The Meaning of Life: From a Buddhist Perspective - Softcover

Dalai Lama XIV

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0861710967 ISBN 13: 9780861710966

Publisher: Wisdom Publications,U.S., 1993

Synopsis

These lectures elaborate on the meaning of life by pointing out the causes behind our situation as well as the altruistic purpose to which life can be put. Addressed primarily to a Buddhist audience, the lectures clarify a view of inner psychic cosmology that has had great influence throughout Asia. From a vivid description of how we become trapped in a counter-productive maelstrom of suffering, there emerges a sense of how Buddhists place themselves in the universe. The unsettling description of the steps of entrapment is in fact a call to action, for it shows how, through reversing the process, the limiting prison of selfishness can be turned into a source of help and happiness for others. The way in which this process plays itself out in the nitty-gritty of everyday life is shown in the Dalai Lama's answer to a myriad of questions from the audience at the beginning of the second through fifth lectures. He elaborates on technical issues raised during the lectures and considers many of the difficult problems we encounter in our lives: how to deal with aggression from within and without; how to reconcile personal responsibility with the doctrine of selflessness; how to handle a loss of faith in a guru or lama; how to face a terminal illness; how to help someone who is dying; how to reconcile love for family with love for all beings; and how to integrate practice in daily life. An underlying theme of all five lectures and the focus of the last is the fundamental innate mind of clear light. The Dalai Lama describes the obscuration of this basically pure and inner-most mind and its manifestation in the wisdom realizing the emptiness of inherent existence through implementation of tantric techniques. The mind of clear light radiates through his entire presentation of the harrowing process of cyclic existence, in which ignorance of the basic nature of phenomena leads beings into actions that leave potencies in the mind which ripen into more suffering Jeffrey Hopkins

About this edition

• Publisher: Wisdom Publications,U.S.
• Publication date: 1993
• ISBN 10: 0861710967
• ISBN 13: 9780861710966
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 128
• Illustrator: Halpern Gina, Etc.