My reading corner

  Geared toward an audience of Western students just beginning to explore the Buddhist tradition, this new book from the spiritual and temporal leader of the Tibetan people explains that "a fundamental confusion in our understanding of the world (including our own self) lies at the root of much of our suffering and difficulties." Fortunately, in this manual, the Dalai Lama explains the Buddhist approach to dispelling this confusion clearly and engagingly. After providing an overview of the Buddha's Four Noble Truths and other Buddhist principles, the Dalai Lama then presents two short, classic Buddhist texts, "Eight Verses on Mind Training" and "Lamp for the Path to Enlightenment," with a verse-by-verse commentary on their meanings and applications. Both texts provide the guidance Buddhists need to gain "a genuine understanding of emptiness." Once Buddhist practitioners achieve this comprehension of emptiness and also cultivate a profound compassion for other sentient beings, they develop bodhicitta, or "the altruistic mind of awakening," but the Dalai Lama makes it clear that this point cannot be achieved without dedicated effort. The Dalai Lama engages readers by talking them through a ceremony to generate bodhicitta, encouraging non-Buddhists to "participate in the ceremony as a means to strengthen your commitment to the ideals of compassion and altruism." With its invitation to Buddhists and non-Buddhists alike, this lucid, accessible introduction to Buddhist concepts and texts is bound to light the way for many readers.

  Can an ordinary person with family responsibilities achieve Nirvana or Buddhahood? What should be the spiritual limit of ambition for a busy professional? How do you stay positive when confronted with environmental and human injustice? Answering these and a host of other questions from his most recent annual Dharma Celebration, His Holiness delivers a message about the paths to “right living” and the need to overcome negative emotions in order to develop one’s inner consciousness. Wise, compassionate, and always pragmatic, he offers advice on the many issues that confront us every day: how to free ourselves from emotional afflictions and petty cravings, how to transform anxiety into contentment, and how to initiate and keep alive interfaith dialogue in the troubled times we live in.

  "N'essayez pas de mettre une tête de yack sur un corps de mouton." Par ce proverbe tibétain, qu'il cite volontiers, le Dalaï-lama signifie nettement qu'il n'a aucune intention d'encourager les gens à se convertir. En revanche, son esprit très ouvert le pousse sans cesse à approcher d'autres religions que la sienne pour comprendre ce qu'elles ont à offrir à l'humanité. C'est ainsi qu'il avait accepté, en 1994, la proposition d'un groupe chrétien pratiquant la méditation de se pencher sur huit passages de l'Évangile. Ses commentaires, limpides, forment la partie centrale du livre. "On le voit entrer de plain-pied, sans fausses pudeurs, dans la logique de l'Évangile", écrit Robert Kiely, le préfacier, qui évoque le climat de la rencontre : chaleureuse et détendue. Bel exemple de dialogue inter religieux. Le livre comprend également la situation des passages étudiés dans leur contexte originel par Laurence Freeman - un bénédictin anglais -, un glossaire étoffé des termes chrétiens, ainsi que quelques pages d'introduction et un glossaire sur le bouddhisme.

  There are a lot of versions of this book, but no matter which one you choose to read, the summary it's the same. It was very useful for me, before and after the death of my father-in-law. Before, coz I was there when he passed away, and I've always thought that if this would have happened , I would have run away scared. Instead, I took his hand in mine, and I conforted him in his last journey. After, coz I know he's with us all the time.

The summary: In 1927, Walter Evans-Wentz published his translation of an obscure Tibetan Nyingma text and called it the Tibetan Book of the Dead. Popular Tibetan teacher Sogyal Rinpoche has transformed that ancient text, conveying a perennial philosophy that is at once religious, scientific, and practical. Through extraordinary anecdotes and stories from religious traditions East and West, Rinpoche introduces the reader to the fundamentals of Tibetan Buddhism, moving gradually to the topics of death and dying. Death turns out to be less of a crisis and more of an opportunity. Concepts such as reincarnation, karma, and bardo and practices such as meditation, tonglen, and phowa teach us how to face death constructively. As a result, life becomes much richer. Like Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, Sogyal Rinpoche opens the door to a full experience of death. It is up to the reader to walk through.

  In the wave of Seven Years in Tibet and Return to Tibet, I bought this book to achieve more knowledge about Tibet and his landscapes. It's a really amazing story, breathtaking and very emotional.

The story: 15 Years-old Buddhist nuns who dare to challenge the Chinese invaders, children who are reincarnated deities, heroic teenagers and elders that come from another time, torturers and wise hermits, corrupt policemen and nomadic warriors. . . ‘The Mountains of Buddha’ is a tale of what refuses to vanish on the other side of the Himalayas: the spirit of resistance, the faith, the Soul of Tibet. It is the true story of two young women who join a group of refugees to cross, at night and by foot, the highest mountains of the world.

  I found so many peace reading this book.......

What's about: His Holiness speaks about love, wisdom, grace, forgiveness, suffering and nirvana. About the paths that lead every human being to the final stop. How to bare the suffering in life, and to achieve peace after it. How to be not attached to mortal things so to achieve an higher spirit.

