KINDNESS, CLARITY, AND INSIGHT

The Dalai Lama escaped from the Chinese occupation of Tibet in 1959, and from his base in India has achieved a worldwide following for his lectures on Tibetan Buddhism. Between 1979 and 1981 he gave 67 lectures in the US. This selection from those talks focuses on compassion and includes the cause and effect of karma, the four noble truths, the luminous nature of the mind, the common goals of the world's major religions, meditative concentration, emptiness and selflessness. The book concludes with a synthesis of all the various strands of Tibetan Buddhism. The Dalai Lama advocates nonviolence and compassion in the political arena, yet the Chinese authorities have been reluctant to engage with him. Compassion is based on cultivating a sense of the reality of the other person and a recognition that his or her needs might conflict with your own. Nirvana can come later and is impossible without being rooted in daily practice. A key question often asked is whether the Dalai Lama proselytises, encouraging others to join his faith, or whether he waits for people to come to him. The response is that he works alongside Christians, Hindus, Muslims and Jews, but at the same time he is not interested in forming a world religion. The secret is to look outward, to ask what you can give. The question of inherent existence is complex philosophically, and the Dalai Lama engages with it here in a deep and scholarly way. A clear exposition of complex ideas. 230pp, paperback.