In HOW TO BE COMPASSIONATE: A HANDBOOK TO CREATING INNER
PEACE AND A HAPPIER WORLD, His Holiness the Dalai Lama
offers practical advice on how to enrich our lives by
focusing on replacing negative emotions with love and
compassion. His Holiness advises his readers to personalize
our enemies by acknowledging that they are individuals who
are equally entitled to happiness just as we are. Our
enemies do not want to suffer and want to be happy, so when
we look past their behavior, we realize that they are not
very different from ourselves.
The Dalai Lama offer many examples from his past to guide
his readers into more compassionate encounters. His Holiness
believes that the majority of problems plaguing the world
today stem from anger, lust, and other negative emotions
coming from the Ego. He argues that by listening to the
voice of our ego we become more and more lost to a world of
negativity creating an endless cycle of hatred and pain.
According to the Dalai Lama, negative emotions can be healed
and transformed by viewing humanity as a whole, instead of
viewing ourselves as individuals. Viewing ourselves as one
person, tends to create greed and cause us to ignore the
suffering of others. When we put our ego aside and realize
we are all one, we finally see that hatred and greed serve
no purpose.
His Holiness asks readers who seek to incorporate more
compassion into their lives to keep a strong vigilance over
their emotions. When we are the recipients of hatred, the
incoming emotions can be recognized and transformed into
compassion before the human ego can react with equal
negativity. The Dalai Lama has plenty to say about those who
we consider our enemies. While many of us may consider
enemies a curse, the Dalai Lama points to the benefits of
having enemies. Enemies strengthen our character and help us
develop patience. Instead of focusing on the trouble people
are creating in your life, the reader should respond with
gratitude to these unsuspecting individuals who are
unknowingly allowing us to grow spiritually. The people we
love can never add to our spiritual growth, only the enemy
can help us develop patience and increase our faith.
HOW TO BE COMPASSIONATE: A HANDBOOK FOR CREATING INNER PEACE
AND A HAPPIER WORLD is a heartfelt antidote to negativity
which will resonate with readers regardless of religious
preference. His Holiness' grace and wisdom shine through and
comfort the reader on each page. Written for people tired of
the negativity in their own lives and in the world in
general, the Dalai Lama's empowering words will take readers
to an ideal world awaiting those people who are ready to
take the first step to a more peaceful existence. His
Holiness' thought provoking arguments will cause readers to
view negative emotions, both our own and those of others, in
a whole new light.
Each one of us is responsible for all of humankind, and for
the environment in which we live. . . . We must seek to
lessen the suffering of others. Rather than working solely
to acquire wealth, we need to do something meaningful,
something seriously directed toward the welfare of humanity
as a whole. To do this, you need to recognize that the whole
world is part of you. —from How to Be Compassionate The
surest path to true happiness lies in being intimately
concerned with the welfare of others. Or, as His Holiness
the Dalai Lama would say, in compassion. In How to Be
Compassionate, His Holiness reveals basic mistakes of
attitude that lead us to inner turmoil, and how we can
correct them to achieve a better tomorrow.
He demonstrates precisely how opening our hearts and minds
to other people is the best way to overcome the misguided
ideas that are at the root of all our problems. He shows us
how compassion can be a continuous wellspring of happiness
in our own lives and how our newfound happiness can extend
outward from us in ever wider and wider circles. As we
become more compassionate human beings, our friends, family,
neighbors, loved ones—and even our enemies—will find
themselves less frequently in the thrall of destructive
emotions like anger, jealousy, and fear, prompting them to
become more warmhearted, kind, and harmonious forces within
their own circles. With simple language and startling
clarity, His Holiness makes evident as never before that the
path to global harmony begins in the hearts of individual
women and men.
Enlivened by personal anecdotes and intimate accounts of the
Dalai Lama’s experiences as a student, thinker, political
leader, and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, How to Be
Compassionate gives seekers of all faiths the keys to
overcoming anger, hatred, and selfishness— the primary
obstacles to happiness—and to becoming agents of positive
transformation in our communities and the world at large.
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