Richard Gere helped migrants at sea

Richard Gere is popularly known as an activist and a philanthropist. Apart from being a great star in Hollywood, he has always gone out of his way to help people and sometimes in matters that involve the law.

Gere, according to reports is set to appear in Italy in a law court. The actor helped deliver food to people onboard a vessel who refused entry to an Italian port by then former interior minister Matteo Salvini.

Talking about his belief, Richard Gere has lived all his life as a Buddhist and has remained loyal to Dalai Lama.

“I remember when I was just starting to practice meditation – 24 years old, trying to come to grips with my life,” Gere said. “I was holed up in my sh*tty little apartment for months at a time, just doing tai chi and doing my best to do the sitting practice.

“I had a very clear feeling that I’d always been in meditation, that I’d never left meditation. That it was a much more substantial reality than what we normally take to be reality. That was very clear to me even then, but it’s taken me this long in my life to bring it out into the world more, through more time practicing, watching my mind, trying to generate bodhicitta.

When Gere met the Dalai Lama for the first time in India, it was a special occasion.

“We started out with a little small talk, and then he said, ‘Oh, so you’re an actor?’” he recalled.

“He thought about that a second, and then he said, ‘So when you do this acting, and you’re angry, are you really angry? When you’re acting sad, are you really sad? When you cry, are you crying?’

“I gave him some kind of actor answer like it was more effective if you really believed in the emotion that you were portraying. He looked very deeply into my eyes and just started laughing. Hysterically. He was laughing at the idea that I would believe emotions are real, that I would work very hard to believe in anger and hatred and sadness and pain and suffering.”

Speaking about the help he rendered to migrants, Richard has been summoned to court.

“We saw more than a hundred people on board,” Gere said. “I felt ashamed that we have so much and are not able to embrace these fellow human beings, our brothers and sisters who were starving, traumatized.

“If they were told the boat was going back to Libya, they would jump in the water and drown themselves, and I felt it was our responsibility to bring as much light as we could.”.

“It’s very simple, I’ll just tell the truth; I’ll just tell what I experienced. I’m only here to speak for people who don’t have a voice. It’s not about me. I’m completely irrelevant here. I’m honest with you. I can be invisible. All I am is a witness.”