The Open Road: Susan Derrera

In The Open Road: The Global Journey of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, Pico Iyer writes:

"[The Dalai Lama] told me that sometimes he felt that he could never do enough, and that nothing he did could ever really affect things. . . . He told me that it was "up to us poor humans to make the effort," one step at a time, and again, as if invoking the final words of the Buddha, he spoke of "constant effort, tireless effort, pursuing clear goals with sincere effort."

Then as we were walking out of the room, he went back and turned off the light. It's such a small thing, he said, it hardly makes a difference at all. And yet nothing is lost in the doing of it, and maybe a little good can come of it, if more and more people remember this small gesture in more and more rooms."