“I don’t know whether people know this, but it is believed that when Buddhism was at its height flourishing in India, at that time India politically, financially, culturally, India did the best… Much, much better than Rome, much, much better than many places that we know of. And a lot of this is [attributed] to the buddhadharma.
I am not even talking about some sort of spiritual blessing and all of that, which of course has to be. But you know the Buddhist appreciation of reasoning, the Buddhist appreciation of not taking things at face value, and Buddhist philosophy of cause, condition, and effect. In other words, the Buddhist philosophy that everything is dependent arising. These are not… these cannot get outdated. In fact these messages are more potent and more important now than ever.
Not just the Buddhist philosophy, even the Buddhist methods such as contemplation, the need to have at least control over our insatiable, blind, and so short-sighted greed, which is basically destroying our world, we all know that.”
Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche