The Art of Happiness in a Troubled World

by Dalai Lama XIV

The figures of the genocide are staggering—an estimated eight hundred thousand to one million of their fellow Tutsi countrymen (as well as Hutu moderates) were massacred in one hundred days! Not with bombs, machine guns, or gas chambers—but mostly one on one, up close, personal. One witness reported he saw “husbands killing wives, wives killing husbands, neighbors killing neighbors, brothers killing sisters, sisters killing brothers, and children killing parents.” For a hundred days, it seemed that all social categories or designations, such as husband, wife, sister, neighbor, friend, old, young, farmer, doctor, or clergyman had all disappeared—only two remained: “us” and “them.”