Merely thinking that compassion, reason and patience are good, will not be enough to develop them. We must wait for difficulties to arise and then attempt to practice them. Who creates such opportunities? Not our friends, of course, but our enemies. So if we truly wish to learn, we should consider enemies to be our best teacher!

For a person who cherishes compassion and love, the practice of tolerance is essential, and for that, an enemy is indispensable. So we should feel grateful to our enemies, for it is they who can best help us develop a tranquil mind. Also, both in personal and public life, with a change in circumstances, enemies become friends.

Anger and hatred are our real enemies. These are the forces we most need to confront and defeat, not the temporary 'enemies' who appear intermittently throughout life. Of course, it is natural and right that we all want friends. I often joke that if you really want to be selfish, you should be very altruistic! You should take good care of others, be concerned for their welfare, help them, serve them, make more friends, and make more smiles. When you yourself need help, you find plenty of helpers! If, on the other hand, you neglect the happiness of others, in the long term you will be the loser. Only affection brings us genuine close friends.

Today, if you have money and power, you seem to have many friends. When you lose your wealth and influence, you will find it very difficult to track these people down. When things go well for us, we become confident that we can manage by ourselves and feel we do not need friends, but as our status and health decline, we quickly realise how wrong we were. So to prepare for that moment, to make genuine friends who will help us when the need arises, we ourselves must cultivate altruism.

I myself always want more friends. I love smiles. Because of this I have the problem of knowing genuine smiles. For, there are many kind of smiles, such as sarcastic, artificial or diplomatic. Sometimes a smile can even create suspicion or fear. But a genuine smile really gives us a feeling of freshness. If these are the smiles we want, then we ourselves must create the reasons for them to appear.

Individual happiness can contribute in a profound and effective way to the overall improvement of our entire community. Because we all share an identical need for love, it is possible to feel that anybody we meet, in whatever circumstances, is a brother or sister. It is foolish to dwell on external differences, because our basic natures are the same.

Ultimately, humanity is one and this small planet is our only home. If we are to protect this home of ours, each of us needs to experience a vivid sense of universal altruism. It is only this feeling that can remove self-centred motives that cause people to deceive and misuse one another. If you have a sincere and open heart, you naturally feel self-worth and confidence, and there is no need to be fearful of others.

I believe that at every level of society - familial, tribal, national and international - the key to a happier and more successful world is the growth of compassion. We do not need to become religious, nor do we need to believe in an ideology. You just need to develop good human qualities.