An ancient text beloved by the Dalai Lama is now being offered to a Western audience with the promise of genuine transformation. Margaret Evans speaks with author David Michie.

"Why be unhappy about something
If it can be remedied?
And what is the use of being unhappy
about something
If it cannot be remedied?"

How can you argue with that? So balanced and clear and, at the same time, so compassionate in its understanding of our human predicament.

While it sounds so matter-of-factly modern, in fact it is a verse on equanimity from an 8th century text written by one of Tibetan Buddhism's most revered sages, Shantideva.

In a story that parallels to a remarkable degree the life journey of the Buddha himself, Shantideva was an Indian ruler who forsook the wealth and privilege of his court in Gujarat, in western India, to study at the great monastic University of Nalanda. Always a non conformist, the privileged young man was ridiculed until he stood to offer his first Dharma discourse to the assembled monks. His incisive and brilliant words laid the foundation for what became his greatest work, Guide to the Bodhisattva's Way of Life.

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Nine years ago this month, the world witnessed an event so horrific that it bypasses all language barriers and we collectively identify it by just two numbers, 9/11. Just the mention of those numbers over the years since draws us all back to that terrible day.

I was sitting by my mother's bedside in the intensive care ward of Royal Perth Hospital and, strange as it may seem given her condition, I gave thanks that she, at least, was unaware of the horror that had gripped the world.

But in that horror, as we are only discovering now, something wonderful happened. Immediately after the twin towers crashed to the earth, the earth's magnetic field registered a sharp spike that's clearly identifiable on a graph.

The hypothesis for this otherwise inexplicable event is that the sudden immense outpouring of emotion as people everywhere began to pray for the victims or simply to send, unbidden, thoughts of compassion was heard by the universe. And it responded. As the mystics and seers tell us, what is in one is in the whole.

We owe this awe-filled insight to the work of Gregg Braden who shared it with us during last month's I Can Do It event in Sydney and Perth. In a fascinating talk, he put forward the theory that the universe responds to feeling, a phenomenon called heart coherence.

It's led to an experiment called the Global Coherence Initiative, which has the aim of redefining our relationship with the earth. It's big picture thinking and it tends to put politics in the shade doesn't it.

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by Nova Editor, Margaret Evans