  The book:  Readers who think of the Dalai Lama as that beloved, avuncular, cosmopolitan, orange-robed monk with the kindly eyes and charismatic manner are in for a surprise, if not a downright shock, with this small but powerful collection of spiritual essays. Like the weather on the slopes of the Himalayas, these words burn down with the brightest sun one minute, and then, without warning, they blow right through you with the feel of an icy breeze. The preface describes how these talks were given in July 1996 by the Dalai Lama to a joint retreat of 25 Buddhist and 25 Christian monks at the Abbey of Gethsemani, the one-time home of Thomas Merton, a close and beloved friend of the Dalai Lama. Each homily is directed with deadly accuracy at the hearts, souls and minds of his listeners. They start, as any climb up the Himalayas does, with an easygoing amble up slopes that most of us can follow with ease. But as the Dalai gets into his stride, the spiritual atmosphere becomes thinner, the slopes steeper and the amount of specialized knowledge and experience required to follow in his footsteps becomes increasingly demanding. From time to time, the Dalai Lama does refer to the faith and spiritual practices of the Catholic monks, but his major intention is to give an elegant and sometimes esoteric commentary on the spiritual path taken by his Tibetan monks.

  Robert A.F. Thurman lives to make the teachings of the Buddha interesting and meaningful to people from all over the world. In doing so, he has been recognized as one of America's leading voices for sanity and peace in the new millennium. In 1997, Time Magazine chose him as one of its 25 most influential Americans. Working at Columbia University, his intention is to enrich contemporary thought and practice through the profound and vast Buddhist philosophy and pyschology. Robert Tenzin Thurman is co-founder and current President of Tibet House U.S. a cultural institution dedicated to preserving and promoting the wisdom and the arts of the distinctive and endangered Tibetan civilization.

The book: "A specter is haunting Europe," Karl Marx wrote 150 years ago in The Communist Manifesto, "the specter of communism." Influenced by Marx's claim that religion is "the opiate of the masses," sociologists have traditionally viewed Buddhism as otherworldly, apolitical, pessimistic, socially apathetic and ethically inert -- the most powerful of religious opiates. Robert Thurman's Inner Revolution is a Buddhist manifesto that stands Marx and the sociologists on their heads. A specter is haunting America, he argues, and it's the friendly ghost of Tibetan Buddhism. Thurman is a Buddhist Studies professor at Columbia University. But his real job is playing James Carville to the Dalai Lama's President Clinton. Inner Revolution is one part autobiography, two parts philosophy, three parts history and four parts spin. Here readers learn that Thurman was the first Westerner ordained a Tibetan Buddhist monk, that the Buddha was great in bed, that selflessness is the key to real happiness and that Tibet is "a mandala of the peaceful, perfected universe." But Thurman's aim is not to portray Tibet as Shangri-la. It is to portray Buddhism as deeply ethical and political -- "a coup of the spirit." Like John Dominic Crossan, who has argued that Jesus was a revolutionary, Thurman portrays the Buddha as a liberator -- a "cool hero" who initiated a "cool revolution" that radically transformed society by changing individuals first. His "politics of enlightenment" was countercultural at first, but it eventually went mainstream, finding its highest manifestation in "buddhocratic" (not theocratic!) Tibet. As the world modernized, Thurman argues, Tibet modernized too. But while the West's modernity was "outer," Tibet's modernity was "inner." It explored inner rather than outer space, championed the spiritual over the material, sacralized rather than secularized the world, and put its trust in individuals over bureaucracies. Nonviolent and tolerant, it achieved its apogee in the monasteries of the "psychonauts" of Tibet. Militaristic modernity, Thurman concludes, has brought us to the brink of nuclear annihilation. Our challenge is to marry inner and outer modernity -- to create a global society (a "United Nations of Earth") that is both spiritually and technologically advanced. In keeping with its manifesto style, Inner Revolution is replete with lists. There are five principles of the politics of enlightenment and four grounds for hope in the 21st century. An appendix, the book's most controversial section, propounds 10 planks in what amounts to a political platform. Here Thurman gets down to business, blasting Newt Gingrich-style Republicans (though not by name) on taxes, crime, race, religious freedom, defense spending and the environment, and endorsing abortion rights, medicinal pot-smoking, universal voter registration and higher salaries for college professors. Although Thurman presents his book as an antidote to the materialistic modernity of the West, it is also a welcome corrective to the pop Buddhism of Madison Avenue and Hollywood. Say what you want about his specific political proposals, Thurman's vision of a kinder, gentler America merits a hearing. If nothing else, the book demonstrates that not every Tibetan lama is busy shilling something on TV. Robert Thurman may be no Jack Kennedy, but he isn't Stephen Seagal either. His manifesto deserves a thoughtful read.

  I've been raised as a Roman Catholic, but over the years I took distance from Roman Church. I've always searched for a deeper meaning of our living, suffering, joy and death. I'm not saying that in Buddhism I found the answers I was looking for, but certainly I like its spirit and the loving acceptance of the human nature, and the sweetness that's in it. I started reading some essays I found in the net, then I bought some books on the subject, I've learned more about Tibet and the chinese invasion, and the Dalai Lama pacific fight to restore freedom in his country. Some years ago I went to a conference held by His Holiness, I've never felt before that kind of inner peace, of warm inside , just listening to this man, to his teachings.

The book: This is a unique book of the Dalai Lama’s thought on how he see himself, Buddhism, the world at war, the meaning of freedom, busy modern life, its challenges and how to master them.
In his inimitable style of humorous simplicity His Holiness looks at everyday problems and puts them in a wider context, making clear their global significance. The book provides an excellent and wide-ranging introduction and overview to the Dalai Lama’s philosophy of life, his thoughts and beliefs, and also gives food for thought on how all of us can live lives of greater wisdom and peace.