How to Practice: The Way to a Meaningful Life

Overview

As human beings, we possess one common desire: the need for happiness and a meaningful life. According to His Holiness the Dalai Lama, the ability to find true fulfillment lies within each of us. Now, the spiritual and temporal leader of Tibet, Nobel Prize winner, and bestselling author helps readers begin the path to enlightenment in a very special book -- an easy-access reference for daily practice as well as stunning illumination of the timeless wisdom of His Holiness. How to Practice will guide you toward opening your heart, refraining from doing harm, maintaining mental tranquility, and more. Divided into a series of distinct steps that will lead spiritual seekers of all faiths toward enlightenment, this accessible book is a constant and daily companion in the quest to practice morality, meditation, and wisdom. The Dalai Lama shows us how to overcome our everyday obstacles, from feelings of anger and mistrust to jealousy, insecurity, and counterproductive thinking. Imbued with His Holiness' vivacious spirit and sense of playfulness, How to Practice offers the Dalai Lama's own sage and very practical insight into the human psyche and what binds us all together.

Editorial Reviews

The Dalai Lama, a formidable teacher, presents a way that is the middle way, but not necessarily the easy way. Because the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism has a natural gift as well as the translating and publishing resources that makes his teachings accessible, it is easy to forget the rigor and depth of those teachings. Too, Buddhism so often appears in the West as a system of daily behavior and practice that it is also easy to overlook the compelling intellectual challenge it presents to the Western understanding of reality. His Holiness starts on familiar Buddhist ground (morality of action, suffering, compassion) and chapter by chapter adds doctrine and complexity until teachings from the heights of imaginative Tantra and Tibetan deity yoga are being explicated. For the uninitiated the climb is steep, and those seeking general ethical guidance would do better with an easier text (His Holiness has written those, too). For the serious, however, the Dalai Lama offers elegant clarity about the paradoxes at the heart of Buddhism including the central Heart Sutra itself, the teaching of form-is-emptiness and about the intellectual intricacy of Buddhist teachings. Tibetan Buddhism is considered the esoteric wing of Buddhism; this slice shows some layers of its complexity while whetting the spiritual appetite for more understanding, or what Buddhists would call the intention for enlightenment. (Jan.) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information. -- PUBLISHERS WEEKLY.

Author Information

Bio of Dalai Lama

Born in 1935 into a farming family in northeastern Tibet, the Fourteenth Dalai Lama was recognized early in his life as a reincarnation of the thirteenth Dalai Lama. By age four, he was enthroned in Lhasa. During the 1950s, the political stability of Tibet was threatened when China's People's Liberation Army entered the country and established a military presence. Increased tensions put the life of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama in danger, and in 1959, he fled the country at night to Dharamsala, India, where he established the Tibetan government in exile.

Bio of Jeffrey Hopkins, Ph.D

Jeffrey Hopkins, Ph.D., served for a decade as the interpreter for the Dalai Lama. A Buddhist scholar and the author of more than thirty books, he is a professor of Tibetan and Buddhist studies at the University of Virginia, where he founded the largest academic program of Tibetan Buddhist studies in the West. He lives in Charlottesville, Virginia.

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Additional Info

Imprint

Atria

Filesize

338.23 KB

Number of Pages

240

eBook ISBN

9780743442572