A good heart is the source of all happiness, says His Holiness the Dalai Lama, and we can all be good-hearted with some effort. But better still, he says, is to have bodhichitta—a good heart imbued with wisdom. Anyone who has good thoughts, who does a lot to help others, and who leaves behind good memories is respected by people all over the world, regardless of whether they [...]
About The Dalai Lama
New Ethic for a Small Planet
If the twenty-first century is to be one of peace and caring, says His Holiness the Dalai Lama in this heartfelt personal plea, we must develop a new ethic of human values that transcends religion. I am an old man now. I was born in 1935 in a small village in northeastern Tibet. For reasons beyond my control, I have lived most of my adult life as a stateless refugee in India, [...]
Developing the Mind of Great Capacity
A teaching on practices to generate bodhichitta by His Holiness the Dalai Lama. From one point of view, personal liberation without freeing others is selfish and unfair, because all sentient beings also have the natural right and desire to be free of suffering. Therefore, it is important for practitioners to engage in the practice of the stages of the path of the highest [...]
Only Genuine Compassion Will Do
It's not sufficient, says the Dalai Lama, to simply think that compassion is important. We must transform our thoughts and behavior on a daily basis to cultivate compassion without attachment. Before we can generate compassion and love, it is important to have a clear understanding of what we understand compassion and love to be. In simple terms, compassion and love can be [...]
Emptiness and Existence
His Holiness the Dalai Lama takes us step by step through the famed logic of Madhyamika, the Middle Way that defeats all extreme views of reality. To generate the type of love and compassion that motivates you to seek buddhahood, not for yourself but for the sake of others, first you must confront suffering by identifying its types. This is the first noble truth. From the time [...]
The Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu — The Best of Spiritual Friends
His Holiness The Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu -- they're two of the world's best-known spiritual leaders, and dear, dear friends as well. It's a friendship rooted in a shared sense of joy, and of purpose: to foster and spread that joy around the globe, in order to address and counter its despair. Here, from The Book of Joy, their book with Douglas Abrams, we get an [...]
Living the Compassionate Life
This teaching by the Dalai Lama explains how the Buddhist teachings of mindfulness and compassion lead inevitably to feelings of self-confidence and kindness. As human beings we all have the potential to be happy and compassionate people, and we also have the potential to be miserable and harmful to others. The potential for all these things is present within each of [...]
A Day in the Life of the Dalai Lama
If you were the Dalai Lama, how would you spend a day? In a classic Pico Iyer interview with the Dalai Lama from the turn of the century, His Holiness shared an intimate glimpse of a day in the life of a global religious leader. Each time I receive some new teaching, that adds something to my daily practice. So nowadays, my daily recitation, compulsory, normally takes [...]
Basically Good
His Holiness the Dalai Lama on good heart, awakened mind, the causes of happiness and other basic principles of Buddhism. I believe that all human beings are of the same nature. At the mental and emotional levels we are the same. We all have the potential to become happy and nice people and we also have the potential to become very bad and harmful people. The same potential [...]
Discover Your Innermost Awareness
In his teaching on the essence of Dzogchen, the Dalai Lama describes the shock that naturally accompanies an experience of innermost awareness, which is actually the basis of all reality. I have great interest in the statement by many wise persons in all the orders of Tibetan Buddhism that their systems come down to the same final principle, and I feel that this is what I [...]