My Spiritual Journey by Dalai Lama (good books for 8th graders txt) 📕

The Dalai Lama

My

Spiritual

Journey

Personal Reflections, Teachings, and Talks

Collected by Sofia Stril-Rever

Translated by Charlotte Mandell

CONTENTS

FOREWORD: Listening to the Dalai Lama’s Appeal to the World by Sofia Stril-Rever

PART ONE: As a Human Being

1. Our Common Humanity

I Am No One Special

I am just a human being

In our blood, a vital need for affection

My mother, a compassionate woman

It’s time to think in human terms

Every person we meet is our brother or sister

Loving-kindness, the condition of our survival

I pray for a more loving human family

We are all alike

Until My Last Breath, I Will Practice Compassion

What do we mean by “compassion"?

True compassion is universal

The power of compassion

I am a professional laugher

I am a devoted servant of compassion

Compassion, path of my happiness

I love the smile, unique to humans

2. My Lives Without Beginning or End

I Rejoice at Being the Son of Simple Farmers

My everyday life

I was born on the fifth day of the fifth month …

I can see into the humblest souls

My parents never thought I might be the Fourteenth Dalai Lama

I recognize my rosary

I successfully pass the tests of remembering my previous life

My Childhood in Lhasa

I climb up onto the Lion Throne

I find my teeth

Childhood memories

I indulge in illegal treats

I almost looked like Moshe Dayan!

My Reincarnation Lineage

I am summoned to become the Dalai Lama to serve others

The Tibetans will decide if they want a Fifteenth Dalai Lama

My Dalailamaship

Why shouldn’t a very beautiful woman be my next incarnation?

We are without beginning or end

I could reincarnate in the form of an insect

PART TWO: As a Buddhist Monk

3. Transforming Oneself

My Ideal: The Bodhisattva

My identity as a monk

My monk’s vows

The daily meditations of a Buddhist monk

Living as a bodhisattva

Spiritual practice in order to become better human beings

Temples of Kindness in Our Hearts

Toward brotherly exchanges between religions

Politicians need religion more than hermits

My pilgrimages, from Lourdes to Jerusalem

A life of contemplation on love

Temples inside

Transforming Our Minds

Analysis of the mind as a preliminary to spiritual practice

Impermanence and interdependence, or seeing the world as it is

Transforming our mind on the Buddha’s path

Actualizing our potential

Training our emotional life

4. Transforming the World

I Call for a Spiritual Revolution

We can do without religion, but not without spirituality

Spiritual revolution and ethical revolution

The sickness of duality

The disregard of interdependence by Westerners

I Do Not Believe in Ideologies

Humanity is one

Interdependence is a law of nature

A sense of responsibility is born from compassion

War is an anachronism

Everyone must assume a share of universal responsibility

My Dialogue with the Sciences

Why is a Buddhist monk interested in science?

Humanity is at a crossroads

Ethics in the sciences to save life

The tragedy of September 11, 2001, taught me that we must not separate ethics from progress

5. Taking Care of the Earth

Our Ecological Responsibility

As a child, I learned from my teachers to take care of the environment

The Tibet of my childhood, paradise of wildlife

In Tibet the mountains have become bald as monks’ heads

Reflections of a Buddhist monk on our ecological responsibility

Our Planet Is One World

The Buddha in the Green Party!

Human rights and the environment

Mind, heart, and environment

Taking care of the Earth

Interdependence as seen from space

PART THREE: As the Dalai Lama

6. In the Dalai Lama Meets the World

I Was the Only One Who Could Win Unanimous Support

At sixteen, I become the temporal leader of Tibet

We wrongly believed that isolation would guarantee us peace

I endorse the Kashag’s appeal to the United Nations

The motherland, a shameless lie

Mao’s personality impressed me

March 10, 1959, a day of insurrection in Lhasa

My Children, You Are the Future of Tibet

Forced exile

My priority is stopping the bloodshed

Children of hope

I am a proponent of secular democracy

Liberty, equality, and fraternity are also Buddhist principles

I love the image of swords transformed into plowshares

Human beings prefer the way of peace

What would Gandhi have done in my place?

7. I Appeal to All the Peoples of the World

I Denounce the Sinicization of Tibet

I ask the world not to forget that thousands of Tibetans were massacred

In the name of humanity, I appeal to all the peoples of the world

The Han-ification campaign in Tibet

Five hundred Tibetans perished while fleeing their occupied country

Tibet, Sanctuary of Peace for the World

My people’s contribution to world peace

I propose that Tibet become a sanctuary of ahimsa for the world

In the name of the spiritual heritage of my people

My weapons are truth, courage, and determination

Tibet is still suffering from flagrant, unimaginable human rights violations

In China, I see that change is on the way

To all my spiritual brothers and sisters in China

CONCLUSION: I Place My Hope in the Human Heart

We Can Only Live in Hope

AFTERWORD: Winning Peace with the Dalai Lama

NOTES

BIBLIOGRAPHY

INDEX

Acknowledgments

My Three Commitments in Life

Editor’s Note

Copyright

About the Publisher

FOREWORD

Listening to the Dalai Lama’s Appeal to the World

The Dalai Lama is fourteenth in a lineage of reincarnations that came into being with the first emanation of enlightened compassion, Gendun Drup, in 1391.1 The Dalai Lama discusses the anecdotes and accomplishments of his previous lives as naturally as he relates his childhood memories. He maintains a living link with his thirteen predecessors, often mentioning their beloved, familiar presence. He is seventy-four years old, but since he took on the burden of spiritual and temporal leadership of Tibet, his awareness encompasses seven centuries of history. In this book we meet the Dalai Lama at a time when he is reflecting on his next incarnation, for he knows that his present existence is drawing to an end. But he also knows that his life will not stop with death.

He asserts, however, that he is “no one special” but “a human being” like everyone else. Meeting him calls many certainties into question, for his “human” dimension does not exhibit the ordinary limits of our condition; I have often wondered whether the essential teaching we receive from him is simply about becoming fully human.

I asked myself this question again on March 10, 2006, in Dharamsala, as I listened to the speech the Dalai Lama was giving to commemorate the Lhasa insurrection. I had the feeling that his words carried far beyond the cloud-wrapped mountains and the hundreds of people gathered in a