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SWAMI SATCHIDANANDA
S. SATCH: The newspaper publishes bad news-it is unwashed news. The good news, nobody reads it. If people read good news more, they will print good news. But if they print only good news, newspapers will go broke. On the other hand, newspapers could educate the public to read more good things. There is a Tamil saying in India that "a woman can make or break.” I twist that to, “a pen can make or break.” We were once at a United Nations gathering with some media people. I told them that the pen makes or breaks, because you are writing the headlines of the day for the world. What are people reading about, good things or bad things? I told them, you are making people think of bad things; and the more they read that, they become bad. They send out bad vibrations. Look at poor President Clinton. He did nothing more than what other presidents have done; JFK did more. But at that time, the media didn't write about such things. Now they are writing, and it's a big explosion.
L.M.: It is a real problem.
S. SATCH: I went and opened the Woodstock Festival.
L.M.: You said an opening prayer there in 1969?
S. SATCH: All the newspapers wrote nasty things about all the rubbish and about how people smoked marijuana and danced naked. But none of them wrote about the nice, positive things. For three days and nights in the rain, hundreds of thousands of people lived together without any friction or any violence. But the media didn't appreciate that. So I told them at the UN: You are like vultures or eagles-eagles fly high, but do you know where their eyes are looking? Where the dead bodies are. We don't see the good things, we only see the bad things. So newspaper people, the media, should change their attitude and start writing more about good things.
L.M.: You're right. The vision for the coming spiritual age or renaissance is to be able to bring about a better world, through meditation and service to others that we have been talking about. We need to see the best in everyone as Saint Francis did.
S. SATCH: In everything you have good and bad, it's a mixture. But when you see the good things, and develop that, and improve and encourage that,
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