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Book Title: Awakening the Mind, Lightening the Heart: Core Teachings of Tibetan Buddhism ISBN: 0060616881 ISBN 13: 9780060616885 The author of the book: Dalai Lama XIV Edition: HarperOne Date of issue: October 20th 1995 Language: English Format files: PDF The size of the: 28.50 MB City - Country: No data Loaded: 2884 times Reader ratings: 4.9 |
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This book is a two-hundred and thirty page exposition of a four and a half page poem, which itself was an expansion of a thirty-two line poem and this is a reflection of a them of the whole work which is the sense of the increasing difficulty and effort involved in Buddhist spiritual practise (view spoiler)[ at least at the kind of professional level undertaken by people who have taken serious vows, lay people presumably make do with everyday worries! (hide spoiler)]. In this it reminded me of .
Preliminary Ramblings
I have a (view spoiler)[ very probably completely inaccurate (hide spoiler)] sense that in the good old days people could simply achieve Enlightenment. This was mysterious, perhaps incommunicable through language, yet all the same people did it. However since then people had thought long and hard about it and realised that it was far more complex than originally thought. Now one might spend many lives working to achieve subsidiary goals such as awakening the mind, which the Dalai Lama at one point mentioned he still hasn't managed to do (view spoiler)[which has to be fairly discouraging (hide spoiler)].
Two things occurred to me about this point. First was that I quite liked what was being said, this was like my younger days going to the library and reading science-fiction because this business of struggling through universes of thought and feeling across unending regenerations swearing not to rest but to work for the emancipation of all sentient beings struck me as more exuberant and audacious than all those books with space ships on their covers than I ploughed through as a youngster (view spoiler)[ and those adventures through time and space seemed like the history of Buddhism itself, growing and decaying. Monasteries that thrived to be forgotten, statues that towered over the landscape violently destroyed, Stupas swallowed by jungle to be rediscovered as tourist attractions (hide spoiler)].
The other idea I had was that seems to be a tendency in the mind to balance the cosmic see-saw, for instance in Christianity, and perhaps in the rest of the monotheistic religions too, the greater the love that God has for creation the worse that creation has to be. Here maybe the more fantastic and aeon spanning the compassion of the Buddha and the Bodhisattvas the more difficult and demanding the spiritual tasks have to be. The positive virtue is taken to be equal to the scale of the undertaking.
Anyhow, enough blathering.
When I was receiving teachings from Khun-nu Lama, he told me a story of someone in Lhasa doing circumambulations. Someone else was meditating there, and the other one circumambulating asked, "what are you doing?" The other replied, "I am meditating on patience." The first retorted, "Eat shit!" and the meditator jumped up, shouting in anger. This clearly shows that the real test of patience is whether we can apply it when we encounter disturbing situations (pp72-3).
Secondary Ramblings
This is a transitional work. It marks the transition from an oral teaching culture to one that is literary. The initial work, and the first response to it were poems. We can imagine that they were memorised and recited. Learning would have begun with memorising the work.
The story associated with this tradition of mind training was that one monk had mastered the technique and precisely because he thought it was important he didn't teach it to everybody but only those he considered suitable, or capable of benefiting from it.
We can see from this how slender the lines of an oral tradition can be.
Further , although not strictly pertinent to his theme, the comments on emptiness I found particularly clear and they clarified for me how (he at least) can understand a system of reincarnation without having a soul.

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Read information about the author

Tenzin Gyatso was the fifth of sixteen children born to a farming family. He was proclaimed the tulku (an Enlightened lama who has consciously decided to take rebirth) of the 13th Dalai Lama at the age of two.
On 17 November 1950, at the age of 15, he was enthroned as Tibet's ruler. Thus he became Tibet's most important political ruler just one month after the People's Republic of China's invasion of Tibet on 7 October 1950. In 1954, he went to Beijing to attempt peace talks with Mao Zedong and other leaders of the PRC. These talks ultimately failed.
After a failed uprising and the collapse of the Tibetan resistance movement in 1959, the Dalai Lama left for India, where he was active in establishing the Central Tibetan Administration (the Tibetan Government in Exile) and in seeking to preserve Tibetan culture and education among the thousands of refugees who accompanied him.
Tenzin Gyatso is a charismatic figure and noted public speaker. This Dalai Lama is the first to travel to the West. There, he has helped to spread Buddhism and to promote the concepts of universal responsibility, secular ethics, and religious harmony.
He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989, honorary Canadian citizenship in 2006, and the United States Congressional Gold Medal on 17 October 2007.
Reviews of the Awakening the Mind, Lightening the Heart: Core Teachings of Tibetan Buddhism

OLLIE
You need to drive a phone number to protect against robots.

AMELIE
Just a terrific book.

LEON
Time flew unnoticed.

MADISON
Contradictory. On the one hand, it pulls in and on the other ...
Poignant book.
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