, when the remains of one of the now-extinct Neanderthal were excavated, it was discovered that he had been living for years with a broken leg. Even though he was disabled, friends had helped him. The age of helping each other had begun.

This period was also revolutionary because the concept of death first arose within human beings. They began to bury their dead. They became conscious of death and the world after death. This awareness was also the discovery of “life.”

To become conscious of death was to become conscious that they were living life, which was not death. As we came to perceive the basic distinction between life and death, we became more aware that we were alive. The intellect is based on the consciousness that makes distinctions, and the most basic of those is the distinction between life and death.

For a long time, Neanderthal man was believed to be the direct ancestor of the human race, but genetic analysis has disproved this idea. The dominant theory now is that Neanderthal man died out because they could not adapt to various environmental changes.

Either way, during this period, the intellect began to develop in human beings, and they moved beyond the stage in which the strong dominated the weak. Hunter-gatherer societies were based on mutual help and even distribution of resources.

To sum up this history of the human race, the “civilization” I speak of is a period when human beings transcended the dominance of strong over weak, and they came to possess the intellect, but still held onto the basic attributes of affection and kindness.

With the shift to a farming society, however, people planted seeds in spring and harvested crops in autumn, and thus became aware of time. Being aware of time means not living in the here and now.

